Featured image:Fanny Churberg, The Ice in March, 1880, oil on canvas, 31.3cm x 47.3cm Gift from Arvid Sourander. Finnish National Gallery / Ateneum Art Museum Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Aleks Talve

Editorial: Nurturing Museum-based Research

March 15, 2024March 15, 2024 Riitta Ojanperä

Riitta Ojanperä, PhD, Director of Collections Management, Finnish National Gallery

15 March 2024

A new calendar year has begun, and the FNG Research online magazine is again preparing to publish three issues; the first in March, the second during the summer period and the third close to the end of the year. The magazine started up in the summer of 2015 and since then it has proved relevant in facilitating the Finnish National Gallery’s professional networking and in encouraging international exchange around the questions currently being raised in art history, cultural history and museum studies.

In 2017, we set up a research intern programme that links with the research magazine. Fostering opportunities to collaborate between the academic and the museum fields has been our ongoing area of interest and the intern programme has proved a beneficial way to facilitate that. Each year we have recruited two apprentices to practise hands-on research with chosen parts of our collections. The Finnish National Gallery’s interest is to strengthen future museum professionals’ understanding of the potential of museum collections and develop their skills in order to generate new knowledge based on different aspects of our collections, whether based on archival materials, art works or collections’ metadata.

In this issue, we are delighted to publish two articles written last year by our research interns. In the first, Maria Hynninen delves into our archival sources to ask questions about Finland’s cultural diplomacy during the 1970s. The second article, by Eero Karjalainen, reflects on museum collections as sites of speculation and raises questions on the theme with his research into selected contemporary art works in the collections. These articles are the result of their agreed work tasks during their three-month internship.

The other articles in this issue follow the long-term publishing policy of FNG Research too. Saara Karhunen’s article was first published in the catalogue of the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma’s new collections’ exhibition, opened early this year. Publishing selected texts online from the Finnish National Gallery’s printed catalogues is part of our web magazine’s plans this year too.

Many of the exhibitions mounted by the Finnish National Gallery’s three museums are preceded by ambitious long-term research projects that are based on extensive international collaboration. In this issue, we present Dr Yvette Deseyve’s key-note speech delivered to the conference organised by the Ateneum Art Museum last year, which was connected to its ongoing research project ‘Crossing Borders – Transnational Networks of Pioneering Women Artists’. The academic interest in women artists is more intensive than ever, and we are looking forward to following up its findings.

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Featured image:Fanny Churberg, The Ice in March, 1880, oil on canvas, 31.3cm x 47.3cm
Gift from Arvid Sourander. Finnish National Gallery / Ateneum Art Museum
Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Aleks Talve

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Covers from exhibition catalogues: group exhibitions held at the Nationalgalerie Berlin, 1881 and 1882, including works by Antonie Biel and Marie von Parmentier Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Nationalgalerie Photos: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Nationalgalerie / Andres Kilger (CC BY-NC-SA)

Pioneering Women Artists – an Omission in Art History?

March 15, 2024March 12, 2024 Yvette Deseyve

Dr Yvette Deseyve, Deputy Director, Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin / Friedrichswerdersche Kirche

This key-note paper from the scientific seminar, ‘Crossing Borders’, is part of the international ‘Pioneering Women Artists’ project that was launched at the Ateneum Art Museum, Helsinki, in September 2020. The research project is led by the curator Anne-Maria Pennonen, PhD

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The academic interest in women artists is not new – but it is more intensive than ever: today, art historians can look back on several decades of research projects and research findings on women artists and female art production in European art. In addition, this field of research has also become an integral part of art history teaching. Even if the perception of female artists seems to be becoming more and more self-evident, research on women artists in art is still full of surprises, discoveries and misunderstandings. In this paper, I will attempt to bring together the various strands of art-historical research in order to take a closer look at the different factors of visibility, or lack of visibility, of 19th-century women artists: what has been achieved by research so far and where can it go? What do we know, or not know just yet?

