Alfred Hirv

Alfred Hirv, an artist whose main years of studying and creation were at the beginning of the 20. century in St.Petersburg, which had become the “capital” of Estonians, has now remained in the local art history one of the authors of the realistic school. So maybe it is not very astonishing, when Alfred Hirv was mentioned in the monography of Ants Laikmaa as the member of “the golden triplet”, who laid the foundation to the Estonian art.
Another two ones? Johann Köler and Amandus Adamson.
Alfred Hirv was born in Petseri as a son of a farmer. Soon he headed for St.Petersburg to study at the Stieglitz Artistic Vocational School. This is a school, without which there would not be the Estonian art history: among the schoolmates of Hirv belong among others Konrad Mägi, Nikolai Triik and many others. Hirv, who is called by Tiina Abel “ a great and precocious talent”, was quickly accepted as a student by Julius Sergius von Klever, one of the celebrities of the Russian realistic school of painting. At the age of 18 the young man already left for the Art Academy of Rome and then a year later to the Ažbe Art School in Munich. In the same school also studied some years later Wassily Kandisky. Even though the biographers of Hirv notice the lack of systematic art education, the young artist compensated it with acquainting himself with the creation of the “small Dutchmen”. The result were works in academic manner that by today have become extremely rare. Majority of the creation of Hirv, who worked mainly in Russia, has remained in Russia and his works have appeared here extremely rarely. Only about a hundred works are known to be here, 23 of them have been acquired into its funds by the Estonian Art Museum and a few more by Tartu Art Museum. Majority of them have been exposed at great expositions of Hirv in both of the museums and at the survey exhibition of the Estonian art in Italy, Germany and other places.
Indisputably the best known part of the creation of Alfred Hirv is formed by still-lives. Here can most clearly be noticed the strive of Hirv towards technical perfectness that promises to keep continuously to the classical values of the art of painting: studying of light-shadow, loyalty to details, reflection of the room depth and its illusions, rendering of the atmosphere. We can see how “is reflected the artist’s attachment to the subject and is revealed the skilfulness and technical lightness of rendering of the material,” as it is said by Aleksander Tassa.