LONDON.- This December, Sotheby’s will offer four works by leading Finnish artists as Finland marks 100 years of independence. The paintings comprise two quintessentially Finnish landscapes by Eero Järnefelt and Akseli Gallen-Kallela, and two pictures by Helene Schjerfeck, one of the most important and renowned artists of the entire Nordic region. Consigned from different private collections, three of the group are coming to auction for the first time, while the Järnefelt set a new artist recorded when it was last at auction in 1990. The group will feature as part of Sotheby’s 19th Century European Paintings sale in London on 13 December.

All four works will be on view to the public in Helsinki at Snellman Sotheby’s International Realty, Kasarmikatu 34, on 30 November.

Richard Lowkes, Specialist, 19th Century European Paintings, Sotheby’s London, commented: “We are delighted to be offering works by three major Finnish artists in this year of Finland’s centenary celebrations – artists who are increasingly gaining international recognition. The landscapes of Gallen-Kallela and Järnefelt added momentum to the Finnish independence movement, and have shaped how Finns view their country today. While Schjerfbeck’s work was less overtly political, her intimate portrait and still life are an equally striking expression of the Finnish psyche. We look forward to presenting the pictures in Helsinki on 30 November prior to the auction in London.”

Property from the Collection of J.E. Safra
Eero Järnefelt, Sunset over a Lake, 1894. Gouache and gold paint on paper. Estimate £150,000-200,000 (€168,000-224,000)
Eero Järnefelt’s Sunset over a Lake could not be more quintessentially Finnish. Dramatic views over Finland’s lakes by artists such as Albert Edelfelt encouraged the younger generation of artists to look afresh at the Finnish landscape, as they dreamt of their country’s independence from Russia. Late nineteenth-century Finnish art was strongly informed by nationalist and Symbolist currents. Dominated by Sweden for almost six hundred years, Finland passed under the rule of the Russian Empire in 1809 and gained its independence only in 1917. Social dissatisfaction and disillusionment over Russian rule was widespread, and young artists sought a new pictorial vocabulary to express their Finnish identity.

Breath-taking in its plunging perspective and crepuscular hues, Sunset over a Lake – painted in 1894 – probably presents a view over Lake Pielinen near Koli in eastern Finland, a subject which Järnefelt made his own. First visiting Koli in North Karelia in 1892, the artist looked to Karelia as a lost paradise, and an embodiment of the authentic soul of Finland, a sentiment he shared with the leading artistic personalities of his generation, from Jean Sibelius to Akseli Gallen-Kallela.

In numerous formal aspects the composition defies the conventions of western art, pointing instead to the influence of Japanese prints. Notable features are the vertical format, bird’s eye view looking down on the lake and islands, heightened colours, high horizon line, stylised trees along the lower border, and even the gouache medium rather than the more conventional oil on canvas. As demonstrated by the recent touring exhibition in Helsinki, Oslo, and Copenhagen, the form and character of Nordic art of the late nineteenth century bore the indelible imprint of ‘Japanomania’, as each artist approached the new possibilities that Japanese visual culture appeared to offer.

Born in Vyborg, his father Finnish and mother from the Russian noble Clodt von Jürgensburg family, Järnefelt was brought up speaking Finnish at a time when the Swedish language still carried greater prestige. He Finnicised his name from Erik to Eero, just as his fellow artist Axel Gallén later renamed himself Akseli Gallen-Kallela.

Property from a Private Collection
Helene Schjerfbeck, The Girl from California, circa 1927. Charcoal and gouache on paper. Estimate £150,000-200,000 (€168,000-224,000)
Executed circa 1927, The Girl from California belongs to a series of five works depicting the same sitter who captivated Schjerfbeck over a fifteen-year period. Most of the works in the series are in prominent Finnish public collections, including the first oil of 1919 (Ateneum, Helsinki), the oil of 1934 (Didrichsen Art Museum), and the watercolour of the same year (Reitz Foundation; formerly in the collection of actress Ingrid Bergman). All five versions present the young Ulrika Baarman (1895-1978), as Schjerfbeck saw her in Tammisaari when she was aged twenty-four. Born in San Francisco, Ulrika was a relative of the artist through her mother. Here Schjerfbeck reprised the composition of some eight years earlier. While she radically reinterpreted other compositions, her vision of The Girl from California remained remarkably consistent across the versions. While the 1919 Ateneum oil presents the sitter close-cropped and on a square format, for the circa 1927 work Schjerfbeck shifted towards a more rectangular, vertical sheet emphasizing the downward glance of the figure. Bold patches of white gouache define the fall of light on the left side of her nose, the sensuous cupid’s bow of her upper lip, and the upper-left of her head, with the head itself haloed in green. The result is a particularly abstracted and haunting interpretation. The painting was acquired from the artist in the late 1920s and has remained in the sale family collection ever since.

Property from a Private Collection
Helene Schjerfbeck, Camellias, circa 1934. Oil on board. Estimate £200,000-300,000 (€224,000-336,000)
Unseen in public for decades, Camellias is a rediscovery from Schjerfbeck’s late period, belonging to a series of fruit and flower still lifes she painted from 1915 onwards. While in her early work still lifes often appear as embellishments to figural paintings, within her late oeuvre they become important subjects in their own right. The work was painted circa 1934, during the decade in which Schjerfbeck reached the height of public recognition. In 1934 a large number of her works were presented alongside those of three other Finnish painters at the Liljevalch Konsthall in Stockholm. That same year, the Nationalmuseum Stockholm, to whom Gösta Stenman had already donated a Schjerfbeck work in 1926, made its first purchase of a painting by Schjerfbeck, ‘Tapestry Girl’ (1915). Stenman, who that year moved his gallery to Stockholm, also donated one painting each to the art museums of Malmö and Ekilstuna. Three years later he organised Schjerfbeck’s second large-scale solo exhibition, a show that included almost one hundred exhibits.

Property from a Finnish Estate
Akseli Gallen-Kallela, Rower on the Lake, 1916. Oil on canvas. Estimate £70,000-100,000 (€78,500-112,000)
Painted in 1916, Rower on the Lake reinterprets Gallen’s composition ‘The Rower’, painted some twenty-five years earlier and now in the collection of the Gösta Serlachius Arts Foundation. In 1911 the artist and his family returned to Finland from their travels in British East Africa (modern-day Kenya). Disturbed by the road building works then underway to allow the movement of Russian artillery pieces, in 1916 Gallen left his newly built, spacious studio at Tarvaspää near Helsinki. Instead he returned to his first wilderness studio ‘Kalela’, on the shore of Lake Ruovesi, where Rower on the Lake was likely painted. The bold colours and expressive handling of the brush are characteristic of the artist’s later work, as is the signature: not Axel Gallén, but the Finnicised Gallen-Kallela, which Gallen called himself after 1907. Rower on the Lake was possibly acquired from the artist by the great-grandmother of the current owner and has since been passed down through the family by descent.