Published by Royal Academy of Arts. Text by Anna-Maria von Bonsdorff, Rebecca Bray, Désirée de Chair, Jeremy Lewison.
Though little known outside her native country, Helene Schjerfbeck (1862–1946) is one of Finland’s best-loved artists, and has influenced artists far beyond its borders. Her career, which stretched from the late 1870s to the end of World War II, spanned both impressionism and modernism.
Helene Schjerfbeck is published to accompany a major survey exhibition at London’s Royal Academy of the Arts, the artist’s first solo exhibition in the UK since she exhibited in London in 1890. The full range of her exceptional work is presented, with 70 paintings in all genres, including portraits and self-portraits, landscapes and still lifes. With essays about Schjerfbeck’s technique, her social and cultural context and her influence on later artists such as Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud and Frank Auerbach, this volume offers a thorough introduction to the artist’s work and legacy.
Helene Schjerfbeck (1862–1946) is one of the most important Finnish artists of the first half of the twentieth century. While her painterly oeuvre has attracted a great deal of attention in Scandinavia, she is largely unknown abroad. This comprehensive monograph introduces the life and work of the painter, with over 80 impressive works from all of her creative phases. The publication shows how, despite her physical isolation, the artist kept up with the art of her contemporaries through illustrations from art and fashion magazines. Here, both the famous self-portraits and the picture series The Convalescent, The Seamstress and The Death of Wilhelm von Schwerin play a crucial role, as do as numerous portraits of women and the less well-known male nudes and history paintings.
Helene Schjerfbeck