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To be sold at Uppsala Auktionskammare’s Important Sale Week 11 – 14 June 2024
Lot 688 Helene Schjerfbeck (Finland 1862‑1946). ”Flicka med basker” (Girl with a Beret). Signed with monogram HS lower left. Watercolour, gouache och charchoal on paper, 47.5 x 33.5 cm.
Executed in 1935.
With inscription and signature in pencil on the reverse: ”Studie till Berlintavlan Schjerfbeck”.
Compare with the oil on canvas ”Flicka med basker” in Didrichsen Art Museum, Helsinki.
6.000.000 – 8.000.000 SEK
€ 515.000 – 687.000
The collection of art dealer Gösta Stenman (1888-1947), inv. no. 5096.
Thence by descent within the Stenman family.
Bukowskis, Stockholm, 19 October 1987, lot 24.
An important Swedish private collection.
Helsingfors Konsthall, Helsinki, ”Nykytaide r.y – Nutidskonst r.f. Helene Schjerfbeck – minnesutställning”, 10 April-10 May 1954, cat. no. 143.
Gösta Stenmans konsthandel, Stockholm, ”Helene Schjerfbeck – Utställning”, 1954, cat. no. 69.
Gösta Stenmans konsthandel, Stockholm, ”Helene Schjerfbeck”, 1958, cat. no. 69.
Gösta Stenmans konsthandel, Stockholm, ”Helene Schjerfbeck – Hyllningsutställning 1862-1946”, 1962, cat. no. 77.
Gösta Stenmans konsthandel, Stockholm, 1967, cat. no. 51.
Ateneum, Helsinki, ”Helene Schjerfbeck”, 2 February-5 April 1992, cat. no. 414.
Ateneum, Helsinki, ”Helene Schjerfbeck – 150 years”, 1 June-14 October 2012, cat. no. 605.
Prins Eugens Waldemarsudde, Stockholm, ”Helene Schjerfbeck – 150 years”, 3 November 2012‑12 February 2013, cat. no. 605.
Göteborgs Konstmuseum, Gothenburg, ”Helene Schjerfbeck – 150 years”, 16 March-18 August 2013,
cat. no. 605.
Åmells konsthandel, Stockholm, ”Helene Schjerfbeck”, 5‑19 October 2013.
H. Ahtela, Helena Schjerfbeck, 1953, p. 368, no. 786 in the catalogue, titled “Flicka med basker”.
Leena Ahtola-Moorhouse (ed.), Helene Schjerfbeck, exhibition catalogue, 1992, cat. no. 414.
Lea Bergström & Sue Cedercreutz-Suhonen, Helene Schjerfbeck. Malleja, Modeller, Models, 2003, compare with illustration p. 99.
Leena Ahtola-Moorhouse (ed.), Helene Schjerfbeck – 150 years, exhibition catalogue, 2012, cat. no. 605, illustrated p. 300.
Åmells konsthandel, Helene Schjerfbeck, 2013, p. 46, illustrated p. 47.
The Finnish-Swedish artist Helene Schjerfbeck (1862-1946) is one of Finland’s greatest artists and is often called a modernist. ”It is sometimes said that I am ’modern’; I do not know what modern looks like, only that one work is a further development of another, gained through experience,” she wrote in a letter in 1916 to her friend, the artist and writer Helena Westermarck (1851-1938). In 1902, she moved from the bustling Helsinki to the peaceful railway junction town of Hyvinkää, a bit more than an hour’s journey north, and wrote daily letters to her friends, much like we call or text today. She developed her modern painting technique in the early 20th century while in her self-chosen solitude. She worked on it by concentrating and reducing her motifs, based on the thorough technique she had learned during her education and teaching years in the late 1800s.
