Finnish Art History and Sitemap

Hugo Simberg | The Wounded Angel, 1903 | The Finnish National Gallery

Finnish art started to form its individual characteristics in the 19th century, when romantic nationalism began to rise in the autonomous Grand Duchy of Finland.

Prehistoric art

Marks of human activity in Finland has found in Susiluola, Kristinestad.

Some excavation has been considered as a man-made over 100,000 years ago.

After the Ice Age, area of Finland was resettled at around 9,000 years ago and first known sculpture Elk's Head of Huittinen (picture in stamp) has been dated about 5-7000 BCE.

Amelie Lundahl | Genre painter

Helga Amélie Lundahl (26 May 1850 - 20 August 1914) was a Finnish painter.

She was born in Oulu, the youngest of eleven children.

Her mother died when she was three months old and her father, Abraham, a Town Representative (public prosecutor) died when she was eight.

From 1860 to 1862, she attended the "Svenska Privatskolan" in Oulu.

Elga Sesemann | Expressionist painter

Elga Sesemann (March 28, 1922 - January 21, 2007) was a Finnish post-war neo-romantic painter.

She was an expressionist whose themes often included melancholy, depression, anxiety and loneliness.

Sesemann was born in Viipuri (Vyborg) on the Karelian Isthmus.

Sesemann's family is of German origin and grew up speaking German and Russian.

Ellen Thesleff | Expressionist painter

Ellen Thesleff (5 October 1869 - 12 January 1954) was an expressionist Finnish painter, regarded as one of the leading Finnish modernist painters.

Thesleff was born in Helsinki, the eldest daughter of five siblings and her father was an amateur painter.

She took private lessons and then, in 1887, studied for two years at the Finnish Art Society Drawing School (now known as the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts) with Gunnar Berndtson.

Akseli Gallen-Kallela | Art Nouveau / Symbolist painter

Akseli Gallen-Kallela (1865-1931) was a Finnish painter who is best known for his illustrations of the Kalevala, the Finnish national epic.

His work is considered a very important aspect of the Finnish national identity.

He changed his name from Gallén to Gallen-Kallela in 1907.

Early life

Gallen-Kallela was born Axel Waldemar Gallén in Pori, Finland, in a Swedish-speaking family.

His father Peter Gallén worked as police chief and lawyer.

Gallen-Kallela was raised in Tyrvää.

At the age of 11 he was sent to Helsinki to study at a grammar school, because his father opposed his ambition to become a painter.

After his father's death in 1879, Gallen-Kallela attended drawing classes at the Finnish Art Society (1881-1884) and studied privately under Adolf von Becker.

Fanny Churberg | Düsseldorf school of painting

Fanny Churberg (12 December 1845, in Vaasa - 10 May 1892, in Helsinki) was a Finnish landscape painter.

Her father, Matias Churberg, was a doctor from a family of farmers and her mother Maria was the daughter of the vicar in Liperi parish, Nils Johan Perander. Fanny was the third of seven children.

Four of her siblings died when they were young and so Fanny grew up with her two older brothers Torsten and Waldemar Churberg.

Fanny was proud of her Ostrobothnian family and heritage and was planning along with her brothers on changing the surname to Kuurila according to the family's old estate. They never got around to it though.

Dora Wahlroos | En plein air painter

Anna Dorothée (Dora) Wahlroos (19 December 1870, Pori – 21 March 1947, Kauniainen) was a Finnish painter who participated in the painting movement en plein air towards the end of the 19th century.

Biography

She was born in Pori to province land surveyor Johan Henrik Wahlroos and Dorothée Augusta Henrietta Fehn.

She studied at the Turku Drawing School in 1886–1888 and under Victor Westerholm in 1889–1890. She was one of the artists who joined Westerholm in the artists colony at Önningeby on the island of Åland.

She was accepted to the Finnish Art Society in 1890–1891, where her class was taught by Gunnar Berndtson. In the Fall of 1890 she got engaged to sculptor Emil Wikström.

The two went to study together at Paris in 1891–1892.

Maria Wiik (1853-1928)

Maria Catharina Wiik was a Finnish painter.

She worked principally with still life, genre, landscape paintings and portraits. Wiik was born in Helsinki.

She was the daughter of architect Erik Johan Wik (or Wiik) (1804-1876) and his wife Gustava Fredrika Meyer.

She was born and grew up in Brunnsparken and attended the Swedish language school Svenska fruntimmersskolan in Helsingfors. She then studied drawing with art professor Adolf von Becker.

Encouraged by her family, she studied art during 1874-1875 at the Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki.

Elin Danielson-Gambogi | Naturalist painter

Elin Kleopatra Danielson-Gambogi (3 September 1861 - 31 December 1919) was a Finnish painter, best known for her realist works and portraits. Danielson-Gambogi was part of the first generation of Finnish women artists who received professional education in art, the so-called "Painter sisters' generation".

The group also included Helene Schjerfbeck.

Early life and studies

Elin Danielson was born in the small village of Noormarkku, near the city of Pori in Western Finland to Karl Danielson and Rosa Amalia Danielson.

