Eero Järnefelt

Biography

In the summer of 1893 Järnefelt travelled around Finland with a sketchbook and a camera, drawing peasants at work. Out of these sketches grew “Under the Yoke” (“Burning the Brushwood”, in Finnish Kaski), which is usually called his main painting.

He was born on 8 November 1863 in Vyborg, soon after his family had moved there from St Petersburg. His father, Alexander Järnefelt, was an army officer, later a lieutenant general, governor and senator; his mother, Elisabeth, née Clodt von Jürgensburg, came from St Petersburg and was a niece of the sculptor Peter Clodt. Of his eight brothers and sisters, the best known are the writer Arvid, the composer and conductor Armas, and Aino, the wife of Jean Sibelius. The family spoke Swedish but supported the Finnish national movement.

He studied painting at the drawing school of the Finnish Art Society in Helsinki in 1874–1878. In 1881 he finished a private Finnish-language school, and in 1883–1886 he studied at the Imperial Academy of Arts in St Petersburg. Among his teachers was his maternal uncle, the landscape painter Mikhail Clodt; the name of Pavel Chistyakov is also given. In St Petersburg Järnefelt grew close to Ilya Repin and Sergei Korovin, and exhibited with the Wanderers (Peredvizhniki, a society of artists who organised their own exhibitions). From 1886 to 1888 he worked at the Académie Julian in Paris under Tony Robert-Fleury. The strongest influence on him was the Naturalism of Jules Bastien-Lepage. In 1889 he married the actress Saimi Swan. In the same year he took part in an exhibition of Russian and Finnish artists in St Petersburg and won a medal at the Exposition Universelle in Paris; he won a second medal there in 1900. In 1892, together with the writer Juhani Aho and his wife, the painter Venny Soldan-Brofeldt, he made his first trip to the Koli area in North Karelia. He kept returning until 1936 and painted many views of the place, for example “Autumn Landscape from Pielisjärvi” (1899). At home, by Lake Tuusula, he called the Sarvikallio rock “Little Koli”. In 1894 he represented the nobility at the Diet, in 1894–1895 he travelled to Italy, and in 1899 to the Crimea, and he helped organise an international exhibition in St Petersburg held by Mir Iskusstva, the “World of Art” group.

“Under the Yoke” (1893) was painted after his trip through the villages. It seems to me important that for Finnish painting of the time such a view was rare: country life here is not prettified, and the sharp, almost Repin-like manner recalls contemporary Russian art. The painting “The Master and the Farmhands” appeared at about the same time. Subjects from popular life appear in other works too: “Boat from Savo” (1888), “Playing Children” (1895), “Coming Home from the Fair” (1903).

His portrait sitters were people from cultural and public life: “Mathilda Wrede” (1896), “Juhani Aho” (1906), the Regent Mannerheim (1922), the artist’s son Heikki (1897). He illustrated books, among them editions of Juhani Aho, and worked extensively in printmaking: 73 impressions and 92 prints in all are known, mostly on themes of nature, views of Koli, friends and family.

In 1901, to a design by the architect Usko Nyström, he built the house and studio “Suviranta” (“Summer Beach”) on the shore of Lake Tuusula. The family lived there all year round until 1917, then moved to Helsinki, and the house remains in the hands of his descendants.

From 1902 to 1928 he taught drawing at the University of Helsinki, and in 1912 he received the title of professor. He was a member and chairman of the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts. In 1916 and 1920 he painted two compositions for the university’s ceremonial hall; both were destroyed in the bombing of Helsinki in February 1944. In 1911, with two collaborators, he painted a fresco of a Koli view for the restaurant at the railway station in Helsinki.

His last major works were altarpieces: “Awakening Hope” for the church in Raahe (1926) and a painting for St John’s Church in Helsinki (1932). Järnefelt died on 15 November 1937 in Helsinki and was buried in Hietaniemi Cemetery. A memorial designed by the sculptor Väinö Aaltonen was unveiled on 23 April 1939.