Important Spring Sale presents Akseli Gallen-Kallela

Akseli Gallen-Kalela

”Logrottan”

In August 1903, the frescos in the Jusélius mausoleum in Pori in Finland were complete. Axel Gallén (from 1907 onwards Akseli Gallen-Kallela) had been working on them for three years. Despite the work being without compare in Finnish fresco painting, following its completion, an artistic vacuum arose and the lack of commissions led to the artist being weighed down by melancholia and financial problems the following year. Furthermore, it became clear that the mausoleum frescoes were more fragile than anticipated and only a year after their completion, some of them had suffered serious damage, which was naturally a blow to both the client and the artist.

Amidst these setbacks, Gallén was in great need of a change of scene and using the fee from the mausoleum and various grants, he travelled via Stockholm, Copenhagen and Berlin to Vienna, where he attended the Wiener Sezession. He was well-received, forged numerous contacts in artistic circles and received constant invitations to parties and events. After a few months, however, carefree city life had taken its toll and his wife Mary received a telegram bearing the words: “If you do not come here, I will come home.”

Mary shortly arrived in Vienna and the couple travelled on to Milan, the Riviera, Monte Carlo and Spain. In Malaga the artist contracted malaria and once he was sufficiently recovered, the journey continued to Paris, after which the couple returned, tired and homeless, to Finland in May 1904.

Despite the worthy effort of providing a home for political refugees, Pirtti was lacking in peace and quiet to work and when the revolutionaries started to hatch increasingly wilder plans, in the late winter of 1906, Gallén fled to Konginkangas, where he and the sharpshooter Pero and another man went hunting lynx. Pero describes Gallén as the original kind of Finnish character; “swearing like Beelzebub himself, but so beautifully that it was enjoyable”. The hunt was unsuccessful but the comradeship and the magnificent setting gave Gallén great satisfaction. The healthy outdoor exercise and the long ski trips are reflected in his paintings of the area, including in the various versions of Logrottan and the detailed studies of it. The artist’s sense of physical wellbeing is reflected in the imagery and fresh, daring and confident impressions give rise to a new sense of colour.

“All day from early morning I have spent my time on skis, the only possible means of progress in the rugged terrain that interests me. Have worked like a horse and now feel as healthy as ever.”

In Gallén’s paintings of the lynx’s lair we can see what was, for him, a typical celebration of nature. He wanted the viewer to also gain a sense of its purity, expansiveness and magnificence, as he saw it. The subject was mainly immortalised outdoors in severe cold, which made demands on the artist’s instinctive confidence as a painter and his ability to adapt to the prevailing conditions. These circumstances can be discerned in the paintings’ pared-down expression and immediate directness, fascinating and enchanting.

To be sold at Important Spring Sale June 8 – 10.

Viewing June 2 – 7, Berzelii Park 1, Stockholm

AuCtion Live June 8 – 10, Arsenalsgatan 2, Stockholm

To the work