The Neck of a Little Girl

Helene Schjerfbeck was a Finnish painter. She is most widely known for her realist works and self-portraits, and less well known for her landscapes and still lifes. Throughout her long life, her work changed dramatically. Her work starts with a dazzlingly skilled, somewhat melancholic version of late-19th-century academic realism and it ends with distilled, nearly abstract images in which pure paint and cryptic description are held in perfect balance. Helene Schjerfbeck's early work was of considerable significance for Finnish art. It was her decade of seeking, and many conflicting currents can be seen in her works. Although she wished to compete in the field of 'high' art with her large historical works, she sometimes also depicted subjects which the public regarded as trivial - almost fragments of a subject. In such works one can clearly see the influence of the French art of the period, with its striving towards a freer type of artistic expression. The children she depicted were considered 'ugly' and 'brutish', the broad brushstroke technique was not understood, and the work branded Schjerfbeck as a representative of extreme naturalism. Although her early work was heavily influenced by French plein-air naturalism, there is room to place paintings which are radical in another way. Juha, thank you for your suggestion :)