Helena Schjerfbeck, 1862-1946, Finnish

from an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY in 2025/26 

 

Helena Schjerfbeck was born in Helsinki where her parents, of affluent Swedish origin, had moved the family after bankruptcy.  She began to draw and paint very young after a fall lamed her permanently.

 

Considered a childhood prodigy, Schjerfbeck lived up to her potential and, 80 years after her death, her work continues to be treasured in Finland whose sole representative it was at the Venice Biennale in 1956.

 

 

 

Portrait of a Man, 1880, oil on wood

Helena Schjerfbeck, 1862-1946, Finnish. Private Foundation loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY

 

 

She had a thorough-going artistic training.  

Starting at the age of 18, Schjerfbeck received many stipends and awards which allowed her to travel.  At 18, she was in Paris for training.

There she became familiar with the work not only of the French tradition but also with artists still alive: Pierre Puvis de Chavannes (1824-1898), Edouard Manet (1832-1883), Paul Cézanne (1839-1906), Berthe Morisot (1841-1895) and Jules Bastien-Lepage (1848-1884). 

She was not, it seems, interested in the Impressionists.

She visited training grounds popular with artists interested in nature painting: Brittany and St. Ives, Cornwall, England.

 

 

 

Girl with a Madonna, 1881, oil on canvas

Helena Schjerfbeck, 1862-1946, Finnish. Helsingsbors Museum, Helsinki loan to the  Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY

 

 

She visited the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, Vienna and Florence to study and copy the Old Masters and Baroque painting.

 

 

 

 

Youth, 1882, oil on canvas

Private foundation loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY

 

 

After her permanent return to Finland, she kept in touch with the European art scene through journals. Images of the works of Picasso were found among her papers.

 

 

Clothes Drying, oil on canvas

Helena Schjerfbeck, 1862-1946, Finnish. Finnish National Gallery, Ateneum Art Museum loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY

 

 

She painted in all the traditional categories: landscapes, genre, still life, portraits and self-portraits. 

 

 

 

 Fête Juive (Sukkot), 1883, oil on canvas

Helena Schjerfbeck, 1862-1946, Finnish. Private foundation loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY

Accepted for the Paris Salon of 1883 when she was 22.

 

 

 

 

Portrait of Helena Westermarck, 1884, oil on canvas

Helena Schjerfbeck, 1862-1946, Finnish. Private Foundation loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY

 

 

 

 

View of St. Ives, 1887, oil on wood

Helena Schjerfbeck, 1862-1946, Finnish. Private collection loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY

 

 

 

 

Woman with a Child, 1887, oil on canvas

Helena Schjerfbeck, 1862-1946, Finnish. Finnish National Gallery, Ateneum Art Museum, Helsinki loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY

 

 

 

 

The Convalescent, 1888, oil on canvas

Helena Schjerfbeck, 1862-1946, Finnish. Finnish Art Gallery, Ateneum Art Museum, Helsinki loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY

Accepted for the Paris Salon of 1887.

 

 

Schjerfbeck began to teach in 1892 and stopped in 1902 only for chronic ill health. 

 

 

 

Fiesole Landscape, 1894, oil on canvas

Helena Schjerfbeck, 1862-1946, Finnish. Finnish Art Gallery, Ateneum Art Museum, Helsinki loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY

 

She painted first in the academic style of her training.

 

Focusing more and more on portraits, Schjerfbeck improvised a language:

semi-abstraction; quiet colour; minimalism so that we focus mainly on the figure’s face and pose; no indication of the social context in which the subject finds him/herself.

 

 

 

Girl at the Gate, watercolour, charcoal and pencil on paper, 1897-1902

Helena Schjerfbeck, 1862-1946, Finnish. Private loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY

 

When she stopped teaching in 1902, the artist moved with her mother to an apartment in a remote railway town in Finland.

There she continued to paint – scenes of nature and portraits of friends – and it was in this geographical isolation that she matured the innovations of her art.

 

 

 

My Mother, (Mother Reading), 1902

Helena Schjerfbeck, 1862-1946, Finnish. Moderna Museet, Stockholm loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY

 

 

 

 

At Home (Mother Sewing), 1903, oil on canvas

Helena Schjerfbeck, 1862-1946, Finnish. Turku Art Museum, Finland loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY

 

 

Her palette evaporated into winter earth colours.

