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.

Amelie Lundahl | Genre painter

Helga Amélie Lundahl (26 May 1850 - 20 August 1914) was a Finnish painter.

She was born in Oulu, the youngest of eleven children.

Her mother died when she was three months old and her father, Abraham, a Town Representative (public prosecutor) died when she was eight.

From 1860 to 1862, she attended the "Svenska Privatskolan" in Oulu.

Elga Sesemann | Expressionist painter

Elga Sesemann (March 28, 1922 - January 21, 2007) was a Finnish post-war neo-romantic painter.

She was an expressionist whose themes often included melancholy, depression, anxiety and loneliness.

Sesemann was born in Viipuri (Vyborg) on the Karelian Isthmus.

Sesemann's family is of German origin and grew up speaking German and Russian.

Ellen Thesleff | Expressionist painter

Ellen Thesleff (5 October 1869 - 12 January 1954) was an expressionist Finnish painter, regarded as one of the leading Finnish modernist painters.

Thesleff was born in Helsinki, the eldest daughter of five siblings and her father was an amateur painter.

She took private lessons and then, in 1887, studied for two years at the Finnish Art Society Drawing School (now known as the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts) with Gunnar Berndtson.

Akseli Gallen-Kallela | Art Nouveau / Symbolist painter

Akseli Gallen-Kallela (1865-1931) was a Finnish painter who is best known for his illustrations of the Kalevala, the Finnish national epic.

His work is considered a very important aspect of the Finnish national identity.

He changed his name from Gallén to Gallen-Kallela in 1907.

Early life

Gallen-Kallela was born Axel Waldemar Gallén in Pori, Finland, in a Swedish-speaking family.

His father Peter Gallén worked as police chief and lawyer.

Gallen-Kallela was raised in Tyrvää.

At the age of 11 he was sent to Helsinki to study at a grammar school, because his father opposed his ambition to become a painter.

After his father's death in 1879, Gallen-Kallela attended drawing classes at the Finnish Art Society (1881-1884) and studied privately under Adolf von Becker.

Fanny Churberg | Düsseldorf school of painting

Fanny Churberg (12 December 1845, in Vaasa - 10 May 1892, in Helsinki) was a Finnish landscape painter.

Her father, Matias Churberg, was a doctor from a family of farmers and her mother Maria was the daughter of the vicar in Liperi parish, Nils Johan Perander. Fanny was the third of seven children.

Four of her siblings died when they were young and so Fanny grew up with her two older brothers Torsten and Waldemar Churberg.

Fanny was proud of her Ostrobothnian family and heritage and was planning along with her brothers on changing the surname to Kuurila according to the family's old estate. They never got around to it though.

Dora Wahlroos | En plein air painter

Anna Dorothée (Dora) Wahlroos (19 December 1870, Pori – 21 March 1947, Kauniainen) was a Finnish painter who participated in the painting movement en plein air towards the end of the 19th century.

Biography

She was born in Pori to province land surveyor Johan Henrik Wahlroos and Dorothée Augusta Henrietta Fehn.

She studied at the Turku Drawing School in 1886–1888 and under Victor Westerholm in 1889–1890. She was one of the artists who joined Westerholm in the artists colony at Önningeby on the island of Åland.

She was accepted to the Finnish Art Society in 1890–1891, where her class was taught by Gunnar Berndtson. In the Fall of 1890 she got engaged to sculptor Emil Wikström.

The two went to study together at Paris in 1891–1892.

Maria Wiik (1853-1928)

Maria Catharina Wiik was a Finnish painter.

She worked principally with still life, genre, landscape paintings and portraits. Wiik was born in Helsinki.

She was the daughter of architect Erik Johan Wik (or Wiik) (1804-1876) and his wife Gustava Fredrika Meyer.

She was born and grew up in Brunnsparken and attended the Swedish language school Svenska fruntimmersskolan in Helsingfors. She then studied drawing with art professor Adolf von Becker.

Encouraged by her family, she studied art during 1874-1875 at the Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki.