TRAVEL TUESDAY 485 - RIGA, LATVIA

“If you can’t see, follow your nose.” - Latvian Proverb

Welcome to the Travel Tuesday meme! Join me every Tuesday and showcase your creativity in photography, painting and drawing, music, poetry, creative writing or a plain old natter about Travel.

There is only one simple rule: Link your own creative work about some aspect of travel and share it with the rest of us. Please use this meme for your creative endeavours only.

Do not use this meme to advertise your products or services as any links or comments by advertisers will be removed immediately.

Riga is the capital, the primate, and the largest city of Latvia. Home to 605,273 inhabitants, the city accounts for a third of Latvia's total population. The population of Riga metropolitan area, which stretches beyond the city limits, is estimated at 860,142 (as of 2023). The city lies on the Gulf of Riga at the mouth of the Daugava river where it meets the Baltic Sea. Riga's territory covers 307.17 km2 and lies 1–10 m above sea level on a flat and sandy plain.

Riga was founded in 1201, and is a former Hanseatic League member. Riga's historical centre is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, noted for its Art Nouveau/Jugendstil architecture and 19th century wooden architecture. Riga was the European Capital of Culture in 2014, along with Umeå in Sweden. Riga hosted the 2006 NATO Summit, the Eurovision Song Contest 2003, the 2013 World Women's Curling Championship, and the IIHF Men's World Ice Hockey Championships in 2006, 2021, and 2023. It is home to the European Union's office of European Regulators for Electronic Communications (BEREC). In 2017, it was named as the European Region of Gastronomy.

Riga has one of the largest collections of Art Nouveau buildings in the world, with at least 800 buildings. This is due to the fact that at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, when Art Nouveau was at the height of its popularity, Riga experienced an unprecedented financial and demographic boom. In the period from 1857 its population grew from 282,000 (256,200 in Riga itself and another 26,200 inhabitants beyond the city limits in the patrimonial district and military town of Ust-Dvinsk) to 472,100 in 1913. The middle class of Riga used their acquired wealth to build imposing apartment blocks outside the former city walls. Local architects, mostly graduates of Riga Technical University, adopted current European movements and in particular Art Nouveau. Between 1910 and 1913, between 300 and 500 new buildings were built each year in Riga, many of them in Art Nouveau style and most of them outside the old town.

In 2019, Riga received over 1.4 million foreign visitors. The city is served by Riga International Airport, the largest and busiest airport in the Baltic States. Riga is a member of Eurocities, the Union of the Baltic Cities (UBC), and Union of Capitals of the European Union (UCEU).

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

ART SUNDAY - MAURICE STERNE

“Our influences are who we are. It’s rare that anything is an absolutely pure vision.” - Eddie Vedder 

Maurice Sterne (August 18, 1878 in Latvia – July 23, 1957 in USA), was an American sculptor and painter remembered today for his association with philanthropist Mabel Dodge Luhan, to whom he was married from 1916 to 1923. He began his career as a draughtsman and painter, and critics noted the similarity of his work, in its volume and weight, to sculpture.

In the late 1890s, Sterne studied under Alfred Maurer and Thomas Eakins at the National Academy of Design, and then travelled widely in Europe and the Far East. A trip to Greece in 1908 introduced him to archaic Greek statues, inspiring him to experiment with the form himself in stone. Between 1911-1914 he and his friend Karli Sohn-Rethel, a German painter, travelled together to India, the Far East and settled in Bali to paint and sketch, which further informed his later work.

Sterne came to New Mexico in 1916 at the suggestion of his friend, Paul Burlin, and settled in Taos until 1918. His reputation was established by a show at the Scott and Fowles Gallery in 1926 and furthered by a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in 1933. In the mid-1930s, Sterne lived in San Francisco and taught at the California School of Fine Arts. He returned to the East Coast in 1945 and established a studio in Mount Kisco, New York. He was named to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1938.

From 1945 to 1950, he served on the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts. In addition to his murals in the library of the Department of Justice in Washington, D.C., Sterne’s works are in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, and the Phillips Collection. Sterne was one of a dozen sculptors invited to compete in the Pioneer Woman statue competition in 1927, which he failed to win. Sterne died in 1957.

Sterne’s painting is quite varied and shows his many influences, with a lot of his canvases being derivative of his artistic interests at the time he painted them. Above is “New Mexico Still Life” c.1919. Cezanne still life painting has influenced this work, but there are also some some elements of the more expressionistic, freer work of pre-cubist Picasso. Quite different to Sterne’s painting of “Entrance of the Ballet” that reminds one of Degas, or some of his portraits reminiscent of very early Modigliani, or some of the early Soviet portraiture. His sculpture is sometimes reminiscent of Art Nouveau, at other times pseudoheroic fascist propaganda.

An interesting artist whose work needs a more in-depth exploration.

