Helene Schjerfbeck - part 2

Helene Schjerfbeck (1862–1946) is a Finnish national icon. Talented and widely travelled, Schjerfbeck found artistic success at a young age. In the 1880s she connected with artists’ colonies in Pont Aven, Brittany and St. Ives, Cornwall. In her later years, she left the Finnish capital for a quieter life that allowed her to concentrate on her work. Nonetheless, keeping in touch with artist friends and the seismic shifts in modern art, she produced some of her most raw and radically abstracted paintings in these years.

Schjerfbeck’s talent was recognised when she was just 11 years old and she began attending art school. Her family could only afford to educate one of their children (her brother Magnus), but luckily her tutors believed in her potential and she was offered a full scholarship. When she was just 13, her father died from tuberculosis and her family fell further into poverty. But Schjerfbeck continued to receive funding, and by the age of 18, she was studying art in Paris on a trip paid for by the Finnish Government.

Schjerfbeck lived through some of the most seismic shifts in modern art, from Impressionism to Surrealism. But she was never one to follow the crowd and forged her own path. She drew inspiration everywhere from Old Master paintings to contemporary fashion magazines – and in the process she developed her own distinctive, expressive style. Her work defies categorisation and she is often seen as a “painter’s painter” - someone who constantly experimented with techniques, and was willing to push and take risks rather than repeat past successes.

He is little known outside her home country but Schjerfbeck’s fame may have spread further, were it not for the outbreak of war. In 1914, she was the only Finnish woman artist who took part in the prestigious Baltic Exhibition in Malmo, Sweden. The event was designed to show off the industry, art and culture of Sweden, Denmark, Germany and Russia but was interrupted when Germany and Russia entered the First World War on opposite sides of the conflict. Some 25 years later, Schjerfbeck’s work was due to be displayed in the USA for the first time, but the outbreak of the Second World War led to the exhibition being cancelled.

She lived with limited mobility after a childhood fall that broke her hip. Despite the barriers this would have posed to her, she travelled widely during her younger years, making trips to Vienna, St Petersburg, Florence, Paris and St Ives. While in England, her work was exhibited in a gallery on Piccadilly in London, close to where the Royal Academy of Arts still stands today. Schjerfbeck’s travels helped shape her unique style and she drew on everything she saw in Europe once back home in rural Finland. Although she wasn’t able to travel later in life, she never stopped painting. When she died in 1946 she had devoted more than 70 years to her art.

Schjerfbeck created self-portraits throughout her life but in her final two years, she drew and painted her own face more than 20 times, seemingly fascinated with the physical and psychological process of ageing. As she commented in a letter to a friend, “this way the model is always available, although it isn’t always pleasant to see oneself.” These later works show a move towards radically abstracted figuration that foreshadowed the portraiture of Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud and Frank Auerbach.

For earlier works see part 1 also.

This is part 2 of a 4-part series on the works of Helene Schjerfbeck:

1880-84 Self-Portrait
pencil 13 x 12.5 cm
Ateneum, Finnish National Gallery, Helsinki

1881 Study in Paris
oil on canvas 26 x 19.5 cm

1881 Two Profiles
oil on panel 22 x 34 cm
Ateneum, Helsinki Art Museum

1882 At the door of Linköping Prison in 1600
oil on canvas 131.5 x 99 cm
Art Foundation Merita, Helsinki

1882 Charcoal Burner
oil on canvas 89.5 x 120.5 cm
Helsinki Art Museum

1882 Christina Banér prays for Mercy on her Husband
oil on canvas 33 x 37 cm

1882 Dancing Shoes
oil on canvas 55 x 64.5 cm
Private Collection

1882 Interior, Woman Sewing
pencil (sketchbook)
Ateneum, Finnish National Gallery, Helsinki

1883 Feast of Tabernacles
oil on canvas 115 x 172 cm
Signe and Ane Gyllenberg Foundation, Helsinki

1883 Shadow on the Wall (Breton Landscape)
oil on canvas
Finnish National Gallery, Helsinki

1884 Figure Study
oil on canvas 121.5 x 95.4 cm
Finnish Cultural Association, Helsinki

1884 Portrait of Helena Westermarck
oil on canvas 37.5 x 22.5 cm
Gösta Serlachius Fine Arts Foundation, Mänttä, Finland

1884 Study of a Youngster
charcoal and pencil 19.5 x 19.5 cm

1884 The Door
oil on canvas 40.5 x 32.5 cm
Ateneum, Finnish National Gallery, Helsinki

1884-85 Self-Portrait
Ateneum, Finnish National Gallery, Helsinki

1885 Harjun Paavo
24.5 x 16 cm
Ateneum, Finnish National Gallery, Helsinki

1885-90 The Girl From Barösund
oil on canvas 58 x 65 cm
Private Collection

1886 Head of a Girl
oil on panel 23.5 x 15.5 cm
Ateneum, Finnish National Gallery, Helsinki

1886 Mother and Child
oil on canvas 72.5 x 92 cm
Ateneum, Finnish National Gallery, Helsinki

1886 Sir Richard Southwell
copy of Hans Holbein the Yoinger's painting (see below)
oil on canvas 48 x 35.5 cm
Ateneum, Finnish National Gallery, Helsinki

