Albert Edelfelt

Purchased at Bukowski's Stockholm in December 1915 by the great-grandfather of the present owner; thence by descent

Original canvas. There are scattered spots of retouching, mainly to the trees behind the figure, and some small flecks of paint loss to the girl's kerchief and neck, and some frame abrasion mainly visible to the right, upper right and left edges, but the work is in overall good condition. Held in a wide, bronze-painted moulded plaster and wood frame.
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A recently re-discovered work, Edelfelt's depiction of the little girl in the present oil painting played a seminal role in the artist's two most important paintings of the period: A Child's Funeral Journey and Going to the Christening painted in 1879 and 1880 respectively (figs. 1 & 2). In both works she is the central and pivotal figure; the very soul of each composition.

According to Marina Catani and Tuulikki Kilpinen who have recently examined Fio in the Woods, the colour of the girl's blouse and scarf was originally not pink and white but a dark blue. This discovery sheds a fascinating light on both how Edelfelt conceived the work and his purpose for it. With the sitter's clothes initially painted in dark colours, it seems very likely that he first used the present study from life to establish the pose and the colour tones of the girl for A Child's Funeral in which the grieving child is depicted wearing a dark blue scarf and dress. Thereafter, he then repainted the dress pink and the scarf white (as the work is now) to determine for himself how she would appear in The Christening painted the following year.
  
Baptised Sofia, but nicknamed Fio, the little girl lived in a labourer's cottage near Edelfelt's home, Haikko Manor near Porvoo, together with her mother and two brothers Anttu and Janne, both of whom also modelled for the artist. Edelfelt describes the girl's lowly upbringing and simple life by including the cottage among trees in the background of the composition, touches of Realism that reflect Edelfelt's debt to the work of Bastien-Lepage with whom he had studied in Paris in the early 1870s.

FIG. 1, Albert Edelfelt, A Child's Funeral Journey, Ateneum, Helsinki
 
FIG. 2, Albert Edelfelt, Going to the Christening, Ateneum, Helsinki