In order to draw attention to women in art historiography, I would like to take a look at The Invention of Painting (1832), by Eduard Dage (1805–83), which is in the collection of the Alte Nationalgalerie Berlin. The subject of this painting is the origin of art. According to Eduard Daege’s reading, the art of painting takes on this prominent function of origination, even though the original narrative behind it is somewhat different: the most important ancient treatise on the origin of art is handed down by Plinius Secundus in his Natural History, written in 77AD. After initial remarks on colours and their materiality, Plinius breaks off abruptly with the words: ‘On painting we have now said enough, and more than enough; but it will be only proper to append some accounts of the plastic art.’^[1] Here he picks up, and reports on the parting of a young pair of lovers. More precisely, on the daughter of the potter Butades and on her lover, who has to leave his beloved in order to go to war. Pliny writes: ‘Butades, a potter of Sicyon, was the first who invented, at Corinth, the art of modelling portraits in the earth which he used in his trade. It was through his daughter that he made the discovery; who, being deeply in love with a young man about to depart on a long journey, traced the profile of his face, as thrown upon the wall by the light of the lamp. Upon seeing this, her father filled in the outline, by compressing clay upon the surface, and so made a face in relief, which he then hardened by fire along with other articles of pottery.’^[2] . If one really follows Pliny’s story, the scene, which was widely illustrated in the 18th and 19th centuries, is not actually the invention of painting, but the invention of relief as an aspect of the artistic genre of sculpture. But apart from the implied dispute about which classical artistic form may be closer to nature, it is interesting to see how art history has dealt with this founding myth. Pliny hints that Butades only came to portraiture with the help of his daughter: ‘It was through his daughter that he made the discovery’. To put it bluntly, a woman as an artist. Or even, a woman as the founder of painting or sculpture, whose help made the father an artist in the first place. The prominence that Pliny gave the daughter of Butades in the founding myth of art should not be underestimated and the question arises: how did art history, especially in the 19th century, relate to this source?

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^[1] Plin. Nat. 35.43, Translation http://data.perseus.org/citations/urn:cts:latinLit:phi0978.phi001.perseus-eng1:35.43, The Natural History. Pliny the Elder. John Bostock, M.D., a. o., London 1855.

^[2] Plin. Nat. 35.43.

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Featured image: Covers from exhibition catalogues: group exhibitions held at the Nationalgalerie Berlin, 1881 and 1882, including works by Antonie Biel and Marie von Parmentier
Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Nationalgalerie
Photos: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Nationalgalerie / Andres Kilger (CC BY-NC-SA)

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Tellervo Kalleinen & Oliver Kochta-Kalleinen, Complaints Choir, 2005–2014, video installation Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Petri Summanen

Where I Hang My Coat – On Communities and Belonging

March 15, 2024March 8, 2024 Saara Karhunen

Saara Karhunen, MA, Curator, Finnish National Gallery / Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma

Also published in Saara Hacklin, Saara Karhunen and Satu Oksanen (eds.), Kuin kotonaan – Feels Like Home. A Museum of Contemporary Art Publication 180. Helsinki: Finnish National Gallery / Kiasma, 2024, 33−37. Transl. Liisa Muinonen-Martin

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We belong to various communities that shape our identity, our actions and our relationships with other people and the wider society around us. Whether we’re surrounded by family, neighbours or an online community, there is a recognisable universality to how we adjust our behaviour to the company we find ourselves in. Communities can be formed around almost anything, from work, hobbies and shared interests, to national identities and even geographical locations. They can be held together by a common aim, like a political ideology or a charitable endeavour. Some communities we are born into, others we choose and even build ourselves.

The sociologist Zygmunt Bauman has described our present time as an era of liquid modernity, which is characterised by a more casual approach to community. He writes of ‘cloakroom communities’ that people dip into, not unlike visiting the theatre. Once the show is over, they grab their coats and go on their way. Bauman contrasts these self-determined forms of community, which can often be ephemeral and highly spontaneous in character, with fixed communities that share a common aim or denominator.^[1]Bauman’s analysis highlights the freedom of choice that all communities entail, but he is also at pains to point out the isolation that is inherent in this autonomy. A lack of community cohesion can also lead to a host of social issues.

