Fanny Churberg
Today we are moving to Finland. Fanny Churberg was a Finnish landscape painter, who began her training in Helsinki and subsequently traveled to Düsseldorf and Paris for further study. During her brief career, she painted primarily landscapes and still lifes, and unlike other female Finnish artists who studied in Paris, she exhibited only in Finland. She earned the Premier Prix Dukaat from the Finnish Art Society in 1879, but abandoned painting around 1880 due to unknown reasons. She remained involved in the arts, however, and wrote art criticism and articles on feminism and Finnish art.
In one of her letters, Churberg wrote to her friend about one of her many lonely hikes through the Finnish countryside. She was interested in the wild and the elemental—an approaching thunderstorm, twilight, and winter days. She captured the atmosphere with sweeping, long brushstrokes, and strong color contrasts. This expressive style was far ahead of her time and alarmed her contemporaries, who found Churberg's pictures too harsh and not naturalistically idyllic enough. Not even the first prize of the Finnish Art Society changed this.
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P.S. Finland has often been overlooked in art history. Meet another great Finnish female artist: Helena Sofia Schjerfbeck!