Lithuanian Art and Music Abroad: English Reception of the Work of M. K. Čiurlionis, 1912-39

Abstract

The Lithuanian composer and artist M. K. Čiurlionis (1875-1911) is little-known in England but a major figure in Lithuania and has a prominent place in Russian fin-de-siècle art. Three of his paintings were included in the Second Post-Impressionist Exhibition in London in 1912, and from then until the Second World War his art attracted occasional interest from various English writers, amongst them the musicians Rosa Newmarch and A. Eaglefield Hull, and British vice-consul in Kaunas, E. J. Harrison. This paper examines all extant material on Čiurlionis from this period as material for a non-canonic reception history.