Community, and our sense of community, forms one of the thematic strands around which Kiasma’s current collection exhibition, ‘Feels Like Home’, is arranged. The works covered by this theme encompass everyday, social and political dimensions but also a rich variety of different artistic methods. Some artists have chosen to incorporate autobiographical elements into their work, while others take a documentary approach. A participatory artwork has the power to create an entirely new community of its own. In this article, I will explore the artworks in the exhibition from the perspective of community. What can these artworks tell us about community and its significance to us? What is the artist’s relationship to the communities they depict? And what about our role as visitors in relation to the communities engendered by these works? What kind of opportunities can a museum offer for building community?

^[1] Zygmunt Bauman. Liquid Modernity, Tampere: Vastapaino, 2002, 237–239.

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Featured image: Tellervo Kalleinen & Oliver Kochta-Kalleinen, Complaints Choir, 2005–2014,
video installation
Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Petri Summanen

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Juhani Linnovaara, Moonlight Sonata ll, 1970, acrylic and oil on canvas, 119.5cm x 105cm Finnish National Gallery / Ateneum Art Museum Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Jouko Könönen © Kuvasto 2024

Facets of Finnish Cultural Diplomacy – A Case Study of the Finnish Contemporary Art Exhibition Facettes de Finlande 1975

March 15, 2024March 8, 2024 Maria Hynninen

Maria Hynninen, MA student, University of Helsinki

This article is published following the author’s three-month research internship at the Finnish National Gallery

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Introduction

In December 1975, the Musée Galliéra in Paris opened an extensive exhibition of Finnish contemporary art, ´Facettes de Finlande´. The exhibition was organised by the Association of Modern Art in Finland (Nykytaide ry – Nutidskonst rf) as a part of the bilateral cultural treaty between Finland and France.^[1] This exhibition was part of a broader pattern in the field of Finland’s international cultural relations. From the late 1960s to the 1970s, the Finnish state began to coordinate cultural exhibitions and cultural exchange.^[2] The researcher Elina Melgin states, that it was ´the time of foreign policy in art´, as extensive Finnish export exhibitions promoted Finland abroad.^[3]

During my internship at the Finnish National Gallery, my aim has been to examine what was behind this statement, and to understand the role of export art exhibitions as an aspect of cultural diplomacy in Finland in the late 1960s and the mid-70s. The framework of this research is based on the concepts of cultural diplomacy and cultural policy, which I will elaborate on in more detail in the first part of this article. Because the research topic is broad, it will be discussed from the perspective of the art field and from the point of view of one actor in the field, Nykytaide ry. To exemplify this focus, in the second part of this article, I will present a case study of the exhibition ‘Facettes de Finlande’. What did the selection of art and artists chosen for the exhibition aim to demonstrate to its international audience, and what were the objectives of Nykytaide ry in its export exhibition policy? I will present the key actors who shaped the exhibition, from its initiation to its presentation, and assess its significance. I will also consider the ways in which Finnish art was integrated into the endeavours of official cultural diplomacy concerning the national image of Finland. Although this article does not deal comprehensively with the phenomenon, it addresses in general the exporting of art exhibitions as instruments of Finnish cultural diplomacy. How did the Finnish state coordinate exhibition activities, and how did the art field react to the growing influence of the state? To answer these questions, I have examined how Finland began to coordinate export art exhibitions via the Finnish Commission for International Cultural Exhibitions (FCICE), an auxiliary body under the Ministry of Education, which operated from 1966 to 1975. The function of the FCICE has not been examined before. Finally, I will conclude by exploring the objectives of Nykytaide ry in its export exhibitions policy, and define the objectives of both the art field and the state in the coordination of export art exhibitions in general.

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^[1] Annual report of Nykytaide ry 1975. File 6: Minutes. The archive of Nykytaide ry (NTA). Archive collections (AC), Finnish National Gallery (FNG). Elina Melgin, ´Nykytaide – Nutidskonst 1939–89,´ in Elina Melgin and Pekka Suhonen (eds.), Nykytaide 1939–1989. Helsinki: Nykytaide ry, 1989, (29–59), 56. An agreement on cultural and scientific cooperation between the Finnish state and the French state was concluded in September 1970. Kalervo Siikala. Suomen kansainväliset kulttuurisuhteet. Helsinki: Kirjayhtymä, 1976, 197.

