Anne-Maria Pennonen, PhD, curator and Hanne Selkokari, PhD, curator, Finnish National Gallery / Ateneum Art Museum

Also published in French as ‘Albert Edelfelt, fils prodige de l’art finlandais’, in Anne-Charlotte Cathelineau (ed.), Albert Edelfelt. Lumières de Finlande. Paris: Paris Musées, 2022, p. 31–40, and in English in the Albert Edelfelt exhibition catalogue by the Finnish National Gallery / Ateneum Art Museum, in Spring 2023. Transl. Wif Stenger

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A Finnish or French artist?

When Albert Edelfelt (1854–1905) went to Paris to study in 1874 as a young artist, there were high hopes for him – and indeed he lived up to those expectations. Early overviews of Finnish art have highlighted Edelfelt’s victories and success, but also the contradictions in his art. Edelfelt’s teacher, Adolf von Becker (1831–1909), firmly believed that Paris was the only place to learn to paint. Von Becker wanted to finally free Finnish art from a German ‘pleasantness and leash of contemplation’ and instead tie it to the great movements and trends of art.^[1] Edelfelt followed his teacher’s advice after spending a year studying history painting in Antwerp (1873–74). He became a role model, helping to spread the teachings of the ‘French school’ among Finnish artists, according to the art historian Eliel Aspelin (1847–1917), who knew Edelfelt when he was young.^[2]

According to Johannes Öhqvist (1861–1949), a versatile German-speaking cultural journalist, the French school had taught Edelfelt a cool, scientific matter-of-factness that sharpened his mind, enabling him to see reality more clearly.^[3] At the same time, however, Edelfelt was seen as a paradoxical figure in his homeland, where there were doubts as to whether he was a portrayer of folk life or a salon painter. For Edelfelt, Paris was the centre of the art world. He was ready to help and support his compatriots who made their way to the city, serving as a skilful support for them and as a strong role model on the path towards naturalism and realism.^[4]

However, the leaders of the Finnish art establishment found the French influence in the arts a constant source of irritation. On the one hand, they understood the value of Paris and the professionalism and ideas that it generated, but there was also a desire to create through them something genuine, a purely national art in Finland.^[5]

In 1902, the younger generation of critics praised Edelfelt as versatile and acknowledged him as the best-known Finnish artist on the continent.^[6] He was an artist ‘who has no national prejudices and whose perception and technique are cosmopolitan. […] a thoroughly sophisticated artist whose cultivation is both innate and acquired.’^[7] According to the architect and critic Jac. Ahrenberg (1847–1914), though, Edelfelt represented Finnish art’s ‘Swedish element’ in line with ‘his race, blood, family background, upbringing and spirit’.^[8]

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^[1] Johannes Öhqvist. Suomen taiteen historia. Helsinki: Kustannusosakeyhtiö Kirja, 1912, 330.

^[2] Eliel Aspelin. Suomalaisen taiteen historia pääpiirteissään. Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, 1891, 81. In 1915, Aspelin published his Edelfelt memoirs I–V and his correspondence in his book Muoto- ja muistikuvia II (Helsinki: Otava).

^[3] Öhqvist, Suomen taiteen historia, 348−49.

^[4] Riitta Konttinen. Sammon takojat. Nuoren Suomen taiteilijat ja suomalaisuuden kuvat. Helsinki: Otava, 2001, 62−63, 65−67.

^[5] Aspelin, Suomalaisen taiteen historia pääpiirteissään, 81−84; Öhqvist, Suomen taiteen historia.

^[6] Gustaf Strengell. ‘Albert Edelfelt’, Euterpe 1902:1, (2−6) 2.

^[7] Gustaf Strengell. ‘Albert Edelfelt: taiteilijariemujuhla’, Valvoja 1904:7−8, 417−41.

^[8] Jac. Ahrenberg. ‘Edelfelts utställning’, Finsk Tidskrift 1902:1, 310−12; Öhqvist, Suomen taiteen historia, 330−35; Konttinen, Sammon takojat, 67.

