Maria Wiik

Biography

In 1881 the Paris Salon accepted a portrait painted by Maria Wiik: it showed her sister Hilda. The picture is small, like almost everything Wiik made. She painted few large canvases, and the biggest of them, “Bad Conscience” (1886), is only 128 × 81 cm.

She was born in Helsinki (then Helsingfors, in the Grand Duchy of Finland) on 3 August 1853; 2 August is also given. Her father, Jean (Johan) Wiik, was an architect in the province of Uusimaa. Maria grew up in the Brunnsparken district, attended a Swedish-language girls’ school, and then studied drawing with Adolf von Becker. In 1874 she studied at the drawing school of the Finnish Art Society, and in 1874–1875 she was also a private pupil of Severin Falkman. In 1875 she went to Paris. Women were not admitted to the École des Beaux-Arts, and Wiik worked with Tony Robert-Fleury at the Académie Julian, one of the few private schools that took women. In the autumn her father died, and she returned to Finland. New journeys followed: a second trip to Paris is dated to 1877–1880; in 1879 she travelled to Normandy with the painter Amélie Lundahl, with whom she also spent the winter of 1881–1882 in Paris. In 1880 she spent a whole school year as a substitute teacher at the drawing school in Helsinki. Her early portraits were shown at the Paris Salon at that time.

In 1881 she produced a series of small paintings with a more psychological atmosphere and many minute details. The chronology of her later journeys is uncertain, and I would not undertake to lay it out year by year. What is known is that with her friend Helene Schjerfbeck she worked in Paris, notably with Puvis de Chavannes, went to Brittany, lived in St Ives in England and visited the Exposition Universelle in Paris. Alone, in 1895, she travelled to Italy. Her friendship with Schjerfbeck is thought to have influenced her manner strongly: her work gained psychological precision and mood. The 1880s are regarded as Wiik’s best period.

Her best-known painting, “Out into the World” (“Maailmalle”), of 1889, is in the Ateneum. In 1900 she won a bronze medal for it at the Exposition Universelle in Paris, and in 1905 it was included in Walter Shaw Sparrow’s book “Women Painters of the World”. Earlier, in 1885, Wiik had received the ducat prize of the Finnish Art Society and an honourable mention at the General Art Exhibition in Helsinki.

In 1896 her sister Hilda died; from then on a sadness is noticeable in Wiik’s pictures. In 1905 she took part in the first exhibition of women artists at the Ateneum and in the same year visited Paris for the last time. She spent the rest of her life in Helsinki. Her eyesight weakened, and in her last years an eye disease at times made work impossible and affected the quality of her paintings; in 1925 she had an eye operation. Her last works are dated to about 1923, when she was also granted an artist’s pension.

Maria Wiik died on 19 June 1928 in Helsinki. She is buried in Hietaniemi Cemetery, in the Krohn family grave. In 1929 a memorial exhibition of her work was held at the Kunsthalle in Helsinki, and in 2000 museums in Hämeenlinna and Oulu showed her paintings. In 1954 Pia Katerma’s doctoral dissertation on her work was published.