While this is one of the most dramatic paintings in Konrad Mägi’s oeuvre, it is also realistic. Yes, the sea seems to be on fire. Yes, the landscape is vibrant, with lichen-covered rocks turned into pools of colour. Yes, something incomprehensible and mystical is happening here. But at the same time, all this apocalyptic spectacle probably stems from the sunset Mägi witnessed. The sun sinking behind the clouds has flooded the edges of the clouds with bright radiance, as light refracts where the clouds are thinner. In the thicker cloud mass just above the horizon, the light has dispersed, leaving only long-wave or red light. The unexpectedness of the scene may have heightened the drama for Mägi: the weather, especially the clouds, changes rapidly in the western part of Saaremaa and in Vilsandi island, and the idyllic sky could have turned into what we see in the painting within minutes.

But Konrad Mägi was a pantheist. This means that nature was not just interesting or beautiful for him, but he sensed in it some inexplicable metaphysical or even religious dimension. For meteorologists, this painting depicts a sunset. For others, it’s a captivating portrayal of nature’s brilliance. However, for Konrad Mägi, it could have been a depiction of the inexplicable and mystical, an emergence of something higher and more more important than life. A few years earlier, Mägi wrote: “And if there is something higher than life, humans will never know it.”

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