Lot 181: Helene Schjerfbeck (1862-1946)

Helene Schjerfbeck (1862-1946)
Kostymbild, eller Bagarens dotter (Costume Picture, or The Baker's Daughter)
signed with the initials 'HS' (centre right)
watercolour and charcoal on paper
16½ x 12 1/8 in. (42 x 30.7 cm.)
Executed circa 1913

Helsinki, Konsthall, Helene Schjerfbeck, Minnesutställning, April - May 1954, no. 54.
Lapinlahti, Arts Centre, Helene Schjerfbeck, October 1983, no. 2.
Helsinki, Ateneum, Helene Schjerfbeck, February - April 1992, no. 204 (illustrated p. 161).
Hamburg, Kunsthalle, Helene Schjerfbeck 1862-1946, February - May 2007, no. 45, p. 161 (illustrated p. 94); this exhibition later travelled to The Hague, Gemeentemuseum and Paris, Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville.

H. Ahtela [Einar Reuter], Helena Schjerfbeck, Helsinki, 1953, no. 347.

Einar Reuter, Helsinki, and thence by descent to the present owners (on loan to the Ateneum, Helsinki).

PROPERTY FROM THE ESTATE OF EINAR REUTER
No VAT will be charged on the hammer price, but VAT at 17.5% will be added to the buyer's premium, which is invoiced on a VAT inclusive basis.
Kostymbild, eller Bagarens dotter, or 'Costume Picture, or the Baker's Daughter' is a sensitive and atmospheric depiction of a seated girl, whose serenity is exquisitely captured by the artist with a unity of line and shading characteristic of Schjerfbeck's unique subtlety of execution. Although line continued to play an important role in her work at the beginning of the 1900s, the relationship between colour and form was beginning to exert itself. Leena Ahtola- Moorhouse, Chief Curator at the Finnish National Gallery Ateneum, Helsinki, believes that the present work was executed circa 1913, rather than circa 1909. This would tally with the linear approach Schjerfbeck has adopted and firmly place it around the time that Schjerfbeck was first approached by Gösta Stenman, who was to become her art dealer and principal promoter. Stenman introduced Schjerfbeck to the work of Marie Laurencin, whose simplicity and grace Schjerfbeck admired.

The bold forms of Kostymbild, eller Bagarens dotter are heightened by the simple palette (which prefigures her later work 'hue in hue') and Schjerfbeck is able to delineate the curve and sweep of her sitter's body through the relationship between the highlighted areas of the face, arms and lower part of the dress. This work relates closely to Costume Picture II (Ateneum 203; Sara Hildén Museum), in which the lower part of the dress is described with intense luminosity, almost dominating the composition and overpowering the dialogue with the rest of the body. In the oil, however, Schjerfbeck has eschewed simplicity for description and it is, by consequence, less strong compositionally than the present work. At first glance a simple rendition of her subject, Schjerfbeck's restraint in this work belies a complex and highly structured composition. In its beautiful elegance Kostymbild, eller Bagarens dotter achieves a sense of calm and serenity through contrast and subtlety.

The model for the present work can be identified as Taimi Lilja (see fig. 1, where she is seated at the centre, next to Irene Lintumäki, the model for Reading Girl, lot 182). Schjerfbeck's ability to portray her sitter's character with the minimum of exquisitely rendered detail is extraordinary. The baker's daughter has a very strongly defined profile, a bold line that complements the more softly defined hair and background shading.

The present work was owned by Schjerfbeck's great friend and supporter Einar Reuter (1881-1968). Reuter wrote two biographies on Helene Schjerfbeck in the 1950s under the pseudonym H. Ahtela. A state forester, as well as a writer and artist, Reuter first visited Schjerfbeck in Hyvinkää in 1915 and in 1917 he and Gösta Stenman organised Schjerfbeck's first solo exhibition at Stenman's gallery in Helsinki. Reuter and Schjerfbeck became life-long friends and, as an ardent admirer of her work, Reuter was able to acquire some of her most important pictures.