Her early years were however spent at Ilmajoki as her father attempted farming there. Because of the Finnish famine of 1866–68, the farm failed. After being forced to sell the farm, her father Karl shot himself.

Her mother Rosa returned to Noormarkku with her two daughters.

Albert Edelfelt | Academic / Genre painter

Albert Gustaf Aristides Edelfelt (1854-1905) was a Finnish painter. He lived in Grand Duchy of Finland and made Finnish culture visible abroad, before Finland gained full independence.

Biography

Edelfelt was born in Porvoo, son of Carl Albert Edelfelt, an architect, and Alexandra Edelfelt, née Brandt. His parents were Swedish-speaking Finns. He began his formal studies of art in 1869 at the Drawing School of the Finnish Art Society, and continued as a student of Adolf von Becker (1871-73).

Albert Edelfelt | Pittore naturalista

Albert Gustaf Aristides Edelfelt (Porvoo, 1854-1905) è considerato uno degli artisti più importanti dell'Età d'Oro dell'arte Finlandese.

Ha vissuto nel Granducato di Finlandia e ha reso visibile la cultura Finlandese all'estero, prima che la Finlandia ottenesse la piena indipendenza.

Edelfelt nacque nel 1854 a Porvoo, figlio dei finlandesi di lingua svedese Carl Albert Edelfelt (1818-1869), un architetto, e di Alexandra Edelfelt, nata Brandt (1833-1901).

Hjalmar Munsterhjelm | Moonlight paintings

Magnus Hjalmar Munsterhjelm (19 October 1840, Tuulos - 2 April 1905, Helsinki) was a Finnish landscape painter.

Munsterhjelm was born at Toivoniemi Manor of Tuulos, Finland.

He was the son of Gustaf Riggert Munsterhjelm (1806-1872) and his wife and Mathilda Charlotta Eleonora von Essen (1818-1895).

His father first sent him to the Turku Maritime School.

In the early 1860s, he studied art at Düsseldorf with Werner Holmberg (1830-1860) and Oswald Achenbach (1827-1905) and at Karlsruhe under Hans Gude.

Hugo Simberg | Symbolist painter

Hugo Simberg - Autoritratto, 1907

Hugo Gerhard Simberg (1873-1917) was a Finnish symbolist painter and graphic artist.

Life and career

Simberg was born at Hamina (original Swedish Fredrikshamn), the son of Colonel Nicolai Simberg and Ebba Matilda Simberg (born Widenius).

In 1891, at the age of 18, he enrolled at the Drawing School of the Viipuri Friends of Art, and he also studied at the Drawing School of the Finnish Art Association (fi) from 1893-1895, but in 1895 he decided to become the private pupil of Akseli Gallen-Kallela at his wilderness studio Kalela in Ruovesi.

He studied under Gallen-Kallela for three periods between 1895-1897.

Mika Törönen, 1968 | Cityscape / Watercolour painter

Mika Törönen, born 28 November 1968, Pirkkala, is an Finnish award winning painter.

Törönen makes paintings and portraits of Helsinki.

He has studied in Australia - Sydney, at the Julian Ashton Art School in 1999.

Watercolor is not easy medium, but keep painting and be patient. There is no shortcuts. Only way to progress is just paint, paint and paint... learn from your mistakes and bad paintings... - Mika Törönen

Santeri Salokivi | Impressionist painter

Toivo Santeri Salokivi (Turku, September 2, 1886 - Helsinki, March 26, 1940) was a Finnish painter and art teacher, known for his Impressionist style of landscapes.

Salokivi was also a graphic artist.

Salokivi studied at the Turku Drawing School between 1900-1904 and thereafter in Munich and Paris.

Salokivi's trip to Venice in 1911 was also significant for his artistic development.

Salokivi worked as a drawing teacher at the Turku School of Drawing and as a drawing teacher at the Finnish Classical and Real Lyceum from 1914-1917.

Helene Schjerfbeck | Espressionist painter

Finnish painter Helene Schjerfbeck (1862-1946) is most widely known for her realist works and self-portraits, and less well known for her landscapes and still lifes. Throughout her long life, her work changed dramatically.

She was supposedly a Realist, a Romanticist, an Impressionist, a Naturalist, a Symbolist, an Expressionist and a wildly ahead-of-her-time Abstractist.

Helena Sofia Schjerfbeck was born in Helsinki, Finland (then an autonomous Grand-Duchy within the Russian Empire), to Svante Schjerfbeck (an office manager) and Olga Johanna (née Printz).

When she was four she suffered a hip injury, which prevented her from attending school.

Sampo Kaikkonen, 1975 | Figurative painter

Sampo Kaikkonen, a Finnish figurative painter living and working in Oulu, Finland.

His paintings respect the technique and style of the old masters.

The atmosphere in the paintings is timeless. There are no symbols of specific era and the landscape is universal.

Beside the dominant human figures another strong factor in his works is emotion which mediates through his themes, expressions and colors.