^[2] Veli-Matti Autio, Opetusministeriön historia VI. Suurjärjestelmien aika koittaa 1966–1980. Helsinki: Opetusministeriö, 1990, 439. Export exhibitions of Finnish visual art were organised mainly by the Fine Arts Academy of Finland for older art, the Finnish Artists’ Association and Nykytaide ry for contemporary art. Kalervo Siikala. Suomen kansainväliset kulttuurisuhteet. Helsinki: Kirjayhtymä, 1976, 244–45.

^[3] Melgin, ´Nykytaide – Nutidskonst 1939–89,´ 51.

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Featured image: Juhani Linnovaara, Moonlight Sonata ll, 1970, acrylic and oil on canvas, 119.5cm x 105cm
Finnish National Gallery / Ateneum Art Museum
Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Jouko Könönen © Kuvasto 2024

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Niina Tervo, 5, from the series ‘Undulate’, 2018, polyurethane, 24cm x 155cm x 20cm Finnish National Gallery / Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Pirje Mykkänen

A Collection on the Horizon – Speculative Ecologies and the Collections of the Finnish National Gallery

March 15, 2024March 15, 2024 Eero Karjalainen

Eero Karjalainen, MA student, University of Helsinki & Academy of Fine Arts, University of the Arts, Helsinki

This article is published following the author’s three-month research internship at the Finnish National Gallery

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Collection(s), future(s)

I am sitting in the first room on the fourth floor of the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma in front of Tuomas A. Laitinen’s new installation The Earth is the Ear of the Bear (2023), which is on show in the exhibition ‘Ars Fennica 2023’^[1]. Whilst focusing on the circular movement of the soundscape, I realise that my initial intention for writing this article, resulting from a research internship in the Collections Department at the Finnish National Gallery, is too narrow and too strict; too far from both the works of art and the collection they are in. My original intention was to analyse the different artistic and representational strategies of more-than-human agencies in certain works of contemporary art in the collections of the Finnish National Gallery (FNG).^[2] The primary idea was to look at the collections somewhat quantitatively: to ask, for example, how many works of art deal with more-than-human ecologies and technologies? How to understand the vastness of different agencies in the collections by analysing what is represented in the works? And how actively does the collection link and contribute to the discourse around different agencies in contemporary art collections? When thinking about this, it seemed that, in regards to my intention, my original question was not inclusive enough. Thinking, in relationship with, Laitinen’s work, it occurred to me that If I want to learn ‘how agency is equally distributed across humans and non-humans, living and non-living beings’^[3], a broader perspective would be essential.

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^[1] This was the sixth time that the ‘Ars Fennica’ exhibition had taken place in Kiasma and the 27th time in total. ‘Ars Fennica’ is the largest cash prize in Finland awarded to a visual artist. The Ars Fennica 2023 exhibition was open 8.9.2023–28.1.2024. See Ars Fennica website: https://arsfennica.fi/en/foundation.

^[2] Representation is interdependent with the political, the aesthetic and the ideological, to name a few, and the interpretation of representation changes in relation to these. An analysis of representation does not seem sufficient enough, if we want to understand how the works are in the collection. See e.g., Gregory Langfield. ‘Inclusive art history and canon formation – Contradictio in Terminis?’ In Helen Westgeest & Kitty Zijlmans (eds.). Mix & Stir. New Outlooks on Contemporary Art from Global Perspectives. Plural. Amsterdam: Valiz, 2021, 107–113. See also T. J. Demos. Beyond the World’s End. Arts of Living at the Crossing. Durham & London: Duke University Press, 2020, 1–21.

^[3] Filipa Ramos. Meeting the Bear Halfway – An Interface for Tuomas A. Laitinen’s The Earth is the Ear of the Bear. In Ars Fennica 2023 catalogue, 18–19; note 2.

