Landscape with a Rider

Besides rather realistic portraits, Aleksandrs Romans painted quietly lyrical moonlit landscapes, seemingly imbued with a strange languid peace. The quiet lyricism is reminiscent of the artist’s homeland, the vast lowlands of the Semigallia region of southern Latvia.

In the romantic Landscape with a Rider, the viewer's attention is captured by the curves of the long, slim tree crowns, which stand out in contrast to the backdrop of a sky lit by warm greyish-pale moonlight. Emphasis for the fairytale-like nature scene is supplied by two color accents, the white of the horse and the red clothes worn by the smallish rider figure, backed by green earth and the light-colored church in the distance beyond a river.

Aleksandrs Romans was a Latvian painter, born in a peasant family. He pursued his art studies in Saint Petersburg. He returned to Latvia in 1910 and settled in Jelgava, where he operated an art school for girls. After his early death he left behind a small but coherent corpus of works, consisting of realistic portraits and poetic landscapes.

We present today's painting thanks to the Latvian National Museum of Art.  : ) Stay calm and have a nice Friday.

P.S. Check the magnificent landscapes of Emily Carr here; it is the art for climate change.