1113. Helene Schjerfbeck (Finland 1862‑1946). ”Kvinna med blekröd mun” / Woman with pale red mouth.
Signed with monogram HS. Mixed media, 38.5 x 29 cm.

SEK 400.000 – 600.000     € 41.000 – 62.000

Helene Schjerfbeck (1862-1946) had after two years in Tammisaari finally found models to pose for her and could continue the way she intended: to find and paint the inner personage of a face. The small town on the south-western coast of Finland had become her own home, by the sea, and without a controlling mother. It was something she had always longed for ever since visiting her great aunts in her joyful youth. They told her about how her great grandfather had settled down in Tammisaari as a doctor. She had arranged a place of her own at the adress ’Perspektivet 2’ and for the first time in her life she had a studio of her own. She became 66 years old in the summer of 1928.

The young face in the watercolour Woman with pale red mouth has the same model posing as the oil painting Modern Schoolgirl from 1928, which is mentioned for the first time in H. Ahtelas catalogue from 1953 as number 665. However, the watercolour is a work of art in its own right previously not known. The model posing is unknown. The fair-skinned girl is dressed in summer clothes, wearing a sleeveless blouse and with a dreamy, introvert look. One can sense a gentle smile on her slightly rosy-red lips. Schjerfbeck painted a number of girls, often half-length paintings. This summer in the coastal town of Tammisaari she tested painting both fair and dark girls as well as backgrounds. She had her cousin´s daughter Dora Estlander posing as a model in several paintings when she was visiting. The Smith’s Daughter, Little Marita and Girl from the Islands had other, but local models. She looked for the models inner essence, beyond the shallow façade and consequently the paintings are not lifelike. This is also the reason why the models posing seldom or never got to see the finished paintings. They were to avoid having to be disappointed by Schjerfbeck’s interpretation of them.

The technique with focus on faces and elongated necks seems to derive from her studies of El Greco’s paintings. Ever since studies at museums in her youth she admired him and she owned several books about his paintings with black and white images. In 1928-1929 she painted a number of her own versions of details from El Grecos teeming faces, especially from the Toledo suite of paintings. Images from the books and the faces of the fair Nordic models inspired her personal, cool interpretations and the fascinating expressions in the results. None of the paintings leaves the observer unaffected.

The watercolour is mounted on thin grey paper. Schjerfbeck has processed the paper, scraped, washed, changed lines and added new ones. She has moved her monogram signature from the area by the left shoulder, as is clearly distinguishable, to the spot by the models temple. This is not unusual for Schjerfbeck to do, to create a better balance in her compositions.

Lena Holger
Author and art historian

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