Important Sale Week
Explore the catalogues »
To be sold at Uppsala Auktionskammare’s Important Sale Week 10 – 13 December 2024
Lot 794 Helene Schjerfbeck (Finland 1862‑1946). ”Syskonen” (Sisters). Signed with monogram and dated HS -44 upper left. Oil on relined canvas, 34.5 x 43.5 cm.
Compare with the oil and watercolour on paper ”Syskonen” from 1913, in a private collection, Finland.
6.000.000 – 8.000.000 SEK
€ 518.000 – 690.000
The collection of art dealer Gösta Stenman (1888‑1947), inv. no. 5317.
Thence by descent to the present owner.
The Elsie Perrin and Williams Memorial Art Museum, London, Canada, ”Helene Schjerfbeck – Paints from Finland”, August-September 1949, cat. no. 4.
Columbus Gallery of Fine Arts, Washington D.C., ”Paintings by Helene Schjerfbeck: 1862-1947”, 1951.
Gösta Stenmans konstsalong, Stockholm, ”Helene Schjerfbeck – Utställning”, 1954, cat. no. 139.
Gösta Stenmans konstsalong, Stockholm, ”Helene Schjerfbeck”, 1958, cat. no. 127.
Gösta Stenmans konstsalong, Stockholm, ”Helene Schjerfbeck – Hyllningsutställning 1862‑1946”, 1962, cat. no. 113.
Helsingin taidetalo, Helsinki, ”Helena Schjerfbeck”, 1980, cat. no. 93.
Ateneum, Helsinki, ”Helene Schjerfbeck”, 2 February-5 April 1992, cat. no. 495.
Stiftelsen Modums Blaafarvevaerk, Åmot, ”To Malerinner”, 23 May-30 September 1998, cat. no. 103.
Ateneum, Helsinki, ”Helene Schjerfbeck – 150 years”, 1 June-14 October 2012, cat. no. 712.
Prins Eugens Waldemarsudde, Stockholm, ”Helene Schjerfbeck – 150 years”, 3 November 2012-12 February 2013, cat. no. 712.
Göteborgs konstmuseum, Gothenburg, ”Helene Schjerfbeck – 150 years”, 16 March-18 August 2013, cat. no. 712.
H. Ahtela, Helena Schjerfbeck, 1953, p. 371, no. 984 in the catalogue, titled “Syskonen”, compare with no. 393, illustrated pl. 56.
Leena Ahtola-Moorhouse (ed.), Helene Schjerfbeck, exhibition catalogue, 1992, cat. no. 495.
Stiftelsen Modums Blaafarvevaerk, To Malerinner, 1998, p. 118, illustrated p. 119.
Leena Ahtola-Moorhouse (ed.), Helene Schjerfbeck – 150 years, exhibition catalogue, 2012, cat. no. 712, illustrated p. 346.
In a quiet serenade of a moment of true love, Helene Schjerfbeck paints what we, the others, only can feel. The unconditional sense of devotion between two sisters. Forever admired for her exquisite ability to capture the human mind, she manages to push the boundaries beyond, concluding a captivating artistry full of inspiration that ever since has been celebrated for its grandness. The secret within the mysterious mature Schjerfbeck’s paintings, created in the loneliness of her final years, is also her triumph. She focuses on the most important, not only in the formal re-interpretations of her earlier motifs, the colours, the lines and curves, the reduction and refined manner, but most accurate is undoubtfully the human aspect. And with the humans, she searches for the human within. Throughout her life she devoted herself to capture the radiation of the human expression that should be a reflection of its soul’s deepest within. ”Konstnären är känslans arbetare” (The artist is the worker of the feeling) as Schjerfbeck herself wrote in a letter to her dear friend Einar Reuter on November 25, 1924.
There is something about a mystifying aura around the person Helene Schjerfbeck.Her life was characterized by the early feeling of alienation and loneliness that would follow throughout her life. She grew up in Finland with her parents and two years older brother during poor circumstances. At a young age her physical conditions, caused by a hip injury, forced her to a life at home. For a young child, affected by the serious atmosphere within the family, this of course made a huge impact on her person. Later on, this would not only continue to cause her physical pain in her body, but also, reflected her senses. The feeling of exclusion was something that would follow Schjerfbeck throughout her life, the closest one she had was really herself. During almost her entire life she remained isolated, living on the outskirts of the world, with very few persons close to her, she lived through her art. Notable is that today, works by Helene Schjerfbeck are more sought after than ever. In the most recent years, 2022 and 2023, works by her have been acquired to the collections of two of the world’s foremost museums, the Musée d’Orsay in Paris and The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. This, if anything, emphasizes her outstanding significance as one of our most esteemed Scandinavian artists.
The souverain artistic talent of Schjerfbeck was discovered at a remarkably young age and she attended Finska Konstföreningens Ritskola (The Finnish Fine Art Academy’s Drawing school) when only 11 years old, in 1873. Thereafter followed a few decades of success with scholarships to Paris, where she studied at Académie Colarossi, and developed her distinctive painting style that was presented at different exhibitions abroad and in Finland. During the 1880s several of her most important early paintings are created and already now she finds her heartfelt motifs especially in the celebrated depictions of children, like “The Dance Shoes”, “The Girl’s Neck” (Child by the window) and “The Convalescent”. However, this was the time when the national romanticism was acknowledged in Finland, and this genre did neither suite Schjerfbeck nor her art. From the year of 1902 she resigned from her post teaching drawing at the Academy of Fine Arts and moved to the small village of Hyvinkää outside of Helsinki together with her mother. They resided in a small home with one kitchen and one room and spent the following roughly twenty years together, living a life close to alienation. During these years Schjerfbeck distances herself from all outer interpretations and through this flourish her artistry into a new direction where she allows herself to free her inner self.
