Helene Schjerfbeck

HELENE SCHJERFBECK

HELENE SCHJERFBECK

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HELENE SCHJERFBECK

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FOREWORD

Helene Schjerfbeck (1862–1946) is rightly celebrated as one of Finland’s most important artists. Her expressive vision is sometimes likened to that of her almost exact contemporary, the Norwegian artist Edvard Munch, although many of her paintings more closely echo the quietude of works

by Vilhelm Hammershøi. Such comparisons cannot prepare the viewer, however, for the range and impact of Schjerfbeck’s highly original and powerful paintings and of her moving series of self-portraits in particular.

For Schjerfbeck’s development as an artist her long sojourns in Paris, Pont-Aven, Florence and St Ives during the 1880s and 1890s were crucial.

It was there she was bold enough to simplify her expression, painting works such as Clothes Drying (1883) and The Door (1884). In these early paintings she concentrated on painterly elements, colours and forms; the subjectmatter was unimportant. In St Ives she painted The Convalescent (1888), which has become an iconic painting in Finnish art history. The foundation of Schjerfbeck’s artistic quality was set in Central Europe and Britain and her journeys before 1900 became a source of inspiration for the rest of her career.

Despite the recognition Schjerfbeck has enjoyed in Nordic countries and mainland Europe, so far she has remained relatively unknown in Britain. This is the first ever solo exhibition of her work in the UK, nearly 130 years after she herself exhibited in London in 1890. Following its run in London, the exhibition will be presented in Helsinki and will highlight aspects of Schjerfbeck’s career that are less familiar to her followers in Finland, including the works she made during her time in St Ives. The project builds on the momentum of exhibitions in Hamburg, Paris and the Hague (all 2007), Helsinki (2012), Frankfurt (2014) and Japan (2016) to bring Schjerfbeck’s singular artistic voice to long-overdue international attention.

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20 My Mother, 1909 Oil on canvas, 81 x 83 cm Private collection

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21 Maria, 1909 Oil on canvas, 57 x 73 cm Ateneum Art Museum, Finnish National Gallery, Helsinki, inv. A-2012-308

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A revival of interest in the Rococo that began in France in the midnineteenth century spread to the Nordic countries at the beginning of the twentieth century. Schjerfbeck’s painting The Skier (cat. 23) is something of a parody and a critique of the Neo-Rococo. The heavily made-up face situates the work in the tradition of Jean-Antoine Watteau’s depictions of Pierrot. The face in this painting is like the mask of a clown.

In the aftermath of the First World War and the Finnish War of Independence many European artists abjured the depiction of highly emotional states. Influenced by non-Western art as well as by Neoclassicism, serenity was the order of the day. Schjerfbeck masked her own emotions in many of her self-portraits and painted her models in a similar fashion. Their faces were not close resemblances and they were often depicted with eyes shut or looking down, thus refusing the artist’s gaze. Occasionally emotions would intrude, as in Einar Reuter III (cat. 28), which evinces the traumatic shock Schjerfbeck felt when he declared his engagement to another woman.

Although she began each painting from life she often completed them from memory since, as modern, working women, her models rarely had time to return. Most of her portraits are of types, not individuals, so that the sum of her work becomes a representation of a community.

Schjerfbeck was interested in contemporary fashion. She painted her models in straight-line clothing, made fashionable by Coco Chanel and others, that concealed feminine characteristics in favour of a more gender-neutral look. It is possible that she lent her models these garments or simply imagined them, since their torsos, if depicted at all, are androgynous. What results is a representation of the modern woman.

THE MODERN LOOK 99

55 Self-portrait, a Study, 1915 Pencil, watercolour, charcoal and silver leaf on paper, 47 x 34.5 cm Turku Art Museum, inv. 303

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56 Self-portrait, Black Background, 1915 Oil on canvas, 45.5 x 36 cm Herman and Elisabeth Hallonblad Collection, Ateneum Art Museum, Finnish National Gallery, Helsinki, inv. A-II-1065

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1919 Reuter becomes engaged to a Swedish woman

1923 Schjerfbeck’s mother Olga dies on 4 February.

during a visit to the Norwegian sanatorium used by

Schjerfbeck is taken seriously ill and hires a home help.

Schjerfbeck in 1895. Having encouraged and partially funded his trip, Schjerfbeck is shocked by the news,

1925 Schjerfbeck moves with her home help to

apparently having seen their relationship differently.

