Self-Portrait

The role of a dandyish aesthete was not particularly common in Finnish art of the early 20th century. Undoubtedly the most famous dandy of the period was Valle Rosenberg. His Self-Portrait presents a proud youth who shows his aloofness from mundanity by crossing his arms and turning to the side. His downward look of contempt and the rather ethereal pattern in the background reveal that the young man's thoughts are on a higher plane. This aloofness in Rosenberg's self-portrait is an essential characteristic of the dandy, because an aesthete's attitude to life was inevitably that of the outsider who under no circumstances would allow his self-assurance to be undermined, but rather to undermine that of others.