 

 

Fragment, 1904, oil on canvas

Helena Schjerfbeck, 1862-1946, Finnish. Private loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY

Thought to be the daughter of the artist’s landlady.  The gold paint, the worn areas and the pose of the head are reminiscent of fragmentary Renaissance frescoes which the artist had seen in her travels in Italy.

 

 

 

The Seamstress (The Working Woman), 1905, oil on canvas

Helena Schjerfbeck, 1862-1946, Finnish. Finnish Art Gallery, Ateneum Art Museum, Helsinki loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY

 

 

 

 

Girls Reading, 1907, watercolour, pastel, pencil on paper

Helena Schjerfbeck, 1862-1946, Finnish. Finnish National Gallery, Ateneum Art Museum, Helsinki loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY 

 

 

 

 

Silence, 1907, tempera and oil on canvas

Helena Schjerfbeck, 1862-1946, Finnish. Nordea Art Foundation, Finland loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY

 

 

In very few portraits does the subject look at the viewer.  The one eye of the baby over the shoulder of his/her mother is one.

 

 

 

The School Girl II (Girl in Black), 1908, oil on canvas

Helena Schjerfbeck, 1862-1946, Finnish. Finnish National Gallery, Ateneum Art Museum, Helsinki loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY 

 

 

 

 

Maria, 1909, oil on canvas

Helena Schjerfbeck, 1862-1946, Finnish. Finnish National Gallery, Ateneum Art Museum, Helsinki loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY

 

 

 

 

The Skier (English Girl, Red-Cheeked Girl), 1909, oil on canvas

Helena Schjerfbeck, 1862-1946, Finnish. Private loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY

 

 

 

 

The Tapestry, 1914-16, oil on canvas

Helena Schjerfbeck, 1862-1946, Finnish. Private loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY

 

 

Nor does the artist have a message to convey:  she offers images with minimal detail. There is no story with which we might identify. There is  nothing we can know of what the subject is thinking. Each of them has been captured in a waking dream. 

 

She paints and then she scrapes away the top layers of the paint.  Sometimes she leaves the canvas showing. Her hand is the lightest touch.

 

She is not, however, uniform in her choice of  winter colours.  Sometimes her colours explode.

 

 

 

The Red Apples, 1915, oil on canvas

Helena Schjerfbeck, 1862-1946, Finnish. Finnish National Gallery, Ateneum Art Museum, Helsinki loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY

 

 

In 1917, the artist’s longtime publicist, Gosta Berman, organized her first major solo exhibition in Helsinki.  More than 150 of her paintings made her work known to a record 4000 visitors.  

 

 

 

The Sailor (Einar Rutter), 1918, oil on canvas

Private loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY

 

 

 

 

The Lace Shawl, 1920, oil on canvas

Helena Schjerfbeck, 1862-1946, Finnish. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY

 

 

 

 

Factory Girls on the Way to Work, 1922, oil on canvas

Helena Schjerfbeck, 1862-1946, Finnish.  Loan from Riihimaki Art Museum, Finland to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY 

 

 

 

 

Girl from Eydtkuhne II, 1927, oil on canvas

Helena Schjerfbeck, 1862-1946, Finnish.  Finnish National Gallery, Ateneum Art Museum, Helsinki loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY

 

 

 

 

The Motorist (Mans Schjerfbeck), 1929, oil on canvas

Helena Schjerfbeck, 1862-1946, Finnish. Private loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY

The artist’s brother.

 

 

 

 

Green Apples and Champagne Glass, 1934, oil on canvas

Helena Schjerfbeck, 1862-1946, Finnish. Finnish National Gallery, Ateneum Art Museum, Helsinki to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY

 

 

 

 

Girl in Beret, 1935

Helena Schjerfbeck, 1862-1946, Finnish. Private loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY

 

 

 

 

Still Life with Blackening Apples, 1944, oil on canvas

Helena Schjerfbeck, 1862-1946, Finnish. Loan from the Didrichsen Art Museum, Helsinki to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY

 

 

Self Portraits

 

 

 

The artist in the 1890s Unknown photographer.

  Finnish National Gallery loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY

 

 

Helena Schjerfbeck’s journey from the style of her time in the Paris of the salons in which she exhibited – academic, naturalistic, narrative – to the semi-abstraction she developed in her mid- and later life can be seen in her self-portraits.

