Ceylon: Adam's Peak Landscape

Jan Ciągliński was a Polish painter who spent most of his career in St. Petersburg, where he taught at the Imperial Academy and co-founded the Mir iskusstva (World of Art) group. He was known as "frenetic Jan" for the speed and intensity of his working method. He traveled extensively through North Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia, painting as he went. Ceylon: Adam's Peak Landscape is from his 1907 trip to India and Sri Lanka. Thick tropical foliage fills the foreground in greens and blue-grays, with a pale blue mountain — Adam's Peak — visible in the distance through a hazy pink and lavender atmosphere. The canvas texture shows through everywhere. It has the quickness of something painted on-site, in heat.