Old Woman in a White Bonnet

Karl Emanuel Jansson was Åland's gift to Finnish art. His life was sadly cut short by tuberculosis before he turned 28, but by then he had already become a master at portraying the life of the Finnish people. Jansson came from a peasant family. He became a student of R.W. Ekman in Turku before moving on to complete a degree at the Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm 1862-1867. He received occasional financial support from the Finnish Art Society but was forced to live in meagre conditions. He also suffered from bad self-esteem. Upon his graduation, Jansson had already begun flourishing in the arts but decided to continue his studies in Düsseldorf, which was considered the place to be for genre painting at the time. He showed a preference for painting scenes from a little boy's life, perhaps a sign of longing back to the happy world of childhood.