Plane
Nikolai Triik, 1910
This 1910 work by Nikolai Triik shows Lennuk, the ship of Kalevipoeg, son of Kaleva, a hero of Kalevipoeg, the Estonian national epic. Its long horizontal format and the mix of tempera, chalk and pastel on paper give the surface a soft, grainy quality rather than the smoothness of oil on canvas. Triik drew on the oral tradition and mythology gathered in the epic, which in the nineteenth century helped shape Estonia's cultural identity. Here the hero's vessel reads as a symbol of journey and epic adventure more than as a specific moment of action. The painting matters because it links early twentieth-century Estonian painting with the national literature, and it is a useful reference for seeing how artists of that period sought a distinctly local visual language. It belongs to the collection of the Art Museum of Estonia.
- Painter
- Nikolai Triik
- Date
- 1910
- Medium
- paper, tempera, chalk, pastel
- Dimensions
- 72 × 135 cm
- Museum
- Art Museum of Estonia's painting collection, Tallinn