“The powerful sea. Magnificent, limitless, and immeasurable. The entire sky envelops your waves within its blue depths, and you, in all your splendour, breathe quietly and peacefully because you know that there are no bounds to your might and your magnificence. Your existence is eternal. Oh magnificent, powerful, and great sea! Half the world watches you at night, distant suns drown their blinking, mysterious and drowsy gazes in your depths, and you, forever the queen of giants, breathe peacefully and quietly because you know that you are the only one, and no one is your master,” (Čiurlionis, M.K. Žodžio kūryba. Comp. V. Landsbergis. Vilnius: Lietuvos Rašytojų sąjungos leidykla, 1997, 83).


The fifth and sixth sonatas are the highest achievement in Čiurlionis' attempts to express the musical composition of the fugue and sonata. Depicting the waves of the Baltic Sea and the dunes overgrown with pines, this series provides the viewer with an immediate impression, for it was the happy days spent with his beloved fiancée at the seaside that flushed the sonata with joyful colours and uplifting rhythms.


“Sonata of the Sea” depicts three states of the sea. The first is a whimsical sea of small waves, glistening pieces of amber, dunes mimicking the rise and fall of the waves and a seagull gliding over the water (“Allegro”). The second portrays a silent sea before a storm, revealing the secrets of its hidden depths in the form of sunken or perhaps underwater cities and a hand lifting a small boat from beneath (“Andante”). The final painting (“Finale”) is a portrait of a stormy sea, jerking small boats about and resounding with the beauty of might and magnificence. This is an apotheosis of the sea as well as the ideological and emotional culmination of the sonata.


"Sonata No. 5 (Sonata of the Sea)" was exhibited at these exhibitions:



Sonata No. 5 (Sonata of the Sea). Andante.

  • 1908
  • paper
  • tempera