Lot 354: Helene Schjerfbeck (1862-1946)

Helene Schjerfbeck (1862-1946)
White Roses [Vita rosor]
signed with the initials 'HS' (lower left)
oil on canvas laid down on board
20½ x 16½ in. (52 x 42 cm.)
Painted in 1922

Gothenburg, Nordisk Konst, 1923, no. 118; the Finnish section of this exhibition later travelled to Helsinki, Stenman Gallery, November 1923.
Helsinki, Konsthall, Helene Schjerfbeck, Minnesutställning, April - May 1954, no. 103.
Stockholm, Prins Eugens Waldemarsudde, Helene Schjerfbeck, September - November 1987, no. 50; this exhibition later travelled to Gothenburg, Göteborgs Konstmuseum and Oslo, Kunstnernes Hus.
Helsinki, Ateneum, Helene Schjerfbeck, February - April 1992, no. 315 (illustrated full page in the catalogue p. 211).
Hyvinkää, Art Museum, Helene Schjerfbeck, Muutoksen vuodet ('The Years of Change') 1902-1925, November 2001 - March 2002.

H. Ahtela, Helena Schjerfbeck, Helsingfors, 1953, no. 562.

Dr Erkki Calonius, Hyvinkää, by whom acquired from the artist in 1922, and thence by descent to the present owner.

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Helene Schjerfbeck's still-lifes are perhaps the greatest expression of her unfettered genius in her entire oeuvre. Although reasonably uncommon in her work - she greatly preferred the possibilities inherent in depicting the human face - Schjerfbeck painted still-lifes throughout her career, seeing them more as a pastime compared to her more usual motifs. Her early still-lifes from the 1890s are free and natural in technique and she continued to explore the possibilities of this genre throughout her life, creating some of her most daring and innovative work. The reduction of discernible form applied to a flower painting allowed Schjerfbeck a total and unbridled freedom that one seldom finds in her figure pictures or landscapes. In turn, this allowed her to fully explore and develop the synthesis of colour and form. White Roses (Vita rosor), painted in 1922, is a superb example of this artistic freedom in Schjerfbeck's work.

The present work was painted while Schjerfbeck was living in Hyvinkää, a twenty-year period of creativity which represents the very formation and development of Schjerfbeck's individual style. As she moved towards abstraction, an endless process of simplification and condensing of her pictorial language, line ceased to play such a large part in her compositions, replaced instead by the relationship between surface and colour, a concern that preoccupied her to such an extent that she had complained in a letter to Maria Wiik in 1914 that 'I don't know how to draw anymore'.

White Roses displays a remarkable sensitivity to the relationship between colour and form that is characteristic of Schjerfbeck's most successful compositions from the 1920s and 1930s, as well as a subtlety of nuance that foreshadows her obsession with colour in the late 1920s. One of the most striking aspects of White Roses is its arresting luminosity; Schjerfbeck's flowers seem to glow from within much like her fruit in Green Apples and Champagne Glass from 1934 (Ateneum 405) or The Pear from 1925-1926 (Ateneum 333). This luminosity is a powerful and important tool in Schjerfbeck's oeuvre and one that is used to great effect as visual highlights in some of her most important compositions - the light hitting the tree trunks in the Shadow on the Wall series; the light under The Door of 1884 (Ateneum 82); the collars and sparing dabs of pure white on Mans in The Motorist series; the woman's entire dress in The Tapestry (1914-1916; Ateneum 235).

As Lena Holger writes, it was as early as 1915 that Schjerfbeck first decided to execute a painting 'hue in hue', that is to say, depicting the motif in the same colour as the background. This is what allows Schjerfbeck to explore the tonal varieties of the subject in White Roses and makes it such a tour de force of colour. Writing in 1915, Schjerfbeck herself stated that 'if you paint just in one hue everything has to be done at the same time'. In its freshness and spontaneity one could well believe that White Roses was perfected in a short space of time, a method so alien to the constant reworking that characterises many of her compositions.

Towards the end of her life, Schjerfbeck was once again to explore this challenging but satisfying method of application, in her final self-portrait in oil, Self-portrait, Light and Shadow of 1946 (Ateneum 500). Executed almost entirely in subtle variations of green, it displays the same preoccupations of flatness and depth as the present work, both depicting in their own way a simple, haunting image of mortality, albeit that White Roses presents an altogether more accessible motif.

The present painting was acquired directly from Schjerfbeck by Dr Erkki Calonius (1881-1936) the same year it was painted and has remained in the same family ever since. Dr Calonius was a good friend and supporter of Schjerfbeck and one of her earliest patrons, owning some forty paintings and watercolours by her. He settled in Hyvinkää in 1914 as the company doctor for a textile company and later became the community doctor. Calonius was well respected but his patients did not appreciate the art (by local Hyvinkää artists Schjerfbeck, Sallinen and Ruokokoski) on the walls of his waiting room. In 1915 Calonius took his six year old daughter Kaarina to Schjerfbeck to sit as a model (Ateneum 251 & 252) and she later painted Calonius' son Boris (Ateneum 286 & 287) and his wife Adelina (Masquerade, 1923, Ateneum 316 & 317).

Helene Schjerfbeck, Green apples and Champagne glass, 1934, Ateneum, Helsinki
DACS 2010