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Featured image: Albert Edelfelt, The Luxembourg Gardens, Paris, 1887, oil on canvas, 141.5cm x 186.5cm. Antell Collections, Finnish National Gallery / Ateneum Art Museum
Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Hannu Pakarinen

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Anne-Charlotte Cathelineau, Chief Curator, Petit Palais Museum, Paris

Also published in French as ‘Albert Edelfelt et la critique d’art française’, in Anne-Charlotte Cathelineau (ed.), Albert Edelfelt. Lumières de Finlande. Paris: Paris Musées, 2022, p. 147–57, and in English in the Albert Edelfelt exhibition catalogue by the Finnish National Gallery / Ateneum Art Museum, in Spring 2023. Transl. Susan Pickford

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In 1908 the Finnish exhibition at the Salon d’Automne saw French critics hail the pioneering role of Albert Edelfelt (1854–1905), who had died three years previously, in establishing and legitimising a Finnish school of art on the international stage:^[1] ‘Today’s Finnish painters owe Edelfelt much – all – of their artistic emancipation. Edelfelt was a bridge between Finland and Europe at the right time, particularly between Finland and Paris. […] He allowed Finland, as his student Magnus Enckell put it, to “take its place in the grand art movement now sweeping the world”.’^[2] This belated recognition of Edelfelt’s contribution was the result of an exemplary career that began in Paris in 1874, and was rooted in a carefully planned exhibition strategy.

‘Today’s light comes to us from the north’^[3]

When Edelfelt arrived in Paris in the mid-1870s, he joined an ever growing number of foreign artists trying their luck in Europe’s biggest and brightest cultural hub.^[4] It would take another decade, however, before art critics would begin to take a real interest in painters from the far north; when they did, it was as a result of a newfound taste for naturalist aesthetics and an increasing openness to foreign artists at the Fine Arts division of the French administration.^[5] Reading the Press notices from the 1880s and 1890s, it is clear that critics were becoming more aware of a specific Nordic school and its main representatives.^[6] Praise for foreign artists also played into an attempt to revitalise the French school, which many critics saw as in need of renewal.^[7] A growing familiarity with foreign art is apparent from its increasing prominence at the Salon, both in terms of the sheer number of exhibitors and the type of spaces attributed to them.^[8]

Late-19th-century critics defined Scandinavia as Norway, Sweden, Denmark – and Finland.^[9] Art in the latter was still in a fledgling state, as K. Paijani acknowledged in an opinion piece in 1877, while still pointing out the young school’s dynamism: ‘Only for thirty years or so have we been producing home-grown art […]. Genre painters and landscapists are endlessly inspired by our nature and our national life.’^[10] Edelfelt’s critical reception as one of a number of Scandinavian artists covered in reviews of salons and exhibitions follows this broad trend.

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^[1] On Edelfelt’s historiography, see Anne-Maria Pennonen and Hanne Selkokari. ‘Albert Edelfelt, fils prodige de l’art finlandais’, in Anne-Charlotte Cathelineau (ed.), Albert Edelfelt. Lumières de Finlande. Paris: Paris Musées, 2022, 31–40.

^[2] Étienne Avenard. ‘L’exposition finlandaise au Salon d’automne’, Art et décoration, tome 24, Paris, 1908, 137–46.

^[3] Paul Leroi. ’Salon de 1886’, L’Art, tome 40, Paris, 1886, 232–36, 242–53 and L’Art, tome 41, Paris, 1886, 30–40; Paul Leroi. ’Salon de 1887’, L’Art, tome 43, Paris, 1887, 25–42.

^[4] Thérèse Burollet. ‘Cette France … où tout est possible’, in Lumières du Nord. La peinture scandinave. 1885–1915, exhibition catalogue. Paris: Association française d’action artistique, 1987; Riitta Ojanperä. ‘L’art finlandais et la France, 1870–1914’, in Échappées nordiques. Les maîtres scandinaves et finlandais en France. 1870–1914, exhibition catalogue. Lille: Palais des Beaux-Arts / Paris: Somogy éditions d’art, 2008; Vibeke Röstorp. Le Mythe du retour. Les artistes scandinaves en France de 1889 à 1908. Stockholm: University of Stockholm, 2013.

^[5] Emily Braun. ‘Scandinavian painting and the French critics’, in Northern Light. Realism and Symbolism in Scandinavian Painting 1880–1910, exhibition catalogue. New York: The Brooklyn Museum, 1982; Laurent Cazes. L’Europe des arts. La participation des peintres étrangers au Salon: Paris, 1852–1900, doctoral thesis. Paris: Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, 2015; Tanguy Le Roux. ‘L’apparition de l’école du Nord. L’émergence des artistes scandinaves dans la critique d’art française dans les années 1880’, Deshima, n^o 12, Strasbourg, 2018, 155–70.

