Helene Schjerfbeck

Helene Schjerfbeck’s pensive, melancholic paintings offer an intimate insight into the life of an outsider. An artist of compassion and great intelligence, Schjerfbeck furthered Finnish painting more than any of her contemporaries, and perhaps it was her vantage point away from the main artistic centres that allowed her to forge such a distinct style and broad range of reference, from the Old Masters to the French Impressionists. Throughout the 1890s Schjerfbeck taught at the Finnish Art School; however, her health deteriorated and she resigned in 1902. With no financial support from her family, Schjerfbeck funded her travels through book illustrations and group exhibitions. The French Naturalists and Impressionists were to have a formative influence on her early work. Later in life, she developed a more pared-down, even abstract style, reworking many of her subjects of the 1880s in this new uncompromising way. Her skill as a portraitist lay in her ability to bring out the character of each sitter and the subtle intimacy that renders her work emotionally candid without straying into the sentimental. Schjerfbeck left Helsinki for the rural district of Hylvinkää in 1903, where she cared for her sick mother until her death in 1923. In 1944 she moved to the Saltsjöbaden spa hotel in Sweden during which time she produced many self-portraits and still lifes.