Look how realistic the winter art of Akseli Gallen-Kallela (1865-1931) is. Lauri Silvennoninen's recent photograph of the artist's home Tarvaspaa in the city of Espoo, captures a mood similar to the painting (1906 - at right). Gallen-Kallela's name is usually associated with fanciful depictions of scenes from the Kalevala legend of his native Finland.Winter in Finland is a serious business. Much of the country north of the main cities of Helsinki, Espoo, and Tampere, is in the sub-Artic climate zone. I once visited the International Cente
r for Sub-Arctic Studies in St. Johnsbury, Vermont. In summer, I might add. It was a shiver-inducing experience in a place where summer seemed synonymous with borrowed time.
The paradox of winter is on view here. The crystallization of water is magical, visually and in the way that humans can skate and ski and slide over it. Yet the season is inhospitable to humans, furless and warm-blooded as we are.
Gallen-Kallela moved for a time to Berlin during the mid-1890s to oversee a joint exhibition with Edvard Munch. While there, he received word that his daughter Marjatta had died of diphtheria. Like other artists, Gallen-Kallela achieved an international reputation at the Paris Exposition of 1900. He also spent the better part of three years in the United Stat
es in the 1920s to promote exhibitions of his work.These works from the second half of the artist's life balance affection and respect for this most difficult season, perhaps exemplified by the men and the wolves regarding each other for a quiet, yet charged moment, at sunset. That same tangerine shaft of color bands the evening sky at Rouvesi and is reflected in the mist above the water. Warm air meets lavender-blue water.
Image credits:
1. Lauri Silvennoninen - Tarvaspaa, Wikimedia Commons.
2. - 6. Akseli Gallen-Kallela, works from the collection of the Atheneum, Tampere, Finland.
2 comments:
This last image is gorgeous - much more to my taste than his over-stylised Kalevala illustrations.
I had never seen these images until I dug into the Tampere Ateneum website - not easy, but not so difficult as you might think, for an English speaker. 'Sunset at Rouvesi' captures that moment when mist over water reflects the colors in the sunset sky. Another sunset moment that I love - when the atmosphere is right - is when you can turn to the east and see the earth's shadow looming overhead in the night sky.
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