View from Capri

Ants Laikmaa (05.05.1866-19.11.1942)

1911-1912
Pastel on paper
46 × 56 cm

Ants Laikmaa was sent away from his homeland into exile in 1907 because of his political activity and while he first stopped in Finland and St. Petersburg, in 1909 he travelled to Western Europe, arriving in Rome, Italy in 1910. He proceeded to the island of Capri in 1910, where he had planned to stay for a couple of days but where he stayed for a whole year.
Laikmaa completed around a hundred works at Capri, which is a quarter of his known body of work. Several of his earlier works had been destroyed by fire and he sold a large portion of the works painted at Capri while he was still abroad. Many consider this to be Laikmaa’s best period.
Shortly after he first arrived on Capri, Laikmaa wrote to a friend: “Likeable place, dear people, life is cheap and beautiful and peaceful. Many subjects for paintings.” He was elated by the awesome natural settings and exotic beauty of the island. “Yes, Capri, that island for artists, it has far exceeded everything beautiful that I could have imagined!” he wrote. “Nature can never be sucked dry of beauty anywhere. It opens ever new garners, depths and secrets the longer you remain near it and look, foray into it.”
This work depicts the Bagni di Tiberio cliff massif towering out of the water. Laikmaa’s description also explains very well the painting’s impressive treatment of the cliff: “Paradise! Always clear blue sky, water around the island, the like of which I have never seen before: a darker and thereat clearer azure blue, on which the enormous cliffs reflect themselves”. Laikmaa appears to have some sort of particular relationship with the cliffs because he has written at the beginning of his stay at Capri: “There were many cliffs in Finland that I thought of as “my cliff” – here there is not yet one that I can call my own.”