^[6] Philippe Burty. ‘Le Salon de 1880. Les étrangers’, L’Art, tome 21, Paris, 1880, 295–307; André Michel. ‘Le Salon de 1884’, L’Art, tome 36, Paris, 1884, 201–13; Léonce Bénédite. ‘Salon de 1891. La peinture au salon des Champs-Élysées’, L’Art, tome 50, Paris, 1891, 234–39; Georges Lafenestre. ‘Les salons de 1892. I. La peinture aux Champs-Élysées’, Revue des deux mondes, tome 111, Paris, 1892, 607–37; Georges Lafenestre. ‘Les salons de 1893. II. La peinture au Champ-de-Mars et la sculpture dans les deux salons’, Revue des deux mondes, tome 118, Paris, 1893, 164–96; Georges Lafenestre. ‘La peinture aux salons de 1896’, Revue des deux mondes, tome 135, Paris, 1896, 897–933.

^[7] Michel, ‘Le Salon de 1884’; Paul Leroi. ‘Salon de 1886’, L’Art, tome 40, Paris, 1886, 232–36, 242–53; Georges Lafenestre. ‘La peinture étrangère à l’Exposition universelle’, Revue des deux mondes, tome 96, Paris, 1889, 139–72.

^[8] Paul Leroi. ‘Salon de 1888. La peinture’, L’Art, tome 44, Paris, 1888, 173–208.; Bénédite, ‘Salon de 1891. La peinture au salon des Champs-Élysées’.

^[9] Finland had been part of the kingdom of Sweden since the 13th century and became a Grand Duchy under Russian domination in 1809.

^[10] K. Paijani. ‘Les beaux-arts en Finlande’, L’Art, tome 8, Paris, 1877, 230–33.

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Featured image: Albert Edelfelt, Portrait of Louis Pasteur, study, 1885, oil on canvas, 61cm x 50.5cm. Finnish National Gallery / Ateneum Art Museum
Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Hannu Aaltonen

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Anne-Maria Pennonen, PhD, curator, Finnish National Gallery / Ateneum Art Museum

This presentation was given at the Albert Edelfelt Seminar organised at the Petit Palais, Paris, on 20 May 2022, in connection with the Albert Edelfelt exhibition

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Introduction

Among the Finnish artists of the late 19th century, Albert Edelfelt (1854–1905) was a true cosmopolitan. He was the first of the Finnish artists to settle down in Paris for a longer time – he lived in Paris from 1874 to 1891, and continued to keep his studio there until his death in 1905. Edelfelt travelled a lot during these years, not only to Finland for the summer, but also to southern France, Italy, Spain, Russia, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Germany and England. Being well-connected with people from different social backgrounds, he understood the importance of networks. His wide social network consisted not only of artists, but also actors, composers, opera singers, writers, industrialists and businessmen, politicians, and scientists, as well as members of imperial and royal families.

To operate in such an international network required language skills, and we can say that Edelfelt was a true polyglot. At school in Finland, he had learnt Greek and Latin as part of his training; Swedish was his mother tongue, he knew some Finnish, but French became his second language. In addition, he spoke German, English, Spanish, as well as Italian and some Russian.

Although Edelfelt was sometimes quite a controversial character and made critical comments about the different people he had met, he was, nonetheless, socially talented, outgoing and capable of building a wide network. This is quite evident if we compare him with his good friend and colleague Gunnar Berndtson, who came from a similar background, but was shy and more introverted.

This presentation is based mainly on Edelfelt’s letters to his mother Alexandra in the years 1873–1901. In these letters, Edelfelt described his life and travels abroad. Edelfelt was a diligent writer, and sometimes his letters are quite critical, but they can also be hilarious. In addition to the great number of letters, he contributed articles about art and reviews on exhibitions to newspapers, and made illustrations, too.

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Featured image: Albert Edelfelt, Michael and Xenia, Children of Tsar Alexander III, 1881–82, watercolour on paper, 29.4cm x 22.8cm. Finnish National Gallery / Ateneum Art Museum
Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Hannu Pakarinen

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Hanne Selkokari, PhD, curator, Finnish National Gallery / Ateneum Art Museum

This presentation was given to the Albert Edelfelt Seminar organised at the Petit Palais, Paris, on 20 May 2022, in connection with the Albert Edelfelt Exhibition 

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The key role played by Albert Edelfelt (1854–1905) in Finnish art and its art field is reflected in the large collection of his works at the Ateneum Art Museum / Finnish National Gallery. It includes more than 6,900 items and is the largest collection of his art in a Finnish museum. Most of these items are naturally individual pages from the artist’s sketchbooks.[1] Edelfelt also had an important role in Finland as an intermediary within the art field.

In this presentation, I will discuss both his own artworks in our collection and how they came to the museum, as well as how he used his connections in France to buy artworks and organise art exhibitions at the Ateneum. I will also show how, after Edelfelt’s death, his family took on the role of preservers and protectors of his artistic work and his reputation, and how when Edelfelt’s closest family died out, the most private works of his artistic career came to the Ateneum.

