Treasures from the Estonian Art Museum

Starting from this year Estonian Post in cooperation with the Estonian Art Museum will launch a series of stamps devoted to Estonian art, From the Treasury of the Estonian Art Museum. In the future one stamp of the series will be issued on every 17th November. The author of the painting Lennuk (1910, actually a sketch for a major mural) is Nikolai Triik, who was enthusiastic about military campaigns and the romantic life of the Vikings while working at the sketch. Reading the epic poem Kalevipoeg and its Song XII, Voyage to the End of the World, with the eye of a symbolist, the artist intensified the mystic subject-matter by simplified form and contrast of bright colours. The red sail of the silver ship is a symbol of sunlight. The arch of the rainbow above it is repeated as a glow above the island of the Lapp wizard, Varrak, on the left and above the demons’ Island of Sparks on the right. The Art Nouveau tempera painting of three parts is associated with the work of Gerhard Munthe, Akseli Gallén-Kallela and Nikolai Roerich, National Romantic painters of the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, who served as examples for Triik.