Albert Edelfelt: 7 works

'Albert Edelfelt went to study abroad, first to Antwerp and then in 1874 to Paris, with the express intent of becoming a painter of historical scenes. Towards the end of the 1870s, however, his ideals changed: he became a friend of Jules Bastien-Lepage and an advocate of plein-air realism.'

'The beloved Queen Bianca stemmed from Albert Edelfelt's longstanding dream of illustrating Finnish history.'

'He decided that his next work for the Paris Salon had to be painted completely from nature. He created this painting at Haikko near Porvoo.'

'The place where Albert Edelfelt created most of his paintings of ordinary Finnish people was his summer studio in Haikko. For him, the local people of Uusimaa were quite sufficient to represent the whole of the nation.'

'Yet surprisingly, this is the only large-scale work depicting Paris that he ever made. It is also unusual among his larger paintings in that he adopted many of the hallmarks of Impressionism in it, such as using complementary colours to create contrast.'

'Edelfelt's unconventional Christ and Mary Magdalene, a Finnish Legend, set on the forested shoreline of a Finnish lake, shows Jesus dressed in peasant shoes plaited from strips of birch-bark, confronted by a pleading Magdalene in ethnic dress.'

'The winding trail of sunlight, wind and water across the surface of the lake could also be interpreted as a result of Edelfelt's admiration for Japanese ornamentation. He worked particularly on capturing that lingering yet brief golden moment before the sun disappears below the horizon.'