Helene Schjerfbeck

Helsinki, Art House, Helena Schjerfbeck Memorial Exhibition, 1980, no. 5

H. Athela (Einar Reuter), Helena Schjerfbeck, Stockholm, 1953, p. 356, no. 56, catalogued (as Linbårig gosse, dated circa 1880)
Helene Schjerfbeck: Finland's Modernist Revisited, exh. cat., Helsinki, 1992, p. 110, no. 34, catalogued & illustrated (dated circa 1880)
Helene Schjerfbeck 150 Years, exh. cat., Helsinki, 2012, p. 90, no. 23, catalogued & illustrated (dated circa 1878)

The artist's canvas has not been lined, and appears to have been put on a slightly larger stretcher which has a wooden strip attached to the outer edge at one side. There are scattered signs of frame rubbing at the extreme edges, and a pattern of stable hairline craquelure in the boy's face. The composition appears to have been completed around the edges at a later stage, probably by Schjerfbeck herself. This work is in good condition and could benefit from a light surface clean if desired. Presented in a simple gilt frame.
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Dated circa 1880 by Einar Reuter, but perhaps painted as early as 1878 when Schjerfbeck was just sixteen years old and studying with Adolf von Becker in Helsinki, this charming portrait exemplifies the artist's early work and her precocious talent, following her admission to the Academy at the age of just eleven. While the identity of the boy is unknown, his pale blond hair and blue eyes could almost make him a younger brother to The Wounded Warrior in The Snow, Schjerfbeck's breakthrough work of 1880, and the boy's features and innocent expression anticipate the young girl from St Ives in The Convalescent of 1888. Perhaps most strikingly of all, the pink of the boy's shirt, painted freely wet-on-wet, would reappear in a number of Schjerfbeck's late works as the background colour in Self-Portrait with Black Mouth of 1939 (Didrichsen Art Museum, Helsinki), or as the colour of the veil in Madonna de la Charité, after El Greco of 1941 (Private Collection), suggesting she recognised personal significance in the colour at a very early stage.