Tammisaari. She enjoys life there and the town remains

She is taken ill, and spends September, October

her primary home for the next sixteen years (fig. 67).

and November in a hospital in the coastal town of Tammisaari.

1927 Stenman begins commissioning reinterpretations of Schjerfbeck’s earlier works from her, including

1920 Schjerfbeck shows nineteen works with the

Shadow on the Wall (cat. 4; fig. 66).

‘Vapaat – De Fria’ (‘The Free’) group in an exhibition organised by Reuter at the Salon Strindberg, Helsinki.

1932 On her seventieth birthday Schjerfbeck hides

The Finnish state awards Schjerfbeck the Order of

in a cottage near her home to avoid well-wishers.

the White Rose of Finland, an honour established the previous year by the newly independent country.

1937 Stenman organises Schjerfbeck’s second solo exhibition, in Stockholm; 93 works are shown. It is

1921 Schjerfbeck is awarded a pension for artists and

very successful and Stenman subsequently mounts

writers by the Finnish state.

an annual exhibition of her work.

1938 Schjerfbeck enters into a contract with Stenman, receiving an annual salary in return for selling all her works through him. He encourages her to experiment with graphics and printing, creating lithographic versions of many of her earlier, popular works including The Convalescent (cat. 10).

1939 The outbreak of the Second World War leads to the cancellation of an exhibition of 120 of Schjerfbeck’s works in America. The Soviet Union invades Finland in November, sparking the Winter War, during which Schjerfbeck is temporarily evacuated to Elimo, then Tenhola. She returns to Tammisaari in April 1940.

1942 Further temporary evacuations follow throughout the year although she returns to Tammisaari when possible. On 12 February Schjerfbeck moves to the Luontola Sanatorium in Nummela,

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(Opposite) FIG. 66 Schjerfbeck’s reworking of Shadow on the Wall (Breton Landscape) (cat. 4), 1927–28 (Left) FIG. 67 Schjerfbeck at home in Tammisaari, working on Pumpkins (cat. 48), 1935 FIG. 68 Schjerfbeck in Sweden, c. 1945

27 miles northwest of Helsinki. Nurses there act as

On 9 February her ashes are buried alongside those

models for many of her new works (cat. 41) and she

of her parents in Helsinki. In the autumn a memorial

returns to an earlier theme in her work, creating

exhibition dedicated to her work tours Sweden and

reworkings of paintings by El Greco (cats 42, 43).

Finland. A decade later, she is selected to represent

The Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts invites

Finland at the 1956 Venice Biennale.

Schjerfbeck to enrol as a foreign member; she is pleased that her name follows Picasso’s on the membership list.

1943 Great demand for Schjerfbeck’s work leads her to leave her contract with Stenman for one year, to work mostly on private commissions.

1944 Stenman finally persuades Schjerfbeck to move to Sweden; she flies there on 22 February and stays at the Grand Hotel Saltsjöbaden, physically comfortable but feeling increasingly anxious and lonely. Over the next year and a half, she produces more than twenty extraordinary self-portraits (cats 62–67), entering into dialogue with her own old age and impending death.

1946 Schjerfbeck dies with her easel beside her bed in Saltsjöbaden on 23 January at the age of 83.

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Helene Schjerfbeck (1862–1946) is one of Finland’s most celebrated artists yet she is little known outside her native country. In her long and productive career, stretching from the late 1870s to the end of the Second World War, she shifted from a naturalistic style to one that engaged with modernism. Her remarkable portraits were influenced by old-master painting and contemporary fashion as well as modern developments. After travelling around Europe in the 1880s and 1890s she remained in Finland for virtually the rest of her life.

This book records the first solo exhibition of her works in the UK. The full range of her exceptional paintings is presented with over 60 works in all genres, including portrait, landscape and still-life. A section on her self-portraits presents her as one of the most significant twentieth-century practitioners of this art. The authors explore the role of masquerade in her work, and the impact of the old masters and modernity. Her brief stay in St Ives is also explored.

ANNA-MARIA VON BONSDORFF is Chief Curator at the Ateneum Art Museum, Finnish National Gallery, Helsinki.

JEREMY LEWISON is an art historian and curator.

He was formerly Director of Collections at Tate.

DÉSIRÉE DE CHAIR is an art historian and curator.

REBECCA BRAY is Assistant Curator at the Royal Academy of Arts, London.