Oil on canvas 49 x 39 cm Bottom right – A.Jansen The work is unsigned, but the style of painting and the way of modeling are similar, above all, to August Jansen's early portraits. The composition also has a sense of the beginning of the century. August Jansen's work includes portraits, landscape paintings, city views, continuous compositions, decorative panels and still lifes. In 1900–1904, Jansen studied at the Art School of the St. Petersburg Society for the Promotion of the Arts, which he graduated with a silver medal. In the fall of 1905, he entered the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts, which he graduated in 1913 with a degree in painting. In 1917, Jansen, who was released from military service due to illness, returned to his homeland and in 1919 convened the First Congress of Estonian Artists in Tartu with sculptor Anton Starkopf, and in 1921 the Second Congress of Estonian Artists in Tallinn, where the general organization of artists was founded. Jansen was a member of the board of the Estonian Sculpture Artists' Central Association, founded in 1922, for many years. Jansen made his first study trip to Italy in 1924, staying for a longer time in Rome, and in 1929 he stayed in Paris and Spain. Jansen worked as a drawing teacher in schools in St. Petersburg, Rakvere and Tallinn. From 1927 he worked as a teacher at the State School of Art and Industry. Jansen, together with artists Peet Aren and Karl Burman, built the so-called "artists' colony" or studio on the site of Peter I's stables in Kadriorg, where he lived and worked. Jansen began to participate in exhibitions in 1910 and took part in the largest exhibitions in both Tallinn and Tartu and in all Estonian foreign representative exhibitions. He received wider recognition in various. In the first creative years after graduating from the academy, the artist based his works on Art Nouveau and national romanticism. From 1922, Jansen began organizing Estonian art life and soon found himself in the role of a pioneer. In the 1930s, the artist created portraits and landscape paintings that are among the top works of his work, above all portraits of his family members.