Helene Schjerfbeck

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. Helena Sofia Schjerfbeck was born on 10 July 1862 in Helsinki, Finland (then an autonomous Grand-Duchy within the Russian Empire). In 1879, at the age of 17, Schjerfbeck won third prize in a competition organised by the Finnish Art Society, and in 1880 her work was displayed in an annual Finnish Art Society exhibition. That summer Schjerfbeck spent time at a manor owned by her aunt on her mother’s side, Selma Printz, and Selma’s husband Thomas Adlercreutz. There she spent time drawing and painting her cousins. Schjerfbeck became particularly close to her cousin Selma Adlercreutz, who was her age. She set off to Paris later that year after receiving a travel grant from the Imperial Russian Senate. In the 1890s Schjerfbeck started teaching regularly in Finland at the Art Society drawing school, but in 1901 she became too ill to teach and in 1902 she resigned her post. She moved to Hyvinkää, all while taking care of her mother who lived with her (the mother died in 1923). While living in Hyvinkää, she continued to paint and exhibit. In 1913 Schjerfbeck met the art-dealer, Gösta Stenman, with whose encouragement she exhibited at Malmo in 1914, Stockholm in 1916 and St Petersburg in 1917. In 1917 Stenman organised her first solo exhibition; and in that year Einar Reuter (alias H. Ahtela) published the first Schjerfbeck monograph. She continued to paint actively even during her last years; the famous series of self-portraits was painted in Saltsjöbaden.