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Akseli Gallen-Kallela

1865-1931

The Renaissance Man of Finnish Art

Akseli Gallen-Kallela, 1906.

A Biographical Outline

April 26, 1865

Axel Waldemar Gallén (after 1907 Akseli Gallen-Kallela) is born in the town of Pori on Finland’s western coast. His father, Peter Wilhelm Gallén (1817-1879), works at a bank bulove and re" Anna Mathilda Gallén (1832-1922).

1867-1876

Gallén’s grows up on a farm in Tyrvää, 50 kilometers west of Pori, where his father owns 150 hectares of enclosed pastures and cultivated land. He learns Finnish from the farmhands employed at the Jaatsi estate, but speaks Swedish with his upper middleclass parents.

The main building at the Jaatsi estate, constructed 1867-68.

1876

Axel moves with his brothers Uno and Walter to Helsinki where the boys are enrolled at a Swedish-language secondary school. Through his classmates Axel becomes acquainted with the family of Kaarlo Slöör whose eldest daughter, Mary Helena, eventually becomes his wife.

Mary Helena Slöör, 1878.

1878-1881

In Helsinki, Axel attends evening classes at the art school maintained by the Helsinki Art Society. Scholastic work does not capture the fancy of the rambunctious teenager, whose overriding interest is in drawing pictures including caricatures of his teachers.

Teachers of Helsinki’s Swedish Lyceum during Morning Prayers, 1880.

1879-1880

In October 1879, Axel’s father Peter Wilhelm Gallén, a lawyer, dies at his desk in the middle of a court session. Some time after this, Axel announces to his classmates that “I will become a great painter,” and quits school. He draws pictures inspired by medieval history and continues his series of comic scenes.

Encounters aboard a ship, 1878.

1881

Axel rents a room from a neighbor’s house near his familial homestead at Tyrvää and spends the summer painting landscapes and genre scenes. He is particularly fascinated by the communion between man and beast.

The Pigs of the House of Sipi, 1881.

1881-1884

Back in Helsinki by early autumn, Axel enrolls at the Finnish Art Association’s drawing school and over the next three years receives private instruction from the painters S. A. Keinänen and Gustave Courbet’s Finnish student, Adolf von Becker. He makes anatomical studies at the University of Helsinki’s Department of Anatomy. During the summers, he travels around the countryside of southern and central Finland in search of old traditions, buildings, and objects; anything that would evoke a link between the present and Finnish prehistory. Gallén earliest Kalevala scenes, small ink drawings, date from this period.

The Lamenting Boat, 1883.

1884

In late autumn, Gallén, 19-years old, leaves Finland for Paris and enrolls at the Académie Julian where he will study intermittently for the next four years. His primary instructors are Adolphe William Bouguereau and Tony Robert-Fleury both of whom are duly impressed by the young Finn’s precocious naturalist masterpiece, Boy and Crow, painted at Tyrvää in the summer of 1884. Gallén is intrigued by Paris, but misses home. He does not yet speak French.

Boy and Crow, 1884.

1885

August Strindberg, prominent member of the colony of Scandinavian artists and intellectual residing in Paris, asks to meet the “most radical Finn.” Another Finn, the painter Albert Edelfelt, introduces Gallén to Strindberg. The two hit it off not parting for two days. Gallén makes several caricatural drawings of the Swedish writer and painter. In Paris, Gallén meets and befriends several other artists as well. His closest friends are his compatriots Eero Järnefelt and Emil Wikström, the Norwegian painter Carl Adam Dörnberger, the French ceramic artist, count Henri de Vallombreuse, and later, the Swedish painter Louis Sparre.

In the spring, establishing a pattern that would become routine, Gallén returns to Finland, paints several genre scenes and landscapes in the countryside around Dalsbruk and Salo, and in late autumn travels back to Paris. Along with him, he brings a canvas that will become his tribute to socially conscientious Naturalism, Old Woman and the Cat. This is Gallén’s largest picture to date. He completes it in Paris using a local model.

Old Woman and a Cat, 1885.