Helene Schjerfbeck began her artistic career in 1873 as an 11-year-old prodigy at the Finnish Artists’ Association’s drawing school, now the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts, where she studied for four years. The drawing school was housed in a rented apartment at Unionsgatan 20 in Helsinki. Her father died of tuberculosis after a long period of illness when Helene was 13 years old and her brother Magnus was 15. Among the family, she was often called ”Ella,” while to her friends, she was ”Lena.” Her early studies were funded by a family friend, Professor Georg Asp (1834-1901). After her father’s death, her mother’s pension was only sufficient for her brother Magnus’s architecture education. The mother then supported the family by housing students.
After her time at the drawing school, Helene attended Adolf von Becker’s private school for two years in Helsinki, from 1877 to 1879, learning to paint in oil. She exhibited for the first time at the Artists’ Association’s annual exhibition and rejoiced at her success. All her friends had already travelled abroad, to Düsseldorf, Rome, or Paris. She was considered too young to travel, being only 17, and had to stay home for another year. She used the time to improve her oil painting skills and to do illustration work.
She received her first state premium and travel grant of 1500 marks to further her education and in the autumn of 1880 she was able to travel to Paris, joining friends already there, such as the artists Helena Westermarck and Maria Wiik (1853-1928). She travelled by steamship without a passport since it was possible to travel throughout almost all of Europe without a passport from 1860 to 1917. During the next decade, throughout the 1880s, she painted in Paris, Brittany, and St Ives in Cornwall, England, and returned home to Finland occasionally, preferably in the summer. She exhibited three times at the French Salon de Paris, the most important contemporary art exhibition in the world around 1900. This recognition allowed her to be regarded as an established artist.
Back home in Helsinki, for financial reasons, she was forced to teach from 1894 to 1902 at her old drawing school, now housed in the upper floor of the Ateneum building. From there, she received a meager pension, which became the basis for her continued livelihood.
The political climate in Finland hardened. Since 1809, Finland had been a Grand Duchy within the Russian Empire with great independence, but at the turn of the century, Russian control tightened. A strong national movement also emerged within the art world, and Helene Schjerfbeck’s French education and teaching methods did not fit in there. Many artists, writers, and politically interested people advocated for a free Finland, making it important to celebrate national themes. In practice, this also meant adopting Finnish names, as artist Axel Gallén did in 1907, becoming Akseli Gallen-Kallela (1865-1931). However, Helene Schjerfbeck refused to change her allegiance to French ideals. She became partially ostracized and depressed, took a leave of absence for almost a year, and finally resigned, moving to Hyvinkää in 1902. There, her modernist vein began to develop.
The watercolour “Flicka med basker” (Girl with a Beret) was painted in 1935 after she had moved to the coastal town of Tammisaari, west of Helsinki. When she lived inland, she constantly longed for the sea, the scent of the water, and the sailing trips of her childhood with her cousins. The watercolour was followed by an oil painting with the exact same motif but with a different expression. The oil painting has been in the Didrichsen Art Museum in Helsinki since 1962.
In the watercolour, there is a search, an airiness in the dress colour that seems influenced by the sea air. The picture also reflects the 1930s with its unassuming style in the dress’s simplicity and straightforward function, in the hairstyle with soft curls and the beret slightly tilted. There is a scent of the admired actress Greta Garbo’s spirit, the icon of the time. The character of the model, with her shyly lowered blue gaze, is convincingly depicted with sharp charcoal lines over the bridge of the nose and raised white accents in opaque gouache. Fascinatingly, Helene Schjerfbeck was not afraid to mix colours and techniques. In a letter to Helena Westermarck in 1936, she wrote, ”’Pure colours are false – in nature a colour is never pure – except in the rainbow, which is not beautiful.” “Flicka med basker” (Girl with a Beret) has a freedom in its expression, humbly free from all ingratiating sweetness, perhaps modestly presented, but uprightly proud.
