A wild marshland beyond the north wind
1104. Akseli Gallen-Kallela (Finland 1865‑1931). A wild marshland beyond the north wind / Ödekärr bortom nordanvind.
Signed Gallen-Kallela. Oil on canvas, 67 x 77 cm.
SEK 600.000 – 800.000 € 62.000 – 82.000
”He who lives and works in nature, eventually achieves such a personal relationship with his surroundings that he can almost speak to the trees of the forest – just as children often speak to the flowers of the meadow. Our traditional storytelling also testifies to the fact that the deep connection with nature has been a distinctive feature for us, the Finns. We seem to have an ability to personalize nature, which is very pronounced in our recent art lyricism and novelism” (Akseli Gallen-Kallela from Boken om Gallen-Kallela, 1932, p. 81).
Akseli Gallen-Kallela is for many associated as the artist who captured the typical Finnish. Perhaps especially through his many motives for the Kalevala epic, where he expresses a national spirit through a combination of realism and symbolism. He was a national romantic searching for his Finnish origins and as a part of this he changed his name Axel Gallén to the more Finnish-sounding Akseli Gallen-Kallela in 1907.
After studying in Paris, where he came under the influence of Jules Bastien-Lepage, the leading French naturalist painter, he returned to his homeland longing for the Finnish motives. Under international influences, he moved from the time around the turn of the century and onwards towards increasingly stylized forms. The Finns have traditionally lived close to nature. In the land of a thousand lakes, nature has become like a friend to the man who lives in it. Vast forests and light summer nights, typical characteristics of Nordic nature, were perceived as both exotic and mysterious in continental Europe. The interest in Nordic landscape art spurred with artists like Edvard Munch and Akseli Gallen-Kallela.
Nature plays the lead role in the characterful landscape paintng of this sale. Overlooking a vast marshland, the blueish mountains are discerned in the distance. In the foreground are some aged storm-twisted pines. In this nationalistic motive in a strong colour scheme, it becomes clear how art can act as a means of expressing the contents of the soul.
”Up in the north […] I could see the visions I had longed for since my childhood. There I met the forms of life that really suited my nature.
There was still roadless wild marshland, where the horizon framed another unspoilt wilderness that lived its own life. There the translucency of the sky shone and the intoxicating mystery of the forest glittered my soul with new-born magic power” (Akseli Gallen-Kallela from Boken om Gallen-Kallela, 1932, p. 88).
Already in The Great Black Woodpecker from 1893 Gallen-Kallela formed a new national romantic ideal landscape, in which both the decorative synthetic and Japonism played an important role. Just like in that picture, Gallen-Kallela captured the landscape in the expressive image of this sale from an above perspective, a technique learnt from Bastien-Lepage. He combines the serenity of the Finnish landscape with the country’s mythical past.
The painting in this sale, A wild marshland beyond the north wind, was acquired, like The Lair of the Lynx, cat. no. 1103, by Carl Adolf Engström (1855-1924) most probably from the artist himself. When A wild marshland beyond the north wind in this sale is presented now, it has not seen the public light in almost a century.