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"Self-Portrait, 1912"
Oil on Canvas, 43.5 x 42 cm
Helene schjerfbeck, 1912
Though she is relatively unknown in the United States, I have admired the work of Helene Schjerfbeck for years. Imagine my excitement when I learned that the Metropolitan Museum was mounting the first ever retrospective in the US devoted to her work. Cause for a trip to New York! And the exhibit did not disappoint. It's one thing to look at reproductions in a book, but quite another to see the paintings in person.
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| "Still-life in Green" Oil on Canvas, 33.5 x 50 cm. Helene Schjerfbeck, 1930 |
The difference is especially notable with a painter like Schjerfbeck, whose work involves a lot of textural manipulation. Schjerfbeck chose different textures of canvas for different effects. She did a lot of back-and-forth work, putting down paint and then scraping it off. The result is a painting that is "alive", and that shows the hand of the artist and the process of developing the painting. In many cases (see above) the raw canvas is left showing through and is incorporated into the motif.
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| "Red Apples" Oil on Canvas, 40.5 x 40.5 cm Helene Schjerfbeck, 1915 |
Perhaps my favorite painting was the one just below, "Fragment". As the wall copy at the Met notes, Schjerfbeck would have seen Renaissance frescoes in Italy a few years before painting this painting, and the abraded surface calls to mind the deterioration of frescoes wrought by time. Besides the surface quality, I love the tenderness of this image, so vulnerable. In person, it practically glows.
"Fragment"
Oil on Canvas, 31.5 x 34 cm
Helene Schjerfbeck, 1904I love Schjerfbeck's minimalism, and avoidance of details. She wrote to a friend, "Let us avoid executing so precisely and exactly that our work closes the way instead of opening it. Let us IMPLY." A woman after my own heart.
"At Home (Mother Sewing)"
Oil on Canvas, 86.5 x 62.3 cm
Helene Schjerfbeck, 1903The exhibit at the Met closed on April 5, 2026, but you can still get the catalog on Amazon here. Well worth a look!