The model for “Flicka med basker” (Girl with a Beret) was Hjördis Lindholm (born 1916, later married surname Olander) was 19 years old when she began modelling for Helene Schjerfbeck. She was tall and thin and had just started wearing makeup, which suited Helene well, ”she has started to paint herself, I want to paint her with makeup”, she wrote in 1934 to Einar Reuter (1881-1968). The first result with Hjördis as sitter is ”Hjördis, fabriksarbeterskan” (Hjördis, the factory worker) from 1934. The model herself never saw the paintings of her sittings; Schjerfbeck never showed them to her. She was extremely reluctant to show models the results due to the disparaging criticism of her motifs’ resemblance to reality, which she had experienced in her youth. This reluctance to show what she had created can also be seen as the basis for Helene Schjerfbeck’s many self-portraits: ”I have begun a self-portrait, one always has the model at hand, it’s just not at all fun to see oneself,” she wrote in 1921 to her artist friend Ada Thilén (1852-1933). At the same time, she avoided all external criticism, needing only to endure her own critical eyes.
Helene Schjerfbeck participated for the third time in 1888 at the Salon in Paris. She exhibited the painting “Première verdure” (The Convalescent), painted in St Ives, Cornwall, England. The painting became her definitive artistic recognition and breakthrough, both in Paris and at home in Helsinki, additionally awarded the Salon’s bronze medal. Solo exhibitions of an artist did not begin until around the 1910s. Her first solo exhibition was in September 1917 at Stenman’s art salon in Helsinki. She received mixed reviews, but the exhibition was overshadowed by the start of the Finnish Civil War. Her second solo exhibition was also organised by her art dealer and gallerist Gösta Stenman (1888-1947), this time in his gallery at Storgatan 10 in Stockholm in 1937. She had now turned 75 years old. The exhibition was an enormous success. Art critic Gotthard Johansson called it ”a holy room.” She was embarrassed and proud at the same time, but going to Stockholm was out of the question. She did not see any of her exhibitions, neither the one in 1917 in Helsinki nor the one twenty years later at Storgatan 10 in Stockholm. She only wanted to be left alone to paint. In the Stenman exhibition for her 80th birthday, ”Hyllningsutställningen” in 1942 in Stockholm, Gösta Stenman allowed her own words to begin the catalogue with the quote: ”The state between dream and lucidity – that is to paint – is the only thing that calms the heart’s anxiety.”
Helene Schjerfbeck could not understand what was written about her in Finnish newspapers because she did not understand Finnish. She understood a few words and expressions, but Swedish was her mother tongue, as in many Finnish-Swedish families. She lamented in her 50s that she had never learned to speak, read, or write Finnish.
Helene Schjerfbeck was a prolific writer of letters. Thousands of letters with her skilled and beautiful handwriting have been preserved, many written to her so-called painting sisters and mostly to Helena Westermarck, who has been quoted in several cases above. The largest collection is in the Åbo Akademi library. Another recipient of her letters was her friend Einar Reuter, who later became her biographer under the pseudonym H. Ahtela. He preserved all correspondence from her from 1915 to her last active year in 1945. He sometimes helped Gösta Stenman write about the conditions of art. He is quoted in the preface to the exhibition catalogue from 1939, where I have altered his statement referring to a masculine form to a feminine one: ”The artist lives ahead of their time, it is said. In solitude and often terrible isolation, she strive towards her goal, searching for a beauty and truth that may only become apparent to a future generation. The deeper she goes, the more powerfully her work will one day affect the viewer. The indispensable condition is that the search has been honest and unselfish, as well as the portrayal of what was seen, regardless of whether contemporary society understood the artist or not. The slightest glance aside, the smallest insincere grasp, and the work’s subtlety is gone, like the dust from a butterfly’s wing.”
Nazi winds began to blow over Europe in 1935 when the model Hjördis became “Flicka med basker” (Girl with a Beret), foreshadowing what we would later call the end of the interwar period, before the Second World War’s horrific reality from 1939. Helene Schjerfbeck was evacuated from Tammisaari and other places at the last moment in 1944. After many relocations, she ended up at Saltsjöbaden’s bath hotel in Sweden. There, she continued to paint during her last two years, painting views from her window, some still lifes, and several remarkable self-portraits. ■
Lena Holger
Author, art historian, curator, and responsible for several books and exhibitions about Helene Schjerfbeck.