Famous in Finland: Helene Schjerfbeck

It's time for another encounter with a neglected Nordic painter -- one neglected by the British anyway. Helene Schjerfbeck, the subject of a substantial show at the Royal Academy in London, is one of the biggest names in the history of Finnish art, but we have to admit we'd actually never heard of her till the RA announced this exhibition. 

What unfolds before us is the story of an painter who appears to have pursued a relatively conventional career for a couple of decades before, in the second half of her life, withdrawing in difficult circumstances to what must have been relative artistic isolation in small Finnish towns and producing some remarkably expressive, if odd, work.

Finland.... Beyond the occasional encounter with Akseli Gallen-Kallela, we're in uncharted artistic territory here, in a far-away country of which we know very relatively little, with a history that's at odds with the western European mainstream: Under Russian rule until 1917, it fought against the Soviet Union in World War II. 

And just to complicate matters, Schjerfbeck was from Finland's minority Swedish community, born into a middle-class family in Helsinki in 1862. She broke her hip when she fell down some stairs aged 4, which left her with a lifelong limp but which also led her father to give her drawing materials to amuse herself while she was recuperating. She was a bit of a child prodigy, gaining entry to art school, winning prizes and travelling to Paris, Brittany and St Ives in the 1880s. 

We didn't really find a huge amount to get excited about in the first section of the show devoted to these early years. Schjerfbeck painted at this time in a fairly naturalistic style, with hints of Impressionism, and some works, such as The Convalescent, depicting a small girl recovering from illness, have a Victorian sentimentality bordering on sugariness. That painting, like many of the 65 or so works in this show, comes from the Finnish National Gallery, which has put together the exhibition in conjunction with the RA. 

In the 1890s, Schjerfbeck taught for the Finnish Art Society and was also sent abroad to copy works by old masters in foreign collections. She suffered repeatedly, though, from ill health, and early in the new century she moved out of Helsinki to care for her ageing mother. 

And it's at this point, halfway through her life, that her art gets a lot more interesting, as she adopted a far flatter, Expressionist painting style with bold expanses of colour. Self-Portrait, Black Background from 1915 presents a stylised portrayal of herself, but she looks self-confidently, almost challengingly out at the world from her canvas. Those rosy cheeks stand out, and we'll be getting more of those later. 

Schjerfbeck had been the only woman among 15 artists commissioned to paint self-portraits by the Finnish Art Society. She seems to have regarded it as something of a vindication because, as an ethnic Swede, she'd felt left aside by a rising wave of Finnish nationalism, the sort celebrated in Gallen-Kallela's paintings.

One of the first paintings made by Schjerfbeck following her move out of Helsinki in 1902 was this beautiful Fragment, inspired by early Renaissance frescos she'd seen in Italy a decade earlier. To reproduce the effect of a fresco's faded colours in oil, she scraped and repainted the surface many times, revealing different layers of paint and apparent deterioration.

Perhaps the most attractive work in this show dates from the first two decades of the 20th century. In Tapestry, one of her few paintings that seems to have much in the way of a narrative, you at first think that the two dream-like characters are standing on a terrace on a lake or sea shore, with an island in the background. But look more closely and the backdrop is revealed to be indeed a tapestry, with the woman casting a shadow on it. 

In The Seamstress, the eye is drawn to a pair of scissors on a light-blue ribbon that's pulled taut as the black-clad working woman sits in an apparent moment of contemplation in a rocking chair. And here's another seated woman in black: the artist's mother. Finland's answer to Whistler's Mother.

In some ways, Schjerfbeck does not appear to have had an easy life. She was in hospital for months in 1919 after her much younger biographer, whom she seems to have harboured hopes of an intimate relationship, became engaged to someone else during a stay in a sanatorium that she had helped fund. There was another lengthy hospital stay in 1923 after her mother died, after which she left the small town north of Helsinki they'd been living in and moved to an area on the coast with a majority Swedish population. 

Despite living far from any artistic centre, Schjerfbeck kept up to date with trends, corresponding with fellow artists, reading widely and subscribing to foreign art and fashion magazines in the second half of her career.  She painted quite a lot of portraits at this time, but they're not portraits in the usual sense. She said she didn't want her pictures to be "people hanging on the wall". Instead, they're experiments in colour and composition.

Take The Skier (English Girl). It's not known whether the sitter, Mabel Ellis, was a skier. If the caked make-up was sun protection, why is she wearing that hat, which definitely doesn't look suited to winter sports. Schjerfbeck's approach to portraits was a semi-fictional one; this one seems to bring out her interest in the Rococo fashion for masquerade.

Another example of this semi-fictional approach is in this portrayal of Schjerfbeck's nephew, Måns, as a dashing motorist. But not only did Måns not own a car, he didn't even have a driving licence.

And she continued to paint self-portraits throughout her long life, into her 80s. When we get near the end, these portrayals become almost unbearably bleak. Amid increasing ill-health, she left war-torn Finland for neutral Sweden in 1944, where, anxious and lonely, she produced a series of haunting, highly abstracted images of herself until her death two years later.

This is not an uninteresting exhibition -- it's always fascinating to see an artist we don't know -- but we didn't come away with the view that Helene Schjerfbeck was a world-class painter that we're astonished we've only just come across. Her self-portraits, particularly the very final ones, are certainly memorable, but much of the rest of what's on show didn't really surprise or intrigue us very much. And we didn't feel we got to know that much about the artist or her world. A few photographs, a map of the places where she lived and worked, or a short video, would have helped to set the scene. 

We spent about half as long in this exhibition as we we did in the excellent show featuring Félix Vallotton elsewhere in the Royal Academy. And we sensed that we were not alone in our assessment. As we studied Schjerfbeck's work, we couldn't help noticing the steady flow through of people who appeared less than gripped. If you're choosing one to go and see one exhibition at the RA now, choose Vallotton. 

Practicalities

Helene Schjerfbeck runs until October 27 at the Royal Academy on Piccadilly in central London. It's open daily from 1000 to 1800, with lates on Fridays until 2200. Full-price tickets are £14, or £12 without a Gift Aid donation. Online booking is available here. The RA is a few minutes' walk from Green Park and Piccadilly Circus Tube stations.

Images

Helene Schjerfbeck, Self-Portrait, Black Background, 1915, Finnish National Gallery/Ateneum Art Museum. Photo: Yehia Eweis
Helene Schjerfbeck, Fragment, 1904, Signe and Ane Gyllenberg Foundation, Villa Gyllenberg, Helsinki

Helene Schjerfbeck, Tapestry, 1914-17, Private collection

Helene Schjerfbeck, My Mother, 1909. Private collection. Photo: Finnish National Gallery/Yehia Eweis
Helene Schjerfbeck, The Skier (English Girl), 1909, Sven-Harrys konstmuseum, Stockholm
Helene Schjerfbeck, Måns Schjerfbeck (The Motorist), 1933, Sven-Harrys konstmuseum, Stockholm
Helene Schjerfbeck, Self-Portrait with Red Spot, 1944, Finnish National Gallery/Ateneum Art Museum. Photo: Hannu Aaltonen