1886

Gallén exhibits Old Woman and the Cat at the Salon of the Société des Artistes Français. The work is favorably received. He pursues art studies at the Académie Julian and outside the academy adopts the flair and habits of a bohemian painter. Little is known about his liaisons with Parisian women, but several bar and café scenes from this period suggest a keen fascination with the typology of the femme fatale. In the spring, Axel again travels to Finland and now spends the summer at Korpilahti, a scenic locale in Central Finland on the shores of Lake Päijänne. The summer yields several depictions of rural life that will, in due time, become visual icons of Finnish national culture. In the autumn Gallén decides not to travel to Paris and instead, shortly after Christmas, moves to a remote croft farm at Keuruu.

Woman Frying Vendace, 1886.

1887

Gallén spends the winter at the Ekola croft on the shores of the frozen Lake Jamajärvi. Here he paints a series of wintry landscapes as well as rural scenes, e.g. Peasant Life (Société des Artistes Français 1889) and Pauper Boy, which explore the fascinating amalgamation of natural and artificial light within Rembrandtesque interiors. Gallén draws inspiration also from the literary works of J. L. Runeberg, the early nineteenth-century chronicler of Finnish rural life. In the spring, Gallén returns to Helsinki and begins a portrait of Mary Helena Slöör, the sister of his friends, Arthur and Rafael Slöör, with whom he had attended the Swedish Normal Lyceum. Axel and Mary fall in love, but for now keep their affair a secret. In June, Gallén returns to the Ekola croft and continues his series of rural scenes. His images of peasants and wilderness landscapes are beginning to earn him recognition in Finnish cultural circles in Helsinki. In the autumn, the 22-year old painter returns to Paris to pursue his studies. He corresponds actively with Mary and from hereon his homesickness for Finland increases dramatically.

Mary Helena Slöör, 1887.

1888

Gallén spends the entire year in Paris, desperate to complete his studies. He paints a series of urban scenes and portraits including such masterpieces as Démasquee. He enrolls at Cormon’s atelier probably inspired by the latter’s prehistoric scenes. In late June, Axel writes to Mary from his Montmartre flat: “It is warm outside; even though the windows are closed I hear noise, shouts, and laughter from the streets. All these sounds melt into one single pandemonium. . . . Damn, how lonely I feel, I can’t partake in their joy. If only I would not think of you and of Finland so much, things would be better.”

Démasquée, 1888.

1889

Gallén submits six works to the Finnish section at the Paris Exposition Universelle that opens in early May, and is awarded a Silver Medal. In June, he returns to Finland with his new painter friend, the Swedish count Louis Sparre. The two artists head to the Finnish hinterlands and end up at the Ekola croft where Gallén had spent six months in 1887. Gallén produces a remarkable series of genre scenes and landscapes. His fluency as a poetic interpreter of Finnish rural life and vistas reaches new heights in images such as Midsummer’s Eve and In the Sauna. In October, Gallén returns to Helsinki and his affair with Mary intensifies. The couple wants to marry, but they fear the reaction of Mary’s father.

In the Sauna, 1889.

1890

Kaarlo Slöör finally gives his consent to his daughter’s marriage plans. Axel’s and Mary’s wedding takes place in Helsinki on 20 May, and immediately after the modest ceremony the couple departs on their first journey together. Their destination on this occasion is Karelia, a border zone between Finland and Russia that enjoyed a Romantic reputation as the cultural and territorial home of Finland’s national epic, the Kalevala. Axel’s and Mary’s Karelian honeymoon is an eye-opening experience for a painter who aspired to become the visual interpreter of Finland’s mythological prehistory. The couple returns from Karelia in September and settles at Malmi, a suburb of Helsinki. Here Gallén pursues his Kalevalian visions, especially the monumental Aino-triptych commissioned by the Finnish senate.

