The Great Black Woodpecker

Towards the end of the 19th century, many artists sought their way out of noisy and smoky cities. While Paul Gauguin found an unspoiled, authentic way of life on the island of Tahiti, Finnish artists looked for their cultural roots and an original Finland in the Karelian backwoods and inland lakes. The Great Black Woodpecker was painted in Eastern Karelia, by Lake Paanajärvi in Kuusamo, which now belongs to Russia. The lonesome woodpecker in the primal forest portrayed by Akseli Gallen-Kallela conveys a feeling of nature at its truest and purest, the inviolability and integrity of the wilds.

We present today's painting thanks to Europeana, a web portal created by the European Union containing digitalized museum collections. If you don't know it, check it out, it is full of stuff!

P.S. Here's the countryside in art from idyllic scenes to social issues.