Albert Edelfelt

Albert Gustaf Aristides Edelfelt (21 July 1854 – 18 August 1905) was a Finnish painter noted for his naturalistic style and Realist approach to art. He lived in the Grand Duchy of Finland and made Finnish culture visible abroad, before Finland gained independence. He was considered the greatest Finnish artist of the second half of 19th and the first half of the 20th centuries, and one of the most prominent contributors to the Golden Age of Finnish Art.

Early life and education Edelfelt was born 1854 in Porvoo, son of the Swedish architect (1818–1869), who had lived in Finland since his early youth, and Alexandra Edelfeldt (née Brandt 1833–1901). His father died when he was still young, and his mother had to raise him and his younger siblings alone compounded by financial difficulties. He remained very close to his mother throughout his life.

He began his formal studies of art in 1869 at the Drawing School of the Finnish Art Society in Helsinki and continued as a student of Adolf von Becker (1871–73). He then received a scholarship from the Finnish government to study history painting at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp, Belgium. He studied under Nicaise de Keyser for several months in 1873–74, and won an award for excellence for his painting of Alexander the Great on his deathbed. He also began a long-lasting friendship with the Belgian artist Émile Claus.

Career

Arrival in Paris – History Painting In the autumn of 1874, at the age of nineteen, following the advice of his teacher Adolf von Becker, With that judgement, he almost entirely abandoned history painting and concentrated on painting in the open air.

He returned to Finland for a time, then returned to Paris in 1881 and rented a new studio at 147, avenue des Villiers.

Impressionism and Painting in Open Air In the early 1880s, Edelfelt began to adapt some of the characteristics of the new Impressionist movement; natural settings, particularly parks and gardens and the seashore; intimate domestic settings; the play of light on the figures; and rapid execution, to capture the sensation of the moment. At the same time, he never became entirely an impressionist, following his realist training to concentrate on precise details and using a broad and complex palette of colors.

Throughout the 1880s, Edelfelt continued to paint outdoor scenes of life in Paris, displaying his talent for capturing the effects of light, combined with his precision of detail. During the same period he created wide variety of intimate domestic scenes, capturing the details of Parisian life.

Portrait of Louis Pasteur In 1880, Edelfelt became a friend of Jean-Baptiste Pasteur, the son of the famous chemist Louis Pasteur, who introduced him to Pasteur the following year. He became a close friend of the family and painted many of their portraits over the years that followed. Pasteur had a good sense of public relations and participated with Edelfelt in the planning of his own portrait.

Edelfeld's portrait of Pasteur in his laboratory, painted in 1885, had a great success at the Paris Salon of 1886 and became one of the most familiar images of the scientist. It gained the painter the award of the Legion of Honor when he was only thirty-five years old.

In February 1899, Tsar Nicholas II issued a decree suppressing the political liberties of the Finns. Edelfelt mobilised a network of Finnish artists and cultural figures with a petition to the Russian government, called "Pro Finlandia", seeking recognition of the independence of the arts in Finland. He also took on the role of a cultural diplomat as the commissioner of the Finnish participation in the Paris Exposition Universelle (1900).

The Finnish Countryside Edelfelt spent his summers in Finland exploring and painting. While his French paintings were almost all of Paris scenes, his paintings in Finland captured the scenery, people, and particular light of the Finnish countryside. He presented them regularly at the Paris Salon. For his painting of an outdoor church service on the coast at Haikko, near Porvoo, he made a series of oil sketches, to capture exactly the tonalities of the water and the sky.

In 1880, his family purchased a summer house at the coastal manor of Haikko, located in the southwest part of the country, and he established a studio there in 1883. He frequently used his family and local residents as models. His pictures possess a spontaneity and naturalness that result from his careful observation and empathy for the subjects.

Portrait painting Edelfelt, very early in his career, became a master of portrait painting, which provided the major part of his income. "Portraits for the soup, paintings for the glory", he wrote in 1878, citing the Belgian artist Antoine Wiertz. From 1880 onwards, he participated in the Paris Salon, and portraits were his major source of income.

Each portrait he painted involved a lengthy process. He created a series of preparatory drawings using pencil and crayon, followed by pastel colors, before completing the final oil painting. Besides paying close attention to the expression of the model and the pose, he also focused on the surroundings of the subject, including books, pets, or objects that could reveal the personality of the subject.

In the 1890s, he became interested in illustrating poetry.

Edelfelt also later dabbled in religious painting, and in his 1890 Christ and Mary Magdalene he set a biblical scene in the Finnish landscape, influenced by Kanteletar.

Personal life

He sent his mother hundreds of letters when he was away. In Paris, he shared a studio with the American Julian Alden Weir, who introduced him to John Singer Sargent. He had romantic relationships with numerous women, including Antonia Bonjean and Virginie in Paris.

In 2013, Boys Playing on the Shore (1884) was selected by Nordic Moneta as Finland's most significant painting.

In Finland, he was one of the founders of the Realist art movement. He influenced several younger Finnish painters and helped fellow Finnish artists such as Akseli Gallen-Kallela and Gunnar Berndtson to make their breakthrough in Paris. Among his students was Léon Bakst. Edelfelt was one of the first Finnish artists to achieve international fame. Albert Edelfelt is considered one of the most notable artists of the Golden Age of Finnish Art. A museum under his name operates in Porvoo. He was selected as the main motif on a Finnish commemorative coin celebrating the 150th anniversary of his birth, the €100 Albert Edelfelt and painting commemorative coin, minted in 2004. The reverse shows an embossed face of the artist.