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.

Karl Schmidt-Rottluff | Expressionist painter

Karl Schmidt-Rottluff (1884-1976) was a German expressionist painter and printmaker.

He was one of the four founders of the artist group Die Brücke.

Life and work

Schmidt-Rottluff was born in Rottluff, nowadays a district of Chemnitz, on 1 December 1884.

He attended the humanistische gymnasium (classics-oriented secondary school) in Chemnitz, where he befriended Erich Heckel.

He enrolled in architecture at the Sächsische Technische Hochschule in Dresden in 1905, following in Heckel's footsteps, but gave up after one term.

Van Gogh's "Café Terrace at Night" was inspired by Maupassant's "Bel-Ami"

After finishing Café Terrace at Night, Vincent van Gogh wrote a letter to his sister expressing his enthusiasm:

"You never told me if you had read Guy de Maupassant’s Bel-Ami, and what you now think of his talent in general.

I say this because the beginning of Bel-Ami is precisely the description of a starry night in Paris, with the lighted cafés of the boulevard, and it's something like the same subject that I've painted just now". (Letter 678 from Vincent van Gogh to Wilhelmina van Gogh, Arles, 1888.)

Vincent van Gogh | Café Terrace at Night, 1888 | Kröller-Müller Museum, Netherlands

Ellen Pyle | Magazine illustrator

Ellen Bernard Thompson Pyle (1876-1936) was an American illustrator best known for the 40 covers she created for The Saturday Evening Post in the 1920s and 1930s under the guidance of Post editor-in-chief, George Horace Lorimer.

She studied with Howard Pyle and later married Pyle's brother Walter.

Life

Born in the Germantown section of Philadelphia on November 11, 1876, to Newcomb Butler and Kate Ashton Thompson, Ellen began her artistic studies at the Drexel Institute of Art, Science and Industry in 1895.

Rosalba Carriera | Rococo painter

Rosalba Carriera (1673-1757), a Venetian Rococo painter, was best known for her innovative approach to pastels, which had previously been used for informal drawings and preparatory sketches.

She was also credited with pastel as a medium for serious portraiture that redefined the Rococo manner.

In her younger years, she specialized in portrait miniatures.

Carriera would later become known for her pastel portraits, helping popularize the medium in eighteenth-century Europe.