Street in Kuressaare

In the beginning of the summer of 1920, Konrad Mägi travelled to Saaremaa for the third time. On this occasion, he stayed in the main town, Kuressaare, living at Pikk Street 43. Through June and July, he would try to mend his poor health and lead courses for 120 elementary school teachers. In early June, he wrote Aleksander Tassa: “Come here and bring Vabbe with you. The air and mud have a divine effect on the nerves.” Unlike his previous trips to the island, he did not produce many paintings and they do not make up to a new period in his oeuvre. This work probably depicts Kitsas (Narrow) Street in Kuressaare.

An interesting parallel to this painting is Vincent van Gogh’s Street in Saintes-Maries (1888), where the painting space was composed nearly the same way: in the middle there is a street leading into the depths of the painting space, on the left a row of houses where large roof surfaces predominate, on the right more abstract forms. The parallel is probably coincidental, but Mägi’s works have a few other intriguing connections with van Gogh. His paintings with fields of flowers from Norway can be juxtaposed with van Gogh’s series of gardens, where hundreds of flowers have likewise taken over the foreground, extending into the distance (see e.g. Flowering Garden with Path, 1888). Mägi’s park motif painted in Naples appears to be copying its composition from the van Gogh painting Entrance to the Public Gardens in Arles (1888), and Mägi’s Branches in Bloom is reminiscent of a number of van Gogh still lifes where the focus is on twisted branches (see e.g. Almond Blossom, 1890) and both painted only a few Christian compositions, including a Pietà scene. Vincent van Gogh’s influence on Mägi’s painting style can also – and perhaps chiefly – be inferred from use of colours with such intensity that they stray from serving the theme and take on their own separate meaning.

Mägi was probably most likely to have seen Van Gogh paintings in Paris. In his letters, he does not mention van Gogh, but we know that Mägi was actively interested in visiting galleries and museums. Back then, the Bernheim-Jeune Gallery, a key art institution on the right bank of the Seine, had started to introduce the works of Neo-Impressionists. In December 1907 (Mägi was already in Paris then) they held an exhibition of Alfred Sisley works, and two days after it closed, a group exhibition was opened featuring works by Cézanne, Degas, Gauguin, Matisse, Manet, Monet, Rodin and 17 others. After the closing of the latter exhibition, the same venue in January 1908 hosted a large exhibition of 100 paintings by van Gogh, whom the Bernheim-Jeune brothers had introduced to a wider audience for the first time several years earlier. At this exhibition, the Van Gogh painting Street in Saintes-Maries was also displayed. Mägi may have seen it and it may have been an indirect source of inspiration for the painting. On the same day, another exhibition of Van Gogh works with 35 paintings was opened at Galerie Druet, and thus Mägi likely saw many Van Goghs over a short time.