Axel and Mary Gallén’s honeymoon catalyzed a Karelian cultural renaissance, a movement to which the folklorist Yrjö Hirn gave the name “Karelianism” in a famous article published in 1939. Though Hirn acknowledges that Gallén was hardly the first cultural traveler to visit Karelia, “a Karelianite,” he states that Gallén’s trip “initiated an entire series of pilgrimages to Russian-Karelia whose importance to 1890s romanticism has been so great that it hardly can be overestimated.” Indeed, between 1890 and 1900, prompted by Axel and Mary’s honeymoon, almost all young Finnish artists, musicians, and writers to traveled to the mystical Finno-Russian borderland to seek inspiration from this mystical region’s landscapes and culture.

The Quiet of the Evening, 1890.

1891

On 28 February, Gallén is announced the winner of the Kalevala illustration competition organized by the Savo-Karelian Student Fraternity. Hereafter, he is recognized as the dominant figure in the field of Kalevala-inspired visual art. On 9 April, Mary gives birth to a baby girl, Impi Marjatta. The happy family spends the summer on the scenic Murtosaari Island in the Northern Häme district. The aquatic milieu of this temporary abode inspires Gallén to paint images that examine the form and patterns of waves and moving water. He also continues work on the Aino-triptych, inspired by cantos 3-5 of the Kalevala, with Mary as his model. In the autumn, the family returns to Malmi where Axel completes the triptych.

Aino-triptych, 1890-91.

1892

In March, after a glorious reception of the Aino-triptych in Helsinki, Axel and Mary travel to Paris. Gallén exhibits three of his recent works at the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts—Ettone, Madonna, and the Aino-triptych. The paintings are lukewarmly received by Parisian critics. Gallén, for his part, is not impressed by the new tenets in French art and responds critically to the symbolist works on display at Joséphin Péladan's Salon de la Rose + Croix. Axel and Mary return to Finland in May and a month later head to the wilds of northern Finland with their daughter who now is a little over a year old. The family spends the summer on the shores of Lake Paanajärvi famed for its rich flora, fauna, and topography. Here Gallén paints a series of sublime landscapes that will become central icons of Finnish Romantic Nationalist art. The monumental, musically inspired Mäntykoski Waterfall, begun at Lake Paanajärvi, is the largest nineteenth-century Finnish landscape painting and is today internationally recognized as one of the most innovative late nineteenth-century “earthscapes”.

The family returns to Helsinki from their wilderness sojourn in mid-October.

Mäntykoski Waterfall, 1892-94.

1893

In the winter, Gallén paints a series of sublime riverscapes choosing as his subject the mighty Imatra rapids in eastern Finland. He portrays the powerful rush of frosty water as evocative of Finnish nature’s indigenous, unconquerable power. Axel’s use of the medium of landscape to highlight Finland’s ideological autonomy from Russia is not lost to his fellow Young Finns.

The artist and his family spend the summer at Vehmersalmi in the Savolaks District where Gallén paints a new, monumental Kalevalian scene, The Forging of the Sampo, inspired by the 20^th canto of the epos. Axel spends the autumn in Helsinki where he meets actively with members of the nationalistically oriented Young Finland circle that includes musical figures such as Jean Sibelius and Robert Kajanus; writers Armas and Arvid Järnefelt, Karl August Tavaststjerna, and the Swedish-born Adolf Paul; writer-journalists Kasimir Leino, Juhani Aho, and Eero Erkko; painters Pekka Halonen, Eero Järnefelt, and Louis Sparre; sculptors Robert Stigell and Emil Wikström; the architect Yrjö Oskari Blomstedt; the German violinist Willy Burmester; the famous pianist and student of Franz Liszt, Alfred Reisenauer; and the music-critic, organist, and composer of popular music Oskar Merikanto. In the 1890s, this was the crème de la crème of Finland’s cultural circuit. Gallén begins work on a set of group portraits, the so-called Symposion series that is a tribute to the friendships born from within the Young Finland circle.

Forging of the Sampo, 1893.

1894

In January, Axel joins Mary and Impi Marjatta at Sääksmäki, a rural locale 130 kilometers north of Helsinki where Mary’s parents have a summerhouse. Here Gallén works on a series of enigmatic paintings—notably Ad Astra, Conceptio Artis, and Symposion—in which he seeks to amalgamate elements from his private life, Finnish mythology, the Bible, and Ancient Egyptian myths. In the spring he sets off to the hinterlands of the Northern Häme district in search of a plot of land on which to build a studio and a home for his family. His search is rewarded in September when he purchases a rocky headland on the eastern shore of Lake Ruovesi from a local farmer, Kalle Kustaanpoika Pöytäniemi. Construction work on the plot begins in October-November. In December, Gallén travels to Berlin to hold a series of exhibitions and to secure his finances through international sales.

