1103. Akseli Gallen-Kallela (Finland 1865‑1931). ”Louhikko harmaa talvipäivä” / The Lair of the Lynx / Lokulan.
Signed and dated Akseli Gallen-Kallela 1908. Oil on canvas, 100 x 80 cm.

SEK 1.000.000 – 1.500.000     € 103.000 – 154.000

”During a lynx hunt in Konginkangas I met with great joy for my eyes and my brushes a rocky mountain with a large number of upright pinetrees…” (Akseli Gallen-Kallela in Boken om Gallen-Kallela, 1932, p. 84).

In 1912, Akseli Gallen-Kallela, in collaboration with the publisher Werner Söderström Osakeyhtiö, made a collection of 40 heliogravures. The idea was to present important works from the artist’s oeuvre and with these gravures illustrate the extent of his artistry. One of the chosen works was the present work The Lair of the Lynx, owned by  Carl Adolf Engström (1855-1924). As appreciation for the loan of the painting whose image had been translated into a heliogravure, Gallen-Kallela returned the painting to Engström together with a numbered and signed heliogravure (before the text). Carl Adolf Engström, who in 1917 received the honorary title Vuorineuvos, had a career as a shipbuilder and director at Sandvikens Skeppsdocka och Mekaniska Verkstad. The Lair of the Lynx has been in the same family since it was acquired and it is now for the first time presented to the  public.

Akseli Gallen-Kallela at Konginkangas in 1906.

The winters after the turn of the century 1900, Gallen-Kallela often spent inland. During the winter of 1906 he was in central Finland in Suolahti for a few weeks. The trip was arranged by Rudolf Ahonius, the station manager at Suolahti, with whom Gallen-Kallela had been in contact since 1904. Gallen-Kallela wanted to go there to ski and hunt, but above all to portray lynxes in wintery snowy landscapes. These excursions were made with the help of Adolf Nordlund and the artist often depicted the winter landscape in situ. On their excursions, Gallen-Kallela also took photographs of the snow-covered nature. The collection of photographs is now in the archives at the Gallen-Kallela Museum in Espoo, and in their collection there is a suggestive black and white image of a snow-covered mountain. This view caught the attention of Gallen-Kallela who in a number of versions of the so-called ”The Lair of the Lynx” worked to acheive the correct representation. One attempt was the gouache dedicated to his friend Rudolf Ahonius and dated 1906 (belonging to the Nokia Group, exhibited at the Akseli Gallen-Kallela Exhibition at Ateneum and Turku Art Museum 1996, cat. no. 253). A small version in oil is in Gösta Serlachius Art Foundation, Mäntää (Inv. 104, exhibited at the above-mentioned exhibition, cat. no. 252). Finally he succeeded in capturing the scene with the magnificent winter image of the sale, The Lair of the Lynx, dated in 1908, where Gallen-Kallela carefully hints the sun’s rays on the white snow. The lyricism is present and penetrates this winter image significantly.

The artist returned to the theme of the winter landscape with snow-covered stony mountains, called ”The Lair of the Lynx ”, in a number of works at the time. In The Lair of the Lynx from Konginkangas (1904, in a private collection, exhibited at the Akseli Gallen-Kallela Exhibition at Ateneum and Turku Art Museum 1996, cat. no. 254) the trails from the lynx are visible. Another work in which the thick, crispy snow is depicted is Sunshine on snow from 1906 in the Collection of Ateneum (A II 834).

A significant work is Winter landscape with skiers from 1899, a work that some connect with the February Manifesto from the same year that introduced measures in an effort to tie Finland closer to Russia. This led to discontent, and in November 1905 a November manifesto was issued which restored to Finland many of the rights taken away from them. The reason for this interpretation is the skiers in the snowy background of the picture. In February, the Finns responded by carrying out a major petition, and in the sparsely populated country with an equally sparse transport network, the name collectors travelled from place to place by skiing. Gallen-Kallela returned to the motif in February vision 1905 (in the collection of Suomen Pankki) when the new manifesto came into force and also led to Finland’s independence, almost exactly 100 years ago.

By the turn of the century the national romantic spirit was widespread in the Nordic countries, with great focus being on moving out into the countryside and being close to nature. Like many other artists at this time, such as Carl Larsson and Anders Zorn in Sweden, Axel Gallén, born in a Swedish-speaking family, would also rent cabins and studios in the Finnish countryside and eventually settle down in his own studio. In the years 1894-95 he built his wilderness studio Kalela in Ruovesi, which became one of the most famous creations of architecture of national romanticism.

Snow-covered hillside with terrain consisting of large boulders, Suolahti, 1906. Photo: Gallen-Kallelan Museo.

The art scene in the late 19th century Finland, was characterized by painters with their background in the French realism. Where Albert Edelfelt’s more adapted realism was the current fashion, Gallen-Kallela´s early work was regarded as highly naturalistic, as seen in the early work Boy with a Crow (1884), as well as The Old Woman and the Cat (1885) which have clear naturalistic tendencies. Towards the turn of the century, the art scene was transformed with focus on more domestic Finnish environments, and symbolism and Art Nouveau became the current trends. The Great Black Woodpecker (1893) is an example of this beginning of symbolism. Gallen-Kallela is for many of us associated with his motives from Kalevala; The Defense of the Sampo and Joukahainen’s Revenge (1896-97), Lemminkäinen’s Mother and The Fratricide (1897). Gallen-Kallela became one of the most famous artists in Finland with these pictures.

This period and these works seem to have drained the energy out of Gallen-Kallela and henceforth he devoted more attention to pictures of the typical Finnish nature. Onni Okkonen, p. 6, comments on these winter pictures in an exhibition in Espoo 1990: ”His brilliantly executed snowy landscapes and some portraits belong to the best of the epoch.” He developed his own distinctive style in his pure landscape scenes. Although devoid of humans, they were full of meaning and expression. Gallen-Kallela dedicated the winters to lynx hunting and skiing and it is during this time that the impressive The Lair of the Lynx in this sale has been created. Here, the former austerity of style seems to give way to new experiments.

Back to catalogue