Creating the Self: Emancipating Woman in Estonian & Finnish Art

There are various historical reasons for this institutional exclusion.

For centuries, women’s opportunities to acquire an art education and work in the field of art were significantly more limited than those of men.

As a result, women artists preferred, or were forced to concentrate on, certain genres, e.g. portraits, still lifes and landscapes, and this created the idea of a specific and less valuable “woman art”.

And yet, a large part of the material in this exhibition confirms that women artists were not passive victims in a society ruled by men.

The fact that women became artists and rejected the lifestyle expected of them created opportunities for self-development and for using art as a means of expressing the way they experienced the world.

The goal of the exhibition is to highlight the development of the self-awareness of women artists, and their means of adapting to art processes.

The exhibition has been organised in collaboration with the Ateneum Art Museum in Helsinki.

A comparison of Estonian and Finnish women artists enriches the exhibition and provides an opportunity to draw parallels.

Artworks by women artists with Baltic-German, Estonian, Finnish and Finnish-Swedish backgrounds intersect, and take viewers to St Petersburg, Düsseldorf, Paris and Rome, in addition to various places in Estonia and Finland.

Copying, besides being a way for them to acquire professional skills, also enabled women artists to earn a living.

Among other things, copies by the Finnish artists Helene Schjerfbeck, Ida Silfverberg and Venny Soldan-Brofeldt, and by the Baltic-German women artists Elsbeth Rudolff, Alexandrine von Wistinghausen and others showed the changing artistic ideals.

As the developing idea of true-to-life art replaced an appetite for antiquity and the Renaissance, an interest in the Old Masters of the Netherlands and Spain also increased.

Since, for a long time, women had no access to nude painting classes at the art academies, the greatest obstacle to dealing with historical painting was the lack of skill in depicting the naked body.

Therefore, the student works completed by Sally von Kügelgen at the St Petersburg Art Academy between 1880 and 1885 stand out for the excellent artistic level and for their exceptional subject matter.

Figure drawing also formed the basis for the teaching at the Pallas Art School, which opened in Tartu in 1919, and was one of the first manifestations and measures of the talent of female students.

This made it possible to apply the sensibilities inherent in femininity to the pursuit of creative goals.

There were several wonderful still life painters, such as Julie Hagen, Marie Dücker, Olga von der Pahlen and Lilly Walther, among the Baltic-German female artists.

The wonderful execution of paintings by artists who worked in various genres, as well as their fidelity to nature, were very appealing.

Many women studied at drawing schools in Turku and Helsinki, although few dared become professional artists.

As women who had chosen careers as artists, they had to maintain a balance between the expectations and limitations associated with their gender and their professional goals and personal wishes.

The painters who started to impact the Finnish art scene in the 1880s were united by their self-awareness, dedication to the profession and exceptional solidarity.

Art studies and the wish for self-realisation took them to Stockholm, the large art cities in Germany, Paris, Bretagne and Italy.

Coming into contact with the trends of “plein air” painting, naturalism and modern art helped elucidate the daring contemporary art ideas of the painters who started working in the final decade of the 19th century.

In an exhibition review that appeared in 1888, a critic used the term Damenwelt (ladies’ world) to describe the artists.

The approximately 50 talented women included the painters Lydia von Ruckteschell, Sally von Kügelgen, Alexandrine von Wistinghausen and Magda Zoege von Manteuffel.

However, the younger Baltic-German female artists were not acknowledged for their special “feminine” art strategy.

Instead, they were primarily appreciated for their ability to succeed in the field of contemporary professional art.

As the talented daughter of the artist August Hagen, she was first taught by her father, and continued her studies in the galleries and private studios of Dresden and Munich.

The time she spent in Rome and its environs between 1851 and 1854 marked the expansion of her scope from portraiture to landscape painting and the depiction of folk types.

After marrying Ludwig Schwarz, who was later Professor of Astronomy at the University of Tartu, the artist returned to Tartu, and worked primarily as a portrait painter and art teacher.

The painter’s creative arc reflected the fast-changing artistic trend, from a detailed Biedermeier-style realism to a true-to-life treatment of nature.

In 1858, the artist received the title of Academician from the St Petersburg Academy of Arts.

A self-aware and “androgynous” female type who resembled the artist herself often powerfully stood out in her work.

Luts studied at the Pallas Art School in Tartu and continued her studies in Paris and Rome.

Her works are characterised by unique imagery, which includes both religious motifs and women active in real-life situations.

Luts was one of the most consistent cultivators of the self-portrait genre; her paintings and drawings depict the artist in various roles and situations.

In 1944, Luts emigrated to Sweden. 

Children’s portraits were often commissions that were considered most suitable for women artists.

While most of the works by women artists involved active dialogues with the changing world and topical art trends, children’s portraits were characterised by permanency: an attempt to convey tenderness, affection, sincerity and intimacy.

These pictures demonstrated another perspective, one which was often overshadowed by the one that dominated the world.

Women in front of mirrors, women reading and women as artists were motifs that appeared with equal frequency.

On the other hand, few men’s portraits could be found among the oeuvre of women artists; usually they were commissions or portraits of family members.

While women’s lives were often dependent on the rules established by men, art represented an area of freedom.

It was a means of self-characterisation and emancipation which reflected and depicted what was happening in the artists’ surroundings.

At the instigation of Louise Rebenitz’s handicrafts school, the Applied Art Studio and many other associations, schools and studios, women acquired excellent skills and started to impact the appearance of the living environment.

Many women artists studied in St Petersburg in the art school established by Baron A. Stieglitz.

The curriculum of this applied art school formed the main breeding ground for Estonian applied artists, i.e. the Tallinn (later State) School of Arts and Crafts, which was founded in 1914 and operated under several names.

In the period between the two world wars, the artists who had studied at the school opened their own studios, and successfully fulfilled commissions from a handicrafts company, Nikolai Langebraun’s porcelain factory, Eduard Taska’s ornamental leatherwork company, Lorup’s glass factory, Karl Haupt’s fine leather factory and the Savi company.

Thus, two different female types lived side-by-side in art at that time.

The figure of the battling working woman was balanced by heroines from the bourgeois world: beauties looking in mirrors, ladies in cafés and fragile muses.

The modern woman of that time often had bobbed hair and wore “androgynous” clothing, as well as smoking cigarettes, which became a symbol of gender equality and emancipation.

In art, the theme of the modern woman intertwined with new art trends: Expressionism, Art Deco and New Objectivity.

Urban life, which was sometimes depicted grotesquely, reflected the changed relationships of the sexes, among other things.

Often women depicted, or even provided detailed documentations, of their own living environments.

The treatment of space became especially multi-faceted in the works that establish a dialogue between interiors and the outside world.

Space was not simply a place devoid of humans, but, through everyday details (e.g. shadows, doors ajar, windows and solitary static figures) became emotional, narrative and dramatic.

The depiction of living environments reflected the gradual enlargement of the space that women could operate in and the expansion of their spatial perception.

Among other things, emancipation also meant creating space for themselves.

By intertwining Art Nouveau and Expressionism, these works served as emotional forerunners of the art that reflected the anxious times during and after World War II.

Women and children, who demonstrate the fragility of people caught in the whirlwind of great historical events, were often used in art to express anguish and a sense of loneliness.