He was particularly influenced by the Finnish painter Akseli Gallen-Kallela, he devoted himself especially in his short career to the illustration the Estonian national epic Kalevipoeg, creating about 40 works.
These include among others: Karl Ernst von Baer (1792–1876), Tartu's greatest natural scientist; Kristjan Jaak Peterson (1801–1822), the first Estonian poet; Nikolay Ivanovich Pirogov (1810–1881), the great Russian doctor; and Friedrich Robert Faehlmann (1798–1850), the initiator of the Estonian national epic, the Kalevipoeg.