Helene Schjerfbeck

Helena Sofia (Helene) Schjerfbeck (; July 10, 1862 – January 23, 1946) was a Finnish modernist painter known for her realist works and self-portraits, and also for her landscapes and still lifes. Throughout her long life her work changed dramatically, beginning with French-influenced realism and plein air painting. It gradually evolved towards portraits and still life paintings. At the beginning of her career she often produced historical paintings, such as the Wounded Warrior in the Snow (1880), At the Door of Linköping Jail in 1600 (1882) and The Death of Wilhelm von Schwerin (1886). Historical paintings were usually the realm of male painters, as was experimentation with modern influences and French radical naturalism, and her works from mostly the 1880s did not receive a favourable reception until later in her life.</blockquote>

Schjerfbeck's birthday, July 10, is Finland's national day for the painted arts.

Early life

thumb|Young Schjerfbeck in 1880

Helena Sofia Schjerfbeck was born on July 10, 1862, in Helsinki, in the autonomous Grand-Duchy of Finland within the Russian Empire, to Svante Schjerfbeck (an office manager at the railway's mechanical workshop) and Olga Johanna (née Printz). She had one surviving brother, Magnus Schjerfbeck (1860–1933), who went on to become an architect. At this school Schjerfbeck met Helena Westermarck. These two, artist Maria Wiik, and the lesser-known Ada Thilén had a close friendship during their lives.

When Schjerfbeck's father died of tuberculosis, on February 2, 1876, Schjerfbeck's mother took in boarders so that they could get by. A little over a year after her father's death, Schjerfbeck graduated from the Finnish Art Society drawing school. She continued her education, with Westermarck and paid for by Professor , at a private academy run by Adolf von Becker, which utilised the University of Helsinki drawing studio. There, Becker himself taught her French oil painting techniques. Schjerfbeck became particularly close to her cousin Selma Adlercreutz, who was her age. Later in 1880 she set off to Paris after receiving a travel grant from the Imperial Russian Senate. The painting was later bought by the Finnish Art Society. During this period Schjerfbeck was painting in a naturalistic plein-air style.

Hyvinkää years

In the 1890s Schjerfbeck started teaching regularly in Finland at the Art Society drawing school, now the Academy of Fine Arts. Hilda Flodin was one of her students. However, in 1901 she became too ill to teach and in 1902 she resigned from her post. On her doctor's advice she moved with her mother to Hyvinkää, whose dry climate was considered healthy, and where she would remain for the next two decades. While living in Hyvinkää, she continued to paint and exhibit.)

|Helene Schjerfbeck - Girls Reading.jpg|Girls Reading, 1907

Exhibitions

In 1913 Schjerfbeck was sought out by the art dealer , who became convinced of her work's quality and set about making her better known. Through his encouragement she exhibited at Malmö in 1914, Stockholm in 1916 and St Petersburg in 1917. In 1917 Stenman organised her first solo exhibition. That same year, Einar Reuter — a forest officer and art enthusiast who had befriended Schjerfbeck in Hyvinkää — published the first monograph on her work under the pseudonym H. Ahtela. Later she exhibited at Copenhagen (1919), Gothenburg (1923) and Stockholm (1934). In 1937 Stenman organised another solo exhibition for her in Stockholm,)

|Helene Schjerfbeck - Robber at the Gate of Paradise.jpg|Robber at the Gate of Paradise, 1924 (fi)

|Helene Schjerfbeck - Matti Kiianlinna (1926–27).jpg|Actor, , 1926 (he became a friend of Helene until his untimely death in 1931)

||Girl with Blue Ribbon, 1943 (fi)

Later years and death

After her mother's death in 1923, Schjerfbeck settled in the coastal town of Ekenäs, where she remained for much of the following decade. When the Winter War broke out in December 1939, she moved to a farm in Tenala for about a year, returning to Ekenäs in mid-1940. She later moved to a nursing home, and from early 1942 to the Luontola sanatorium in Nummela. In February 1944, with Stenman's help, she travelled to Sweden and spent her final years at the Saltsjöbaden spa hotel, where she continued to paint actively, including the series of late self-portraits.

Work

Dancing Shoes is one of Schjerfbeck's most popular paintings and she returned to the theme three times, and executed a lithograph of it that catapulted the painting to international fame. It depicts her cousin Esther Lupander, who had extremely long legs, which led to the painting being nicknamed "The Grasshopper". Executed in Realist style, the painting shows the clear influence of Schjerfbeck's stay in Paris, where she had expressed admiration for Édouard Manet, Edgar Degas, Berthe Morisot, and Mary Cassatt. It fetched £3,044,500 at a 2008 Sotheby's London sale.

Girl with Blonde Hair (1916) is an example of Schjerfbeck's mature style, drawing on French Modernism. The work belongs to a series (including also The Family Heirloom of the same year) depicting neighbours of Schjerfbeck, Jenny and Impi Tamlander, who ran errands for Schjerfbeck and her mother and helped look after the family home. Here the sitter is Impi. The painting realized £869,000 at a 2015 Sotheby's London sale. Schjerfbeck's work was included in the 2018 exhibition Women in Paris 1850–1900.

Legacy

Art forger was an admirer of her works, and writes of his time forging them: "By encroaching on Schjerfbeck I felt like I had violated something sacred. It was if I had broken into a sacristy to steal the church silver." Fellow forger and self-admitted seller of 60 Schjerfbeck counterfeits Jouni Ranta was more critical and considered that her fame was undeserved.

The portrayal of Schjerfbeck in Einar Reuter's 1953 biography — published under his pseudonym H. Ahtela — as a fragile and suffering figure had a particularly strong and lasting influence on how she and her work were interpreted. Scholars have since argued that this image is misleading: Schjerfbeck had a deep and intense emotional life and engaged actively with the art of her time. It also formed the basis of a 2020 film by the same name, directed by Antti Jokinen and starring Laura Birn as Schjerfbeck, which was nominated for an award in the feature-length category at the Shanghai International Film Festival.

International exhibitions

In 1992, the National Academy of Design in Manhattan held an exhibition of Schjerfbeck's work. The exhibit was the first major exhibition of her work in the UK and was organized by the Royal Academy and the Ateneum Art Museum / Finnish National Gallery, Helsinki.
From December 5, 2025 to April 5, 2026, the Metropolitan Museum of Art is showing her work in Seeing Silence: The Paintings of Helene Schjerfbeck. The exhibition includes works made over the course of her career and is her first major museum exhibit in the United States — a presentation that had been planned as early as 1939 but was cancelled owing to the outbreak of the Second World War. The exhibit was organized by the Museum in collaboration with the Finnish National Gallery / Ateneum Art Museum. The Metropolitan Museum of Art owns Schjerfbeck's 1920 painting, The Lace Shawl. In connection with the exhibition, the Metropolitan Museum of Art collaborated with Finnish Design Shop on the Tones of Modernism collection, featuring pieces by Finnish design brands Artek, Iittala, Nikari, Lapuan Kankurit and Hetkinen, created with inspiration from Schjerfbeck's paintings. The exhibition has been well received and was praised in The New York Times and Vogue, among others.

Helene Schjerfbeck

Early life

Hyvinkää years

Exhibitions

Later years and death

Work

Legacy

International exhibitions

See also

References

Further reading

External links