A Sea View

A major protagonist of the Finnish “Golden Age” of painting—about 1880 to about 1910—Hugo Simberg painted Symbolist fantasies inspired by Finnish folklore, in addition to portraits and landscapes. Here, the artist depicts a vista of Vyborg Bay, which is located at the northeast end of the Gulf of Finland in the Baltic Sea. For almost his entire life Simberg spent his summers on the coast at Niemenlautta, his family’s summer residence Virolahti (Pitkäpaasi), near Viipuri (also known as Vyborg in Swedish). The artist even built a studio facing the sea.

The glittering light on the water and the evergreen tree rising above the horizon line, as well as the Symbolist features of the painting such as the clouds with their extraordinary “tails,” the burnt down fire on the beach, and the enigmatic footprints in the foreground, all endow the composition with an air of mystery.

Simberg’s A Sea View is the first painting by a Finnish artist to enter the collection of the Toledo Museum of Art.