L13101

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Lot 206
  • 206

Albert Edelfelt

Estimate
350,000 - 450,000 GBP
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Description

  • Albert Edelfelt
  • The Boys' Workhouse, Helsinki
  • signed and dated Edelfelt 85 lower centre
  • oil on canvas
  • 45 by 55cm., 17¾ by 21¾in.

Provenance

Count C. M. Creutz, Åbo (acquired from the artist at the 1885 Finnish Art Society Exhibition)
Sale: Bukowski's, Stockholm, 4-5 December 1914, lot 30
Gösta Fraenckel, Gothenburg (by 1942)
Sale: Bukowski's, Stockholm, 28 October 1985, lot 9
Purchased at the above sale by the present owner

Exhibited

Helsinki, Edelfelt Exhibition, 1885
Paris, Galerie Georges Petit, Exposition de la Société Internationale de peintres et de sculpteurs, 1885, no. 43
Helsinki, Riddarhuset, Finnish Art Society Exhibition, 1885, no. 64 (Edelfelt was awarded Gold Medal and judged to be Finland's greatest painter)
Punkaharju, Retretti, Albert Edelfelt (1854-1905), 1983, no. 51 (as Interiör från Arbetshemmet för gossar i Helsingfors)
Helsinki, Ateneum; Stockholm, Prins Eugens Waldemarsudde: Albert Edelfelt, 2004-05, no. 101 (Helsinki), no. 35 (Stockholm), illustrated in the catalogues

Literature

Finland, 28 May 1885
J. J. Tikkanen in Finsk Tidskrift, 1885, I, p. 394
Bertel Hintze, Albert Edelfelt, Helsinki, 1942, vol. I, p. 168, illustrated; vol. III, p. 71, no. 321, catalogued (titled Interiör från Arbetshemmet för gossar i Helsingfors)
Marina Catani, Kansankuvausta ja työnteon iloa, Eino Valtosen kokoelma, Rauma, 2009, p. 33

Condition

The canvas has not been lined. There is a handful of tiny scattered spots of paint flaking in the dark pigments of the fabric which the boy is sewing in the lower left quadrant, which appear to be stable. Ultraviolet light reveals only a minor circa 0.5 by 3cm horizontal stroke of retouching at the end of the table to the left. This painting is in very good condition and ready to hang. Held in an elaborate gilt period frame, probably the original. The colours are considerably less orange-red in reality than in the catalogue illustration, and cleaner.
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

Catalogue Note

In The Boys' Workhouse, Helsinki of 1885, Edelfelt beautifully pays tribute both to the youth of Finland, and also to his friend Jules Bastien-Lepage, whose untimely death the previous year had sent shockwaves through the contemporary art world.

The painting depicts an interior at Tarkk'ampujankatu 14, where young poor boys, who might otherwise have slipped into delinquency and criminality, were taken in and encouraged to learn a trade. Studying them in their new occupations, sewing, darning, and stitching, Edelfelt fills his work with optimism for the boys' new future, rescued from the street thanks to the social mission of the workhouse, funded by the city's counsellors, banks and Anniskelluyhtio.

Having honed his skills as a painter of historical subjects first at the Art Society in Helsinki and later in Antwerp, Edelfelt moved to Paris where he fell under the spell of the 'new painting' - notably the plein air naturalism of Bastien-Lepage (fig. 1), and also of the Impressionists, who held their first group show the year of his arrival in 1874. From this point on, Edelfelt developed a new aesthetic, drawing on everyday subjects painted in a luminous, bravura palette, and culminating in his most impressionistic painting of all, In the Luxembourg Gardens, Paris (1887, Helsinki, Ateneum).

Though embracing a style he had encountered abroad and although Parisian subjects and landscapes became central to his œuvre, Edelfelt never lost touch with his Finnish roots. In common with his seminal 1879 oil A Child's Funeral Journey, the present work draws on a subject closer to home and intimately familiar to him. With Russia tightening its grip on Finland, in his own form of protest Edelfelt took up patriotic subjects, in this case Finland's children and its future, as can also be seen in the second work Edelfelt exhibited at Galerie Georges Petit in 1885 (fig.  2). His approach was shared by contemporary fellow Finns Eero Järnefelt, Helene Schjerfbeck, and Akseli Gallen-Kallela who, like Edelfelt, trained in Paris and whose paintings from the 1880s and 1890s bear striking similarities to his.

A preparatory drawing for the present work is in the collection of the Ateneum, while the oil sketch is in the collection of the Åbo Akademi. It was also published as a print.