Ants Laikmaa

Biography

In the autumn of 1891 Hans Laipman, as the future Ants Laikmaa was then called, set out on foot from Riga towards Germany. The journey took about six weeks. A place was already waiting for him at the Düsseldorf Academy of Art: he had sent several of his portraits to Professor Eduard von Gebhardt, and the professors had accepted him as a student.

He was born on 5 May 1866 at the Paiba farm in the village of Araste, into a peasant Estonian family. By some accounts he was the thirteenth child, by others the fifteenth. He attended schools in Velise, Haapsalu and Lihula, then in Reval, where he visited the studio of the painter Theodor Albert Sprengel. In St Petersburg he was not admitted to the Academy of Arts, as his preparation was not sufficient. He stayed to study with Professor Julius Klever and went round the museums.

At Düsseldorf he studied with interruptions, in 1891–1893 and 1896–1897. The first time he had to go home because of his father’s illness. At home he wrote down folk songs, stories and jokes in Läänemaa for Jakob Hurt, the collector of Estonian folklore; in 1896 he sent about three hundred texts. Then he worked for two years in Düsseldorf as a portraitist, in 1899 travelled to Holland and Belgium, and in 1900 walked from Paris to Munich and returned to his homeland.

In 1901, at the Reval Provincial Museum, he opened an exhibition, the first solo exhibition by an Estonian artist in Estonia. Most of the works shown were destroyed in a fire in 1907. For about two years he lived in Vigala and in Haapsalu, where he finished an altarpiece for the church at Pärnu-Jaagupi.

In 1903 he founded a drawing school in Reval. Within a couple of weeks it had about twenty pupils. For the centenary of Friedrich Reinhold Kreutzwald, author of the Estonian national epic, he painted the portrait composition “Kaugelt näen kodu kasvavat” (“From afar I see home growing”) and gave it to the Estonia theatre. In 1906 he organised a survey exhibition of Estonian art in Tartu, and in 1907 he took part in founding the Estonian Art Association.

The portraits of these years are many. Peasants sat for him (“Old Aitsam”, “Old Man from Vigala”), as did the poet Marie Under, the composer Miina Härma and the actor Paul Pinna. Pastel became his favourite technique, because it let him work fast.

In 1907 he was expelled from Estonia as an elector in the elections to the Second State Duma, the Russian imperial parliament. He spent two years in Finland, in Vyborg and by the Imatra rapids. There landscape was added to portraiture, for example “Vallinkoski” (1909). Then he travelled to the art centres of Western Europe and lived on Capri and in Tunisia. To my mind, the Tunisian landscapes and the “market” types of those years deserve a separate discussion, but here I have only a list of titles.

In 1913 he returned to Reval and reopened his school. Oskar Kallis, Alfred Tuul, Aleksander Krims and Aleksander Mülber studied with him. Until 1932 he taught and wrote articles: more than 190 are known, among them the travel pieces “Teelt” (“On the Road”, 1910–1912) and notes on the pupils’ trip to Moscow and St Petersburg in 1914. “Salme” (a portrait of his niece) and the portrait of August Kitzberg (1915) belong to the same period. In the 1920s his colours darkened and his line grew more nervous. He walked around Estonia or travelled by horse in search of subjects, and especially loved the landscapes of western Estonia. He often gave works to friends, so much of his output is still in private hands.

In 1929 the University of Tartu awarded him an honorary doctorate, and in 1930 he received the Order of the Eagle Cross, Third Class. From 1932 he closed the school and lived on his farm at Kadarpiku in Taebla Parish, where he laid out a park.

Laikmaa died on 19 November 1942 at Kadarpiku and is buried there. The house museum was opened in the 1950s.