Portraits by Helene Schjerfbeck

A brief word about Helene Schjerfbeck.  Beloved in Nordic countries for her highly original style, Finnish painter Helene Schjerfbeck (1862–1946) is relatively unknown to the rest of the world. Overcoming immense personal struggles and working in a remote location for decades, she produced a powerful body of work through sheer force of will. This exhibition affirms her rightful place in the story of modern art.

Here are some portraits by her.  A couple of you thought the two other portraits she painted, one of two women, and an abandoned self portrait, which I posted two days ago,  had a sense of being sad. I am thinking that perhaps these portraits bight be less dark.  This first portrait is interesting because she was trying for something different.  After all the paint was applied to the canvas, then she started scraping some of the paint off to get a different effect.  You can see on the left where some of the paint has been scraped away. She thought that this was the most tender of her paintings.

This appealing early self portrait was painted in 1895. By 1912 she began to manipulate color, shadowing and self-espression in ways that shared very little of her inner self.  A near masklike visage ensued.

This portrait from 1912 is prominently signed and dated.  This representation declares an image of increasing self-possession.  This was the first self-portrait that she exhibited publicly.

This "Self-Portrait with Silver Background" is less a study of self than an investigation of drawing materials in combination with silver leaf.  As with so many of Schjerfbeck's self-portraits, she provides few clues to her inner self.  I found that the dozen or so self-portraits were some of the most interesting paintings in the exhibit.