Schjerfbeck’s production is fastidious, she was very harsh to herself. She only painted about one hour per day and in search for models she turned to her surrounding environment, and to herself. The girls depicted in the ”Syskonen” (Sisters) are the daughters of the blacksmith Juho Kustaa Sahrman (from 1913 Mäkinen). Their older brother Einari was the first one from the family that Schjerfbeck used as her model for “The Woodcutter” in 1910-11 (in the collections at Ateneum). She then continued to paint the Mäkinen children during the following decade. The sisters Martta and Katri became her favorite models, and the girls also became little helpers in the Schjerfbeck household, they often brought food from the station restaurant to Helene and her mother. The lovely motif of the “Sisters” origins to 1913, at that time Martta was ten years old and Katri three. First, Schjerfbeck painted a version where the two girls are shown in full body, in watercolour and gouache on paper. Martta, dressed in a black dress and with her back turned to the viewer, is taking her little sister Katri, in a white dress and pink stockings, into her arms. The second painting of the sisters, in oil and watercolour on paper, is concentrated to the interplay between the sisters and focuses only on their faces, as does the auction’s version of the motif. During the following years the sisters were also immortalized in other compositions, like “The Picture Book” that is a four year later version and continuing development of the composition of the “Sisters”. In “The Picture Book” (also known through its 1938 lithograph version) the girls have turned into young beauties. Katri has often been described as Schjerfbeck’s dearest model, as it was easy to get her to sit for her. Katri was always close, living just across the fence and appreciated the payment of one mark per hour when all she had to do was to look like an “Angel of the Lord”.
The vulnerability of the young child was something that Schjerfbeck felt well connected to. Perhaps could this be described as the essence of her own inner soul. Like no other, she manages to transcend this feeling into painting. The sisters are captured in a fugitive snapshot of reality when they are embracing one another in a senseful and utterly caring moment. The older sister, turned in profile towards the viewer, is protectively comforting her younger sister that is facing us with her searching large blue eyes. The girls form a unity as the contours of their faces continue into one another, at the same time they appear as two individuals. The two parts are strengthened by the chosen colours, warm red, orange and white with Martta and pale greyblue tones with Katri. Unifying is the red mouth and the contour of the young girl’s eyebrow that forms the other’s nose. In a refined manner Schjerfbeck excels, by reduction, to empower the painting with life and love. She searched for the expression of the sense of the beautiful within her models. Not because she wanted to beautify the reality, only because she wanted to see and search for the beauty within one’s soul. As expressed by Schjerfbeck to Einar Reuter in a letter in 1920: ”Det omedvetna primitiva i själen skapar konsten, tanken skapar ej – hos mig” (The unconscious primitive in the soul creates art, thought does not – with me). A sister protecting her younger self, a feeling that Schjerfbeck never got the opportunity to experience herself. She, who had lost several siblings and sisters, even before she herself was born.
In the year of 1913 Schjerfbeck was visited in Hyvinkää by the editor and art dealer Gösta Stenman. This was the beginning of a friendship and collaboration that would last throughout her life. Stenman was struck by her modernist painting style that had developed during the years in Hyvinkää and arranged her first solo exhibition in Helsinki in 1917. When Stenman moved to Stockholm in 1930, he opened Stenmans Konstsalong a few years later and became a man of a great influence of the art life in both Finland and Sweden. When Stenman in 1937 presented Schjerfbeck’s second solo exhibition to the Swedish public, her great break-through was a fact. In the year of 1944 Schjerfbeck had to leave Finland due to the war and settled in Sweden, where she would spend her last years, supported by Stenman. He provided her with artistic materials and during these last years she fulfills her artistic career with a masterly finale. She managed to transfer her life force and wrath into aggressive creativity, living at Saltsjöbadens Badhotell she isolates herself and paints, almost with an obsession. With an increased artistic sensibility, from a person that throughout her life had to struggle with difficulties and whose essence from the beginning had been the signature of the fragile. She paints intriguing self-portraits and turns to a few of, what she herself regards as her most important works and re-interpretates these, like the “Sisters” included in this sale, executed in 1944. With admiration we esteem her remarkable ability to conclude her achievement at height. The “Sisters” was acquired by Gösta Stenman and has ever since remained in the collection of his family.
In “Sisters” Schjerfbeck perfectly masters the ability to see within and beyond. With a few refined brushstrokes she transforms the composition’s powerful expression to its admirer. She reduces the composition into a few well-chosen lines and forms that are painted against a quite neglectable monochrome background. All focus is to the interaction between the young children and their sincere emotions. Enhanced by a few parts of strong colours; Martta’s red hair, Katri’s blue eyes and red mouth, and the pink strokes on her shoulder, lifts the work and places “Sisters” amongst Schjerfbeck’s most powerful paintings, foreseeing the modernism still at the same time representing an everlasting classicism. She strikes us right in our hearts with her brushes, like Amor with his arrows, with the emotional vibration of tenderness and warmth between the loving sisters.
To feel is one thing, to put it in words is another. Mastering to paint it, that is only Helene Schjerfbeck. Full of admiration we celebrate this unconditional interpreter of the human soul. The one that no one could reach, but the one that reaches us all. ■