5 Euros Vilhelms Purvītis

Vilhelms Purvītis (1872–1945) was the dominant figure in Latvian landscape painting and the founding director of the Art Academy of Latvia, established in 1919 following independence from Russia. His reputation rested almost entirely on winter scenes rendered with an almost clinical sensitivity to light — work that earned him a grand prize at the 1900 Paris Exposition Universelle. He died in exile in Bonn, having fled the Soviet re-occupation of 1944.