Nature is a recurrent theme in an exhibition of the golden age of Finnish art, but these are charged, epic landscapes layered with meaning, writes Aidan Dunne
THE PERIOD between 1870 and 1920 is generally designated the "golden age" of Finnish art. Finland had, since 1809, been an autonomous Grand Duchy of the Russian empire. Before then, centuries-long Swedish rule had been punctuated by brief Russian occupations. Like Ireland, Finland endured a famine of catastrophic proportions, though later than Ireland's potato famine, from 1866 to 1868. As with many other European countries, the latter half of the 19th century saw the development of a deep-rooted nationalist movement - the Fennomen movement. The Finnish language, long suppressed in favour of Swedish, was revived, and nationalist foundation myths, particularly in the form of the national epic the Kalevala, were enthusiastically popularised. Geographically, Karelia, along the Russian border, assumed the kind of significance that the west of Ireland did for Irish cultural identity. In 1899, Sibelius's stirring Finlandia captured and encouraged the mood of heroic resurgence.
Not surprisingly, the Kalevala plays a starring role in the National Gallery of Ireland's eye-opening exhibition of Finnish art of the golden age, Northern Stars and Southern Lights, drawn chiefly from the Ateneum Museum of Art in Helsinki. One of the period's most prominent artists, Akseli Gallen-Kallela, made his own nationalistic statement in his monumental triptych of the Aino myth. The story of Aino is drawn from the first part of the Kalevala. Gallen-Kallela, in fact, made two versions of his triptych. The first, which is included in the exhibition, when he was living in Paris (and found it difficult to find suitably Finnish-looking models) and the second on commission from the Finnish senate, with his Finnish wife as one of the main models. The latter, particularly, was regarded as proving that the character of the Kalevala could be conveyed in painting.
Gallen-Kallela returned to the Kalevala on many occasions, though in an increasingly stylised, art-nouveau manner, as in the comic-book mode of The Defence of the Sampo and Lemminkainen's Mother.
Just as archetypically Finnish is his relatively prosaic, naturalistic In the Sauna. It's at several removes from the archness of his Kalevala works, but it too reflects the distinction, evident in a great deal of what we see in the exhibition, between the distinctively or self-consciously Finnish and the more cosmopolitan or, essentially, Parisian work.
This isn't strictly a question of conservative versus progressive, though for various reasons art with a specific cultural agenda is more likely to be conservative in character. In fact, as with many artists from abroad, including Ireland, who went to study and work in Paris, Gallen-Kallela, Albert Edelfelt and their compatriots did not go so far as to embrace Impressionism, feeling more comfortable with realism. At the same time, they clearly flourished in Paris. Gallen-Kallela painted some remarkable pictures there, including the exceptional, by any standard, Démasquée - not included in Northern Stars - which perfectly encapsulates the relaxation of Lutheran strictures in the bohemian city.
Edelfelt originally set off to Antwerp to study and become a history painter, but gravitated towards Paris and plein-air realism. His sombre, early set-piece Conveying the Child's Coffin apparently enjoys iconic status in Finnish art history. Had he stayed at home he might have followed its lead and become a dutiful though formidable national artist. There was much more to him than that, however. From the superb, mellow Kaukola Ridge at Sunset to Parisian landscapes and ambitious, radiant figure compositions, as well as elegantly attired women, his range is tremendous. When he becomes more staidly allegorical he loses something. Edelfelt was a highly capable painter of remarkable range.
First impressions can be deceptive. Eero Järnefelt was adept at ambitious group figure compositions, such as his much discussed, at the time, Under the Yoke (Burning the Brushwood), in which smoke-blackened workers, men, women and children, dressed in rags, clear land. Yet despite the accusatory gaze of the young girl in the picture, it would be wrong to say that Järnefelt viewed her as a victim or intended to protest about her plight. In the contemporary debate about farming methods, he was an advocate of the conservative and inefficient slash-and-burn process, and politically he was emphatically pro-aristocracy and anti-democratic. The residual halo visible around the girl's head sanctifies the hard physical life she endures.
Järnefelt was capable of making fine, smaller, delicately observed studies from nature or from life, as in his tender portrait of his young son and Pond Water Crowfoot.
NATURE, UNSURPRISINGLY, is prominent in the art of such a vast, sparsely populated country, though landscape is more often than not charged with several layers of meaning, as are Victor Westerholm's fantastic, epic landscapes, for example. Pekka Halonen's paintings, equally, are usually laced with nationalist symbolism. The Short Cut is a beautifully moody landscape in which two women cross a stream via a makeshift arrangement of planking. One looks back at us.
In her landscapes and still lifes, Fanny Churberg has a feeling for drama, devising startling contrasts of colour and tone. Helene Schjerfbeck's domestic still lifes and figure compositions are more measured and serene and very impressive.
Elin Danielson-Gambogi is a particularly fine painter, as the two landscapes included demonstrate, but it is a pity that her superb At the Tea-Table, a study of a young woman smoking a cigarette after a meal, isn't here - it doesn't belong to a public collection, which might explain why.
It might seem odd that the end of the golden age more or less coincides with independence. But the drive towards the establishment of the nation state was not straightforward. First Russia baulked at increasing Finnish claims to autonomy and then, in the chaos of international developments and revolutionary Russia, internal enmities overtook the country, resulting in an extraordinarily bitter and costly civil war. The emergence of a presidential republic, in 1919, was another beginning rather than the end of the story.
Finland's position, poised between German and Russian claims, meant huge troubles ahead. Northern Stars is especially fascinating because of various parallels that can be drawn between Irish and Finnish experience, but apart altogether from that, it is a welcome and richly illuminating exhibition.
Northern Stars and Southern Lights: The Golden Age of Finnish Art 1870-1920National Gallery of Ireland. Admission €7, concessions €4, family ticket €15.
Until Feb 1, 2009 in collaboration with the Ateneum Art Museum, Helsinki. For more see nationalgallery.ie