Choose from a selected group of artists represented in the exhibition A Mirror of Nature: Nordic Landscape Painting 1840-1910.

Akseli Gallen-Kallela (Gallén until 1907)
Pori 1865 - Stockholm 1931, Finnish

Akseli Gallén grew up in a moderately wealthy Swedish-speaking family in Tyrvää in inland Finland. While still at school, he enrolled in the drawing school of the Finnish Art Society in 1878, and in 1881 he focused solely on art. He studied at the drawing school until 1884 and also privately with S.A. Keinänen, Adolf von Becker and Albert Edelfelt. In autumn 1884, he went to Paris to study with A.W. Bouguereau and T.R. Fleury at the Académie Julian.

While in Paris (1884-89) Gallén acquired influences from the radical ideas of the Scandinavian naturalists. One of his early idols was Jules Bastien-Lepage. Gallén made his début at the Paris Salon in 1886. His realism was not understood in Finland, but thanks to his talent he had no problem in gaining grants. He married in 1890 and travelled to Dvina Karelia with his wife Mary and the Swedish artist Count Louis Sparre with the aim of creating illustrations for the Finnish national epic, the Kalevala. In 1891, he was invited to become a member of the Salon de Champ de Mars. His Kalevala-based, realistically executed Aino triptych was completed the same year. In 1892, he travelled again to Karelia and began to adopt a more synthetist style in the gouache painting The Great Black Woodpecker.

Around 1894, Gallén began to introduce allegorical symbolism, often focusing on the mystery of life and art. He also began to build a wilderness studio in Ruovesi in the National Romantic style. Hugo Simberg came to study with Gallén in Ruovesi, which was also where Gallén launched the graphic arts in Finland practically single-handed. Gallén spent the beginning of 1895 in Berlin, where his synthetist idiom found its final form, and gave a joint exhibition with Edvard Munch. He was at the peak of his creative powers in the late 1890s, creating the Kalevala paintings that have since become national icons. He studied fresco painting in Italy in 1898 and applied the results in his Kalevala-based ceiling frescos for the Finnish pavilion at the Paris World Exhibition in 1900 and for the Juselius mausoleum in Pori in 1902. He participated in the Russo-Finnish exhibition in St Petersburg in 1898 and in the international exhibition of Mir iskusstva magazine in 1899. At the Paris World Exhibition, he received gold and silver medals in two categories each.

In 1907, the "Die Bröcke' group invited Gallen-Kallela to become an active member, and he participated in the group's first exhibition. In 1909-10, he travelled to British East Africa, where he experimented with Fauvism and Expressionism. This was the end of his career as an innovative artist. During the Civil War following Finland's independence, Gallen-Kallela was engaged on special duties under the Commander-in-Chief of the White army, General C.G. Mannerheim, and after the war he continued as aide-de-camp while Mannerheim was regent. During this period, he designed a large number of official insignia.

The Great Black Woodpecker, Akseli Gallen-Kallela, 1892-94

Akseli Gallen-Kallela
Finnish, 1865-1931
The Great Black Woodpecker, 1892-94


Imatra in Winter, Akseli Gallen-Kallela, 1893

Akseli Gallen-Kallela
Finnish, 1865-1931
Imatra in Winter, 1893


Lake Keitele, Akseli Gallen-Kallela, 1905

Akseli Gallen-Kallela
Finnish, 1865-1931
Lake Keitele, 1905