 

 

 

Self-Portrait, 1884-85, oil on canvas

Helena Schjerfbeck, 1862-1946, Finnish. Finnish National Gallery loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY

 

 

 

 

Self-portrait, 1895, oil on canvas

Helena Schjerfbeck, 1862-1946, Finnish. Västra Nylands Museum, Raseborg, Finland loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY

 

 

Unlike the portraits of her acquaintances and friends, her self-portraits show a woman alert to the world; and expectant.  She gives nothing of herself, however.  She does not show what she is thinking beyond a certain puzzled apprehension.

 

 

 

Self-Portrait, 1912, oil on canvas

Helena Schjerfbeck, 1862-1946, Finnish. Loan from the Finnish National Gallery, Ateneum Art Musem, Helsinki to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY

 

 

 

 

Self-Portrait with Silver Background, 1915, paper, charcoal, watercolour and silver leaf on paper

Helena Schjerfbeck, 1862-1946, Finnish. Turku Museum, Finland loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY

 

 

 

 

Self-portrait, Black Background, 1915, oil on canvas

Helena Schjerfbeck, 1862-1946, Finnish. Private  loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY

 

 

 

1919 saw a deterioration of Schjerfbeck’s health whose cause was the breakdown of a close friendship and professional companionship with a man.  Her health deteriorated and she was hospitalized for three months.

Her palette becomes darker. 

 

 

Unfinished Self Portrait, 1921, oil on canvas (canvas reused on the reverse for The Factory Girls on the Way to Work)

   Loan Riihimaki Art Museum, Finland to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY in 2025/26

 

 

Schjerfbeck continued to work after the death of her mother in 1923 despite her own ill health. When the war began, she moved  from Finland to Sweden. 

 

 

 

Self-Portrait in Black, oil on canvas

Helena Schjerfbeck, 1862-1946, Finnish. Loan from the Reitz Foundation to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY

 

 

Schjerfbeck never married and had no children.

Always homesick for her native Finland, she completed the last of her self-portraits while living in Sweden.  They become more spare, more separated from the world. 

 

 

Self Portrait with Palette, oil on canvas, 1937

Helena Schjerfbeck, 1862-1946, Finnish. Loan from the Moderna Museet, Stockholm to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY

 

 

 

 

Self-Portrait, Light and Shadow, 1945, oil on canvas

Helena Schjerfbeck, 1862-1946, Finnish. Villa Gyllenberg, Helsinki loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY

The green pallor was taken from the tiles of a bathroom.

 

 

Bertha Stenman, the wife of her longtime agent, organized a four-year tour of a small collection of her work in 40 American cities beginning in 1944.  Her paintings did not sell in the US which was in the midst of war and on the cusp of the explosions of Abstract Expressionism.  

 

The artist’s work cannot easily be placed within the boundary of any contemporaneous movement. 

Her art is close in emotional tone and subject matter to the work of two of her contemporaries,

the Danish painter of human solitude:  Vilhelm Hammershøi (1861-1916);

 

 

Interior With Piano and Woman in Black (Strandgade 30), 1901, oilon canvas

Vilhelm Hammershøi, 1861-1916, Danish; Staatsgalerie Stuttgart from whose website this image

 

 

And Edvard Munch, 1863-1944, Norwegian, one of the princes of our psychic darkness.

 

 

 

Despair, 1894, oil on canvas. 

Edvard Munch, 1863-1944, Norwegian.  Munch Museum, Oslo loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY in 2017/18

 

 

Käthe Kollwitz, 1867-1945, German, was also an exact contemporary of Schjerfbeck.  The anguish in her work, however, was occasioned by the particularly dire social and political conditions of Germany during her life.

 

 

A woman representing the existential angst of her subjects was rare at this time.

Very rare a woman depicting her own solitary questioning and emotional vulnerability.

 

Schjerfbeck’s self-portraits face the world again and again with the same troubled question: what is this life? 

 

You are left with an appreciation of an artist whose skills and professional accomplishment could not compensate for her loneliness.  A courageous artist, also: unfraid to depict how life is often lived even if this does not match the social expectations of how it should be lived.

 

 

 

Self-Portrait in Black and Pink, 1945, oil on canvas

Helena Schjerfbeck, 1862-1946, Finnish. Private loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY

 

 

The artist died of cancer in 1946 in a hotel bedroom in the Swedish capital.  She was 83.  Her easel was at her bedside.  She is buried in the Finnish capital.

Her legacy is 750 paintings although it is believed that she painted close to 1000.