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Purvitis, Vilhelms (Karlis)
(b Jauzos, Zaubes district, 3 March 1872; d Bad Nauheim, Germany, 14 Jan 1945). Latvian painter, teacher, administrator and museum director. He was the son of a peasant and, like many other Latvian artists in the 19th century, studied (1890–97) at the St Petersburg Academy of Arts. Purvitis received training in the studio of Arkhip Kuindzhi, and his early paintings reveal Kuindzhi’s influence in the search for rich, decorative effects and a romantic perception of nature (e.g. the Last Rays, 1897; St Petersburg, Acad. A., Mus.). Yet even in this formative period, his work showed an admiration for Isaak Levitan, whose paintings are marked by a similar, deeply felt lyricism. Purvitis captured the mysterious charm of the Latvian landscape through the use of modest, subdued and even prosaic subjects. His career was for many years closely connected with Latvia, unlike those of many of his fellow countrymen who were unable to practise in their homeland, and he used the Latvian landscape as the main inspiration for his art. In 1898 he travelled to Germany, Paris and Vienna and in 1906–9 worked in Tallinn. Many of his paintings depicted the transition between winter and early spring. His palette is predominantly cool, only rarely broken by contrasting colours. March Evening (or Winter Landscape, c. 1901; Riga, Latv. Mus. F.A.), for example, shows buildings, flushed with yellow from the late-evening sun, placed against a background of turquoise-blue sky. His work, often considered patriotic, is touched by an essentially rural simplicity, quite unlike the urban or historical preoccupations of forebears such as Julijs Feders. Although Purvitis’s work has aspects of monumentality and majesty, his choice of subjects and his short broken brushstrokes recall the paintings of the French Impressionists, as in Landscape with Haystacks (c. 1936; Riga, Latv. Mus. F.A.). He was Director (1909–16) of the Riga City Art School, which he radically reorganized. In 1919 he founded the Proletarian Art Studios (now the Latvian Academy of Arts), Riga, and was its rector (1921–34). He was also professor (1922–44) of its landscape studio. Among his students were Eduards Kalnins (1904–88), Nikolajs Breikss (1911–72), Arvids Egle (1905–77), Arijs Skride (1906–87), Karlis Melbarzdis (1902–70) and Valdis Kalnroze (b 1894). He was also a member of the Latvian group THE GNOME.
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