1536 Sir Richard Southwell by Hans Holbein the Younger
oil and tempera on oak panel 47.5 x 38 cm
Uffizi Galler, Florence

1886 The Death of Wilhelm von Schwerin
oil on canvas 90 x 117.5 cm
Turku Art Museum, Aurakatu, Finland

1887 Rococo Woman
oil on canvas
Ostrobothnian Museum, Vaasa

1887 The Bakery
oil on canvas
Ostrobothnian Museum, Vaasa

1887-1905 Portrait of a Woman
pencil (sketchbook)
Ateneum, Finnish National Gallery, Helsinki

1887-1905 St, Ives, Cornwall, UK
ink (sketchbook)
Ateneum, Finnish National Gallery, Helsinki

c1887 Woman and Child
oil on canvas
Ateneum, Finnish National Gallery, Helsinki

1888  The Convalescent
oil on canvas 92 x 107 cm
Ateneum, Finnish National Gallery, Helsinki

1888-90 Street, St. Ives (UK)
scrape drawing 22.5 x 21 cm
Ateneum, Finnish National Gallery, Helsinki

c1888 Chickens amongst Cornstooks
oil on panel 42 x 52.5 cm
Penlee House, Penzance, UK

1890-91 Tammisaari Church
oil on canvas 21 x 33 cm
Ateneum, Finnish National Gallery, Helsinki

1891 Young Girl Under the Birch Trees
Signe and Ane Gyllenberg Foundation, Helsinki

1892 Glass of Lemonade, after Gerard ter Borch (see below)
oil on canvas 66 x 53.5 cm
Ateneum, Finnish National Gallery, Helsinki

c1663 Glass of Lemonade by Gerard ter Borch
oil on canvas 67 x 54 cm
Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg

1892 Portrait of a Young Man Holding a Glove, after Frans Hals (see below)
oil on canvas 80 x 66 cm
Ateneum, Finnish National Gallery, Helsinki

1650 Portrait of a Young Man Holding a Glove
oil on canvas 80 x 66.5 cm
Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia

1893 Clothes Drying
oil on canvas 39 x 54.5 cm
Ateneum, Finnish National Gallery, Helsinki

1893 Lullaby
oil on canvas
Lauri and Lasse Reitz Foundation, Helsinki

1893 Portrait of Pope Innocent X, after Velázquez (see below)
oil on canvas 48.5 x 40.5 cm
Ateneum, Finnish National Gallery, Helsinki

c1650 Portrait of Pope Innocent X by Diego Velázquez
oil on canvas 141 x 119 cm
Galleria Doria Pamphilj, Rome

1894 Cypresses, Fiesole
oil on canvas?
Ateneum, Finnish National Gallery, Helsinki

1894 The Infanta Margarita Teresa of Austria, after Diego Velázquez (see below)
oil on canvas 128 x 100 cm
Ateneum, Finnish National Gallery, Helsinki

1653-54 The Infanta Margarita Teresa of Austria by Diego Velázquez
oil on canvas 128.5 x 100 cm
Museum of Art History, Vienna

1894 Dr. John Chambers, after Hans Holbein (see below)
oil on wood panel 65 x 47.5 cm
Ateneum, Finnish National Gallery, Helsinki

1543 Dr. John Chambers by Hans Holbein
oil on. oak panel 58 x 39.7 cm
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

1895-1900 Churchgoers (Easter Morning)
oil on canvas 70 x 95 cm
Ateneum, Finnish National Gallery, Helsinki

c1900-10 Portrait Study
pencil on light wove paper 24.5 x 17.8 cm

1904 Azalea
oil on canvas 36 x 45 cm
Private Collection

1904 Girl Reading
gouache on paper 57.5 x 43 cm
Ateneum, Finnish National Gallery, Helsinki

c1904 Fragment
oil on canvas 31.5 x 34 cm
Signe and Ane Gyllenberg Foundation, Helsinki

1905 The Seamstress (The Working Woman)
oil on canvas 95.5 x 84.5 cm
Ateneum, Finnish National Gallery, Helsinki

1907 Girls Reading
pencil and watercolour on paper 67 x 79 cm
Ateneum, Finnish National Gallery, Helsinki

1907 Granny
oil on canvas 57 x 51 cm
Ateneum, Finnish National Gallery, Helsinki

1907 Silence
oil and tempera on canvas 45.5 x 36 cm
Art Foundation Merita, Helsinki

1908 A Tapestry, a lottery prize, woven by Olga Björklund at The Friends of Finnish Handicrafts
102 x 83 cm

1908 The School Girl II (Girl in Black)
oil on canvas 71 x 40.5 cm
Ateneum, Finnish National Gallery, Helsinki

1908-09 Costume Picture I (Girl with Orange, The Baker's Daughter)
oil on canvas 46 x 56.5 cm
Ateneum, Finnish National Gallery, Helsinki

1909 Costume Picture II
oil on canvas 89.5 x 63 cm
Ateneum, Finnish National Gallery, Helsinki