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Featured image: Niina Tervo, 5, from the series ‘Undulate’, 2018, polyurethane, 24cm x 155cm x 20cm
Finnish National Gallery / Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma
Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Pirje Mykkänen

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Two Research Interns Selected by the Finnish National Gallery for 2024

March 15, 2024March 8, 2024 Admin

Two research interns have been selected for the The Finnish National Gallery’s international research internship programme for 2024. The decisions were made by the FNG Research editorial board, based on the applications received by 15 December 2023. The following points were underlined:

Priority was given to students whose applications were based on a concrete and defined part of the FNG collections and especially to previously unstudied and/or topical materials.
The preparation of the working plan and the research questions related to the chosen collections material or other topical questions linked with the museum’s collections.

The FNG Research internship programme has two aims. The Finnish National Gallery wishes to enhance the study of its collections, including artworks, archives, and objects. At the same time it wishes to support students who choose to study subjects in a museum context, based on physical collections and objects, archive material and data.

The research interns at the Finnish National Gallery for 2024 are:

Silva Simula, University of Helsinki

17th-century grotesque elements in the works of Stefano Della Bella and Salvator Rosa, and associated social criticism and political satire in their works.

Meri Moen, University of Turku

The encounter between Akseli Gallen-Kallela and Edvard Munch and what archival material can reveal about the artists’ relationship and interaction. As objects of study, exhibitions held in Germany, Austria and the Czech Republic in 1895–1910.

Silva Simula has already started her internship and Meri Moen’s internship will take place during the autumn of 2024. The interns will be supported by their in-house tutors while studying their chosen material. The duration of the internship is three months.

For more information about the FNG’s research internship programme: https://www.kansallisgalleria.fi/en/tutkijaharjoittelu.

Hiroshige, Gio Temple in Snow, Geishas Greeting each other in Snowfall before the Temple Gate, undated, woodblock print, 23.8cm x 36.9cm (paper) Finnish National Gallery / Sinebrychoff Art Museum Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Jenni Nurminen

Editorial: Underpinning Exhibitions with International Research

December 1, 2023December 5, 2023 Kirsi Eskelinen

Kirsi Eskelinen, PhD, Museum Director, Finnish National Gallery / Sinebrychoff Art Museum

30 November, 2023

This issue of FNG Research concentrates on the research behind the two recently opened exhibitions, ‘Peder Balke – The Spell of the Arctic’, at the Sinebrychoff Art Museum and ‘Colour & Light – The Legacy of Impressionism’, at the Ateneum Art Museum. The first is a monographic exhibition of the Norwegian painter Peder Balke (1804–87), which is presented to a Finnish audience for the first time. An important exhibition had taken place at the National Gallery in London in 2014, but the Norwegian painter of the Romantic era still remains less well-known internationally. Balke was fascinated by Arctic landscapes. Following his trip to the North Cape in the 1830s, he repeatedly depicted his visions of the north for the rest of his life. Balke was open-minded and experimental in his painting technique. His late output becomes almost abstract. Gill Crabbe interviews the co-curator of the exhibition Dr philos. Knut Ljøgodt, who is Director of the Nordic Institute of Art, about the concept and the aim of the show. The exhibition at the Sinebrychoff Art Museum is a collaboration with the Institute.

In October the Ateneum Art Museum opened the exhibition ‘Colour & Light – The Legacy of Impressionism’. In her article ‘Echoes of Impressionism in Finland’, Dr Marja Sakari, the museum’s Director, writes about one of the starting points for the ’Colour & Light’ exhibition: why the effects of Impressionism were not seen in Finnish art until the first two decades of the 20th century. Her article concentrates on the French and Belgian art exhibition that was organised at the Ateneum in 1904. The senior advisor to the exhibition is Professor Anthea Callen, who is interviewed in this issue by Gill Crabbe. Prof Callen discusses her role in contributing to the project, including her research into the Impressionist and Neoimpressionist works that Finnish artists were exposed to, and brings her particular expertise in the material culture of western European artists of the period.