It is also interesting to consider how the collection of Edelfelt’s art was formed, as he had an exceptional influence over which of his artworks were acquired for the collection of the Finnish Art Society, now the Finnish National Gallery / Ateneum Art Museum. The Art Society started to collect artworks and owned the collection from 1846 to 1939.

Already as a boy and through his family connections, Edelfelt knew all of the leading figures of the Art Society and was in active contact with them while he was studying in Antwerp and later in Paris. The first acquisition was made as early as 1876, when Edelfelt was still a young art student – a set of eight academic studies from 1874–75 (A I 215 A–H). Two years later Edelfelt’s first major history painting, Duke Karl Insulting the Corpse of Klaus Fleming (1878, A I 212), was purchased for the collection. After that many of the works that he showed in Paris were bought by the Finnish Art Society. During his lifetime, a total of 29 of his works were acquired for this purpose. Edelfelt was often personally involved in deciding on these acquisitions as he had great influence both in the Art Society and the Artists’ Association of Finland, as well as in the Antell Delegation. Few, if any, artists have ever had this kind of power concerning national collections in Finland.

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[1] See Albert Edelfelt’s artworks and sketchbooks at the Finnish National Gallery Collection: https://www.kansallisgalleria.fi/en/search?authors[]=Albert%20Edelfelt&category=artwork (accessed 15 November 2022).

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Featured image: Jules-Alexis Muenier, Villefranche Harbour, Nice, 1894, oil on canvas, 54cm x 65.5cm. Antell Collections, Finnish National Gallery / Ateneum Art Museum
Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Asko Penna

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 Gill Crabbe, FNG Research

The Finnish National Gallery’s senior conservator for contemporary art, Siukku Nurminen, has turned her hand to the most unexpected tasks during her 35-year career, as well as developing the field of Finnish conservation, as she explains in an interview with Gill Crabbe

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When I was young, perhaps seven or eight years old, I wrote a story at school, describing how when I grow up I shall study at the Ateneum[1]. On other hand I was also dreaming of becoming a schlager singer, so that I could buy Porsches for my elder brothers.
– Siukku Nurminen

From conserving the 16th-century panel paintings of Lucas Cranach, to repairing a sculpture by contemporary artist Anni Rapinoja of a handbag made from bog whortleberry containing moose droppings, the senior conservator at the Finnish National Gallery Siukku Nurminen has seen some big changes in the kinds of works entering the conservation room over the four decades she has been working in the field. Having finished school in 1977, there was no dedicated training course in conservation available in Finland at the time. But once she gained her Diploma in the Conservation of Works of Art in 1987 from Vantaa Institute for Arts and Crafts, Nurminen joined the Fine Arts Academy of Finland as a conservator at the Sinebrychoff Art Museum. Five years later, she moved to the Ateneum Art Museum / Finnish National Gallery. As her career developed, she gained a BA from EVTEK Institute of Art and Design in 2004 and a Masters in Culture and Art in 2009. She has now worked at the FNG’s Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma since 1997.

When I contact Nurminen to arrange an interview and mention some of the background research I have done, she replies: ‘I see you have been doing some detective work.’ As they say, it takes one to know one, and perhaps of all the skills required in her profession it is the forensic attention to detail in piecing together how materials endure, as well as a persistent curiosity, that are the most essential requirements in her field. ‘Being a conservator is indeed like being a detective,’ she says. ‘We must solve what the criminals (artists) have done. It is like the criminals (artists) are always a little further ahead of us,’ she smiles.

One approach that Nurminen certainly brings to her work is a sense of adventure. Following the principle that there is no better way to understand how an artist uses their more unusual materials than to engage in the actual making of the piece, Nurminen lights up as she describes burning the incense in the process of installing an artwork that was shown at the recent ARS22 exhibition at Kiasma. The installation piece, Collateral (2007), by Sheela Gowda, consisted of dozens of burnt incense cakes, their residual heaps of ash in various shapes presented resting on low wooden tables covered in steel mesh.

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[1] There were two schools at the Ateneum then: Finnish Art Academy School, now the Academy of Fine Arts, Uniarts Helsinki and the University of Art and Design, now Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture.