ART SUNDAY - ALEKSANDRA MITROFANOVNA BEĻCOVA

“A true portrait should, today and a hundred years from today, be the testimony of how this person looked and what kind of human being he was.” - Philippe Halsman 

Aleksandra Mitrofanovna Beļcova (Russian: Бельцова, Александра Митрофановна, March 17, 1892 in Surazh, Chernigov Governorate – February 1, 1981 in Riga, Latvian SSR) was a Latvian and Russian painter.

Aleksandra Beļcova graduated from the Secondary School for Women in Novozybkov in 1912. Later she started studies in Penza city art school, from which she graduated in 1917. While in Penza she met several Latvian painters who studied there as refugees. Among them were Jēkabs Kazaks, Konrāds Ubāns and Voldemārs Tone. Especially close relationships developed between her and Romans Suta, another Latvian painter who studied in Penza.

In 1917 she went to Petrograd to study in State Free Art Workshop under Nathan Altman. It was in Petrograd that her first solo exhibition was held in 1919. Just after the exhibition she moved to Latvia along with Romans Suta and became a member of the Riga Artists Group. The couple married in 1922 in Riga and after marriage they visited Paris, Berlin and Dresden.

In 1923 their daughter Tatiana was born in Paris. In 1925 she painted “The White and the Black” (above). She was involved in the Roller group exhibitions and Riga Graphic Artists Association in the following years. Her paintings were mostly portraits and still lifes, beginning as a Cubist she turned to realism in later years. Her mediums were oil, watercolour, ink and pencil, and she also painted on porcelain. Beļcova died on February 1, 1981.[1] The home of Aleksandra Belcova and Romans Suta in Elizabetes street 57A-26 in Riga is now turned into memorial museum and art gallery.

An excellent critique of the painting above can be found here: https://deepbaltic.com/2017/03/02/baltic-artists-brought-the-world-home-but-at-what-cost/

WEBER & DAGUERRE IN HAITI WITH MICKEY

“The long unmeasured pulse of time moves everything. There is nothing hidden that it cannot bring to light, nothing once known that may not become unknown.” – Sophocles

Haiti - Vertieres’ Day. Latvia - Independence Day (since 1918). Morocco - Independence Day. Oman - National Day.

Today is the anniversary of the birth of:

Carl Maria von Weber, composer (1786);

Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre, pioneer photographer (1789);

W.S. Gilbert, writer of Gilbert and Sullivan fame (1836);

Amelita Galli-Gurci, soprano (1889);

Eugene Ormandy, conductor (1899);

George H. Gallup, of poll fame (1901);

Alan B. Sheppard, US astronaut (1923);

Mickey Mouse, cartoon brainchild of Walt Disney (1928);

Margaret Attwood, writer (1939);

Brenda Vaccaro, US actress (1939);

David Hemmings, actor (1941);

Linda Evans, US actress (1942).

The wild asparagus, Asparagus officinalis, is the plant for birthdays falling on this day.  The name could be related to the Greek word aspartos = “not sown, growing wild”.  It is also known as sparrow-grass or sporage, the long Greek word being anglicised so that the Anglo-Saxon tongue would not trip and fall over itself!  The shoots of the plant have been eaten from ancient times and many of the ancient writers (Pliny and Cato for example) wax lyrically over the virtues of this vegetable.  The Elizabethans considered it an aphrodisiac.  Herbalists prescribed asparagus boiled in broth as a laxative and boiled in white wine as a diuretic.  The asparagus symbolises beauty complemented by brains.  It is under the astrological dominion of Jupiter.

Haiti won independence from France in The Battle of Vertières, on November 18th, 1803. The site is now part of an historical monument in the northern city of Cap Haitien. A national holiday, The Battle of Vertières Day is celebrated each year on November 18th. In 2011 a crowd of over 200,000 Haitians gathered to celebrate and hear Haitian President Michel Martelly deliver a speech at the monument site. The Battle of Vertières marked the first time in recorded history that slaves successfully led a revolution for their freedom. Less than two months after the battle, Haiti became the first black independent republic.

The Republic of Latvia was founded on 18 November 1918. However, its de facto independence was interrupted at the outset of World War II. In 1940, the country was forcibly incorporated into the Soviet Union, invaded and occupied by Nazi Germany in 1941, and re-occupied by the Soviets in 1944 to form the Latvian SSR for the next fifty years. The peaceful Singing Revolution, starting in 1987, called for Baltic emancipation of Soviet rule. It ended with the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, and Latvia declared the restoration of its de facto independence on 21 August 1991.

Carl Maria Friedrich Ernst von Weber (1786–1826,) was a German composer who is considered to be the founder of German romantic opera. He wrote 10 operas, including Der Freischütz (1821) and Oberon (1826). Among his instrumental works is the popular Invitation to the Dance (1819).

Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre (18 November 1787 – 10 July 1851) was a French artist and photographer, recognised for his invention of the daguerreotype process of photography. He became known as one of the fathers of photography. Though he is most famous for his contributions to photography, he was also an accomplished painter and a developer of the diorama theatre. Daguerre’s name is one of the 72 names inscribed on the Eiffel tower.