The Ateneum Art Museum is actively promoting research work on its collections in conjunction with its upcoming exhibitions. At the moment there are several joint research projects being undertaken with international partners at the Finnish National Gallery. In the spring of this year the Ateneum organised a seminar as a part of an international research project called Gothic Modern, which aims to share and exchange ideas for a scientific publication in connection with the exhibition taking place on this theme in the autumn of 2024. Gill Crabbe met Dr Ralph Gleis, one of the participants of the seminar in Helsinki. Dr Gleis has been Director of the Alte Nationalgalerie in Berlin for several years, and was recently appointed Director of the Albertina in Vienna, a post he is taking up in 2025. The interview with Dr Gleis gives a good grounding in the four-year research project and its goals.

Another international research project, which is underway at the Finnish National Gallery concerns ‘Pioneering Women Artists’. Its first conference ‘Crossing Borders: Transnational Networks of Pioneering Women Artists’ was held in September at the Ateneum Art Museum. The project will culminate in a scholarly publication and an exhibition in Helsinki at the Ateneum, which will also travel to the Düsseldorf Kunstpalast, in 2025.

Meanwhile, the Sinebrychoff Art Museum is preparing a major exhibition in Helsinki on the great Venetian Renaissance Master Jacopo Bassano. Scheduled for September 2024, this monographic show presents Bassano’s work for the first time in Europe outside Italy. The exhibition includes several less well-known paintings and rare drawings executed in coloured chalks. The curators of the exhibition are Dr Kirsi Eskelinen and Dr Claudia Caramanna, both of whom are Bassano scholars.

Finally, I would like to draw your attention to our annual call for research interns for 2024. Applications will be taken until 31 December 2023, and the two interns selected will be announced on 15 January 2024. Details of how to apply are in this issue.

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Featured image: Hiroshige, Gio Temple in Snow, Geishas Greeting each other in Snowfall before the Temple Gate, undated, woodblock print, 23.8cm x 36.9cm (paper)
Finnish National Gallery / Sinebrychoff Art Museum
Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Jenni Nurminen

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Alfred William Finch, An August Night, 1898, oil on canvas, 35cm x 45.5cm Gift from Arvid Sourander, Finnish National Gallery / Ateneum Art Museum Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Hannu Aaltonen

Lighting up Colour

December 1, 2023December 1, 2023 Gill Crabbe

Gill Crabbe, FNG Research

For the exhibition ‘Colour & Light – The Legacy of Impressionism’, now showing at the Ateneum Art Museum, the curators invited renowned authority on Impressionism Professor Anthea Callen to be senior advisor on the project. Gill Crabbe asks her about what she brought to the role

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It is a bold museum that chooses to stage an exhibition that places celebrated works from history’s most popular art movement alongside those by artists who, albeit stars in their home country, might be considered obscure or even unknown internationally. But in mounting the exhibition ‘Colour & Light – The Legacy of Impressionism’ the Finnish National Gallery’s Ateneum Art Museum has created an opportunity for an important conversation between the Western European proponents of Impressionism and Neoimpressionism and the Finnish artists of the early 20th century. Significantly, it is a conversation that revolves around the effects of transnationalism, as well as the hybrid fusions of style and technique that can result from international influences.

Indeed ‘Colour & Light’ mixes a dazzling palette of artworks across every room in its show. Replacing a tired chronological approach with rooms themed according to subject matter – the garden, wintertime, rural life, the sea, the nude, urban life – one is exposed more directly to the impact of new techniques and shifts in material culture across time and space. Thus one finds Monet’s wintery scene Floating Ice on the Seine (1880) alongside Finnish painter Pekka Halonen’s brilliant sunlit snowscapes (Rock Covered in Ice and Snow, 1911); the plein-air rural scenes of Henri-Edmond Cross’s Pine (1907), effulgent in high summer, together with Magnus Enckell’s pine trees painted on his summer sojourn on an island in the Gulf of Finland in From Suursaari (1910) and Ellen Thesleff’s Landscape from Tuscany (1908), palette-knifed in rich hues of violet and viridian green. And further on, we see Paul Signac’s eye-popping Neoimpressionist coastal idyll Antibes (undated), alongside Verner Thomé’s blinding contrejour painting Bathing Boys (1910).

