EDELFELT, Albert

(b. 1854 Kiala Estate, d. 1905 Haikko)

Finnish painter, illustrator and etcher. He began his art studies in 1870 at the school of the Finnish Art Society in Helsinki. In 1871-73 he studied at the Academy of Art in Helsinki, in 1873 at the Academy in Antwerp, and in 1874-78 with interruptions at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris under Gérôme. Apart from annual visits to Finland, he lived in Paris.

At first he painted history pictures, under the influence of Bastien-Lepage he painted Naturalist landscapes and scenes of Finnish farm life. He won great acclaim with the French public for his portraits. In the 1880s and 1890 he exhibited at the Paris Salon, at the Paris World Fair in 1889 he received the Grand Prix d’Honneur.

Edelfelt was Finland’s leading artist in the late 19th century, introducing French influences into Finnish art but also helping to gain a broader international interest in his country’s culture. He was not a great innovator, however, and although his reputation in Finland remained firm, international recognition dwindled after his death until the renewal of interest in realism that took place in the late 20th century.

In the Luxembourg Gardens

Impressionist painters frequently took an interest in social life in parks. The light on the greenery, the flower beds and colourful dresses of the ladies, the children at play, all helped make park scenes interesting to painters.

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Paris in the Snow

Edelfelt painted this canvas from the window of his suburban studio in 1887. The view, though it has a flavour of the fortuitous, is deliberately, tautly structured, and the subject, though scarcely oriental, is yet done ‘à la japonaise.’ The lane crosses the image and the real space toward the horizon, its course rhythmically underpinned by trees and, further off, carriages and a tram. In the foreground, a snow-covered rooftop is cropped by the right edge. The shadows of this and the neighbouring building (from which Edelfelt is presumably viewing the scene) join the shadows of the trees to establish a contrapunctal diagonal dynamic. The smoke from the factory chimneys, blown from left to right across the horizon, adds to the effect.

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