Kārlis Hūns (1831—1877)

Little is known about painter Kārlis Hūns’s childhood and early years. Kārlis was the fourth of six children in the Hūns family. He could spend hours watching his father work in the carpentry workshop, often drawing his father’s creations with remarkably steady hands. After studying at Riga’s Dom School, he went to St. Petersburg in 1850 to become an artist. When it turned out his knowledge was insufficient to begin studies immediately, Kārlis Hūns started working as an assistant lithographer-illustrator at the Russian Academy of Sciences. From 1852, he attended evening drawing classes at the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts and began his studies in 1854 when he quit his lithographer work. Considering the Hūns family’s modest financial circumstances, his study years were likely marked by struggle.

This success largely determined Hūns’s future path: seven years of advanced studies in Paris, study trips (Europe, Russia), attaining academic and professor status, teaching at the Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg, and participating in exhibitions (Paris Salon, World Exhibitions, Academy of Arts exhibitions, and later the Traveling Art Exhibition Society shows). 1870. The artist received his professorship in historical painting, and in 1871 began teaching at the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts. At that time, Hūns’s creative and pedagogical career showed promise of being long and successful. 1874. In that year, he married Vera, the daughter of the Russian architect of Italian descent, Ivan Monighetti (1819—1878). Unfortunately, in the same year, Hūns fell ill with throat tuberculosis, and the prolonged illness led to his death in the Davos resort in Switzerland. Fulfilling his wish, his remains were buried in Madliena cemetery, where several members of his family were already laid to rest.

Contemporaries highly valued him as an artist, which is reflected in letters and publications, while few personal observations about Hūns have been preserved. One publication describes a meeting with Hūns in Paris in 1864. Kārlis Hūns was of medium height, with brown, very kind eyes, red hair, and a reddish beard. He was phlegmatic by nature, rarely lost his temper, was very kind-hearted, helpful, always reserved in conversations, and cautiously judged the actions of others, seeking mitigating circumstances. He was thrifty and only allowed himself larger expenses for his sole passion – the acquisition of antiques. The publication also mentions, in the author’s opinion, less pleasant traits in the artist’s personality: he read little, was not interested in political processes, and was unable to evaluate them.

Already in 19th-century Russia 70. In reviews of the most significant art exhibitions of the period, Hūns’ artistic taste and the unusually masterful execution of his paintings were recognized, as was the almost French elegance of his art, and the European nature, freedom, and sophistication of his painting.

Hūns’ painting is characterized by rational and precisely constructed composition, a diversely harmonized color palette, virtuoso imitation of real-life objects, and a balanced combination of painterly completeness with the ‘non finito’ incompleteness. The artist also worked extensively in pencil and watercolor, where he sought sharply captured and documentarily precise observations of nature.

Although Hūns studied historical painting and earned the title of professor of historical painting, he was more drawn to genre painting, the theme of ordinary people’s lives, and for these paintings, the artist usually chose small formats. He is also known as an excellent portraitist. His consistent interest in ethnography in its broadest sense is noteworthy – in the life of the people in its diverse manifestations; particularly notable are his watercolors of women from Madliena and Lielvārde in national costumes (1872). Kārlis Hūns’ persistent return to themes of peasant and artisan work, daily life, and family suggests that it was rooted in personal reasons, such as his ideas about human relationships, about simple daily work as the foundation of human existence, and his memories of childhood in his family in Madliena.

Kārlis Hūns’s work simultaneously belongs to the art of Latvia, Russia, and Europe of the second half of the 19th century, but his place in Latvia’s cultural and art history will always be special. He is the first Latvian whose studies at the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts were crowned with the grand gold medal and the opportunity to study abroad. His works are preserved in many museums and private collections within the former Tsarist Russia’s borders. A significant collection exists at the Latvian National Museum of Art in Riga, where Hūns’s paintings are displayed in the permanent exhibition.