The exhibition and accompanying scholarly publication are the result of an ambitious research project initiated by the Ateneum and aided by Professor Emeritus Anthea Callen, a world expert on Impressionism and the material culture of the period, who was invited to join the project as senior advisor. Prof Callen had been approached by Ateneum Chief Curator Anna-Maria von Bonsdorff through their mutual connection to the Association for Art History, where her presentations on vitalism and plein-air painting had attracted the Finnish curator’s attention. Callen is author of nine books, several of which reflect her expertise in Impressionism and also in material culture – she has a PhD in 19th-century artists’ materials and techniques in 19th-century France, from London’s Courtauld Institute. This, in turn has afforded her a key role in several episodes of the popular British TV series Fake or Fortune. Significantly, she is also a trained artist, which brings additional interdisciplinary knowledge and understanding. ‘Training as an artist does bring a different vision,’ she says. ‘You’re trying to tune into the mind of the artist. As a practitioner you recognise the ideas and how they are executed are inseparable.’

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Featured image: Alfred William Finch, An August Night, 1898,
oil on canvas, 35cm x 45.5cm
Gift from Arvid Sourander, Finnish National Gallery / Ateneum Art Museum
Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Hannu Aaltonen

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Catalogue de l’Exposition d’Artistes Français et Belges, Helsingfors 1904. The catalogue for the exhibition of Franco-Belgian art organised at the Ateneum in 1904. The artworks and the prices are listed in the catalogue, e.g. Monet (nos. 40 and 41), Pissarro and Puvis de Chavannes. Finnish National Gallery Library Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Ainur Nasretdin

Echoes of Impressionism in Finland

December 1, 2023November 30, 2023 Marja Sakari

Marja Sakari, PhD, Director, Finnish National Gallery / Ateneum Art Museum

Also published in Sointu Fritze and Lene Wahlsten (eds.), Colour & Light – The Legacy of Impressionism. Ateneum Publications Vol. 169. Helsinki: Finnish National Gallery / Ateneum Art Museum, 2023, 51–65. Transl. Wif Stenger

Worst of all was a corner that contained landscape paintings, each smudgier than the last, because they all looked as if the artist had squeezed a lot of colour into the palette and then slapped it onto the canvas, repeating the operation until the painting was finished. It had a sickening effect on me, not figuratively but in a physical sense.^[1]

Letter from Helena Westermarck to her aunt Alexandra Blomqvist, 30 April 1880

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In the late 19th century, nearly all professional Finnish artists headed to Paris. There, in the world’s art capital, they confronted everything new that was developing in the visual arts – including Impressionism. However, in the 1800s, none of the Finnish artists joined this movement that radically changed the art world, nor did many other Nordic artists. One of the central starting points of the ‘Colour & Light’ exhibition at the Ateneum Art Museum is the question of why the effects of Impressionism were not seen in Finnish art until the first two decades of the 20th century.

Finnish artists of the day, such as the influential Albert Edelfelt, did however recognise the impact of Impressionism. In a series of articles accompanying a major exhibition of French and Belgian art that opened at the Ateneum in early 1904, Edelfelt wrote that Impressionism had affected almost all painters in some way, although, in his view, the movement itself was already history: ‘Other movements have come and gone – such as so-called Symbolism, but what is certain is that the Impressionist painters have taken art forward by a considerable step and that all of us who use a brush have learnt a lot from them.’^[2] This exhibition of Franco-Belgian art, which took place 119 years ago, is one of the starting points for the ‘Colour & Light’ exhibition and the subject of my article. The 1904 exhibition was part of the process that led to the brightening of the palette of almost all Finnish artists in the 1910s.^[3]

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^[1] Helena Westermarck’s letter to Alexandra (Sanny) Blomqvist, 30 April 1880. Blomqvist collection. National Library of Finland, Helsinki. The original letter has been lost.

^[2] Albert Edelfelt. ‘Den fransk-belgiska utställningen i Ateneum’, Helsingfors-Posten, 30 January1904.