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Featured image: Senior conservator for contemporary art at the Finnish National Gallery Siukku Nurminen (front) lights incense cakes inside an enclosure during the installation of Collateral, by Sheela Gowda, for the exhibition ‘ARS22: Living Encounters’
Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Petri Virtanen

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To see an excerpt from the installation process of Sheela Gowda’s Collateral at the ARS22 exhibition at Kiasma, click ‘play’ below. Video: Finnish National Gallery / Petri Virtanen

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Emmi Halmesvirta, MA student, University of Helsinki

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Introduction

Inspired by the exhibition ‘The Modern Woman’ at the Ateneum Art Museum earlier this year, I consider the work of one of the artists in the show, Elga Sesemann (1922–2007), who is now becoming an increasingly interesting figure after largely being consigned to obscurity in Finnish art history.^[1]

I will attempt to introduce a new analytical perspective into the discussion regarding Sesemann’s career in the 1940s and my text is to some extent experimental. The decade of Sesemann’s powerfully expressionist painting has already attracted curiosity among scholars, but nevertheless research on this artist remains limited. In 1959 Sesemann wrote an autobiographical novel, Kuvajaisia – erään omakuvan taustamaisemaa (Reflections – the background view of a certain self-portrait^[2]). The novel has been applied to the study of her self-portraiture.^[3] The framework in this article is taken from sociology, but my hope is that by reconciling sociological writing with art history, it will be possible to bring something new to the discussion of the expressionism for which Sesemann’s paintings from the period are known.

Elga Sesemann was born in 1922 and raised in Tienhaara, in the vicinity of Vyborg, in Karelia. She was from a family of Baltic-Russian-Finnish heritage, who had migrated from Lübeck to Vyborg during the 1660s. Her father Edgar Sesemann, an engineer, was the director of a local oil company.^[4] The family home of the young Elga was both bourgeois and artistic, with music being especially important in the family.^[5] The languages spoken at home were Russian and German.

At the outbreak of the Second World War, the 17-year-old Elga had to leave her hometown behind.^[6] Earlier in 1939, to the great sorrow of Elga, her father had passed away. They evacuated briefly to Nakkila, in Western Finland, from where the family of now three (Elga, her sister Nelly and mother Olga) made their way to Helsinki. Settling in the Kaivopuisto neighbourhood, Elga then began her art studies.^[7] These years were formative in giving birth to Sesemann’s vision of how to paint original, powerful, and even radical work.^[8] Elga met her future husband Seppo Näätänen (1920–64) at the art school, and in 1945 they married.

In addition to producing self-portraits of psychological depth and mystery, during the 1940s Sesemann also made portraits (many of them commissions), landscapes, interiors, still-lifes and works that the art historian Riitta Konttinen describes as ‘pictures of the mind’.^[9] This short article looks at a couple of her landscapes and interiors, which so far have received less attention than the self-portraits from the same period.

The first section introduces the theoretical background. The second scrutinises Sesemann’s landscapes depicting the urban environment, and the final section draws the themes and concepts of the article to a conclusion.

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^[1] E.g. Master’s thesis by Rosa Huupponen in 2021. ‘Kaikki tämä on ollut eikä tule koskaan enää. Sitä on vaikea ajatella.’ Omaelämäkerrallisuus, eksistentialismi ja moniaikaisuus kuvataiteilija Elga Sesemannin tuotannossa. Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Jyväskylä. https://jyx.jyu.fi/handle/123456789/76326 (accessed 15 October 2022).

^[2] Free translation by the author of this article. To the best of the author’s knowledge, the novel has not been published in English.

^[3] Rosa Huupponen applies textual references from the autobiographical novel to the analysis of Elga Sesemann’s self-portraits. The author claims that the themes and subjects in Sesemann’s paintings resonate with the subject matters in the novel. Huupponen, ‘Kaikki tämä on ollut…’, 5.

^[4] Riitta Konttinen. Täältä tullaan! Naistaiteilijat modernin murroksessa. Helsinki: Siltala, 2017, 238.

^[5] Edgar Sesemann, Elga’s father, made instruments, which were so-called ‘Sesemann-violins’ and repaired cellos. Her mother, Olga Sesemann, played the piano. Konttinen, Naistaiteilijat modernin murroksessa, 240–41.

^[6] E.g. Konttinen, Naistaiteilijat modernin murroksessa, 238.

^[7] Her first studies were in the evening classes of the School of Applied Arts, where she was subsequently accepted as a student of the drawing school. In 1943 she began her studies in painting at the same school, continuing at the Free Art School until 1944. Konttinen, Naistaiteilijat modernin murroksessa, 242.

^[8] Konttinen, Naistaiteilijat modernin murroksessa, 242.

^[9] Konttinen, Naistaiteilijat modernin murroksessa, 243.

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Featured image: Elga Sesemann, Street View, 1947, pastel on paper, 48.3cm x 37.5cm. Finnish National Gallery / Ateneum Art Museum
Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Jenni Nurminen

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