^[3] Earlier, a 1901 exhibition of French art at the Ateneum focused on naturalism and more traditional art. Although it featured the likes of Monet, Pissarro, Renoir and Sisley, they were barely mentioned by the critics. The main attention was on artists who represented more traditional painting, e.g. Pascal Dagnan-Bouveret, Jean-Léon Gérôme, Carolus-Durand, who are lesser-known today. See J.J. Tikkanen. ‘Franska konstutställningen i Ateneum’, Hufvudstadsbladet, 6 October 1901; ‘Kirjallisuutta ja taidetta: Ranskalaisten taiteilijain näyttely’, Uusi Suometar, 21 September 1901; ‘Kirjallisuutta ja taidetta: Ranskalainen taidenäyttely Helsinkiin’, Mikkelin Sanomat, 25 July 1901.

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Featured image: Catalogue de l’Exposition d’Artistes Français et Belges, Helsingfors 1904. The catalogue for the exhibition of Franco-Belgian art organised at the Ateneum in 1904. The artworks and the prices are listed in the catalogue, e.g. Monet (nos. 40 and 41), Pissarro and Puvis de Chavannes.
Finnish National Gallery Library
Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Ainur Nasretdin

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Featured image: Peder Balke, North Cape, 1848, oil on canvas, 102cm x 140cm The Gundersen Collection, Oslo Photo: Morten Heden Aamot / The Gundersen Collection

Peder Balke’s Visions of the Far North

December 1, 2023November 30, 2023 Gill Crabbe

Gill Crabbe, FNG Research

As the Sinebrychoff Art Museum, Helsinki, presents the Norwegian painter of the Arctic Peder Balke for the first time to Finnish audiences, Gill Crabbe meets the show’s co-curator Knut Ljøgodt to discuss his collaboration with those involved in the exhibition

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When we think of the Arctic explorers of old we might imagine elaborate maps of the Ultima Thule adorned with images of writhing sea monsters, puff-cheeked deities of gale-force winds, or square-rigged ships foundering on rocks. The extreme climate in the Far North lends itself to sublime depictions of turbulent storms, dramatic mountainscapes and awe-inspiring glaciers carving out deep valleys. Yet while much of the region remains just as inhospitable as it was centuries ago, climate change is causing a different kind of overwhelm. As global warming accelerates and we are increasingly exposed to images such as monumental chunks of glacier plunging into the ocean, the Sinebrychoff Art Museum’s monographic exhibition of Peder Balke (1804–87), the first Norwegian artist to travel to the Arctic to paint its landscapes, is both timely and urgent.

‘Peder Balke – The Spell of the Arctic’ is the first exhibition of the Norwegian artist to be mounted in Finland. Balke himself was clearly spellbound, as his journey along the west coast of Norway to the North Cape in 1832 was to be a lifelong source of inspiration for his paintings. Scenes of the North Cape and the Vardsø fortress painted from 1845 up until the 1870s are on display in the show, as are soaring mountains (The Seven Sisters Mountain Range, c. 1845–50), topological wonders (Jostedalsbreen Glacier, 1840s) seascapes at night (Moonlight on the Coast of Steigen, 1842) and magical displays of the Aurora Borealis (Northern Lights over Coastal Landscape, 1870s). The perfect subject matter for a painter of the sublime, even for a Romantic visionary.

Like the landscape, Balke’s story had its own dramatic twists and turns. From humble beginnings, this son of landless peasants forged a career that took him to the Royal Drawing School in Christiana (now Oslo), to the Far North of Norway to paint, to Dresden to learn from his forebears in landscape painting, such as Johan Christian Dahl (1788–1857), and later to Paris to receive commissions from the king of the French Louis-Philippe. Around 1850, when he was back home in Christiana, Balke’s career plummeted and he retreated from public exhibitions, turning instead to social reform, politics and building community. But he continued to paint for friends and acquaintances, and his newfound freedom from the public gaze and the art market saw his work shift from grand works of sublime character (North Cape, 1848), to small-scale iconic works that became increasingly abstracted expressions of a Romantic visionary (North Cape, 1860s–70s), still articulated through the subjects closest to his heart – his memories of his expedition to the Far North.

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Featured image: Peder Balke, North Cape, 1848, oil on canvas, 102cm x 140cm
The Gundersen Collection, Oslo
Photo: Morten Heden Aamot / The Gundersen Collection
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