Self-Portrait in Fresco, 1894.

1895

Gallén spends three months in Berlin. He becomes acquainted with Berlin’s cultural cliques—such as the Zum schwarzen Ferkel circle—and stages a large co-exhibition with Edvard Munch at Ugo Barroccio’s gallery. Julius Meier-Graefe invites him to contribute illustrations to the first issue of the new art magazine Pan that is published in April. Gallén sojourn in Berlin ends dramatically when he learns that his daughter, Impi Marjatta, has died of diphtheria at Ruovesi where his wilderness studio is still under construction. Heartbroken, Axel returns to Finland and together with Marry travels back to Germany and then onwards to London. The couple attempts to burry their sorrow in the buzz of large cities. The couple returns to Ruovesi in early July and now Gallén takes personal charge of the construction of his wilderness studio. Kalela, as the wilderness studio and home is named, is completed by late autumn, although alterations will be made to its structure over the next few years. Kalela, designed single-handedly by Gallén, bespeaks the painter’s talent as an architect and a craftsman.

Illustration for Paul Scheerbart’s “Königslied” -poem published in the first issue of Pan, April 1895.

Lönnrot (compiler of the Kalevala) and the Rune Singers, 1895

1895-1901

Axel and Mary’s first Kalela period lasts for six years, their life in the wilderness interrupted only by occasional trips to Helsinki and abroad (notably Italy, January-June 1898). At Kalela, Gallén conceives a series of mythological Kalevala paintings that will eventually fix his reputation as Finland’s national artist: The Defense of Sampo, Lemminkäinen’s Mother, Fratricide, Joukahainen’s Revenge, Kullervo’s Curse, and Kullervo Rides to War, among others. At Kalela, he engraves the pioneering samples of modern Finnish graphic art (woodcuts and etchings), and produces a unique series of stained-glass paintings. And at Kalela, he paints the cartoons for the monumental mythological scenes that he frescoes onto the ceiling of the Finnish Pavilion at the Exposition Universelle in Paris in the spring of 1900. These frescoes earn Gallén a Gold Medal at the Exposition and, two years later, an invitation to the French Legion of Honor.

Two children are born to the family at Kalela, a daughter, Aino Kirsti (1896), and a son, Kaijus Jorma (1898), who will follow on his father’s footsteps and become an artist. Gallén’s first six years at Kalela constitute a unique period of artistic creativity. The works he produced in his wilderness studio between 1895 and 1901 modernized the facades of Finnish visual culture.

The Defense of the Sampo,
1896.

Lemminkäinen’s Mother, 1897.

Kullervo´s Curse, 1899.

Ilmarinen Plowing the Field of Vipers, 1899 (study for a fresco for the Finnish Pavilion at the Paris 1900 Exposition Universelle).

1901-1903

Gallén’s first Kalela period ends unexpectedly when a wealthy Finnish industrialist, F. A. Juselius, invites him to create an elaborate fresco cycle on the walls of a large private mausoleum, a neo-Gothic chapel, erected in a cemetery in the town of Pori as the final resting place for his daughter, Sigrid Maria Juselius, who had died at the age of 11 in June 1898. Gallén, who also had lost a daughter to a childhood illness, accepts the commission. His Juselius Mausoleum frescoes become an unprecedented visual landmark in the history of Finnish art.

While working of the Juselius Mausoleum frescoes, Gallén sends works to various exhibitions both in Finland and central Europe. In 1902, Vassily Kandinsky invites him to take part in the Phalanx IV exhibition in Munich. Reportedly Gallén’s depiction of the Kalevalian hero Kullervo Riding to Battle makes a lasting impression on Kandinsky who transforms it into the poetic symbol of the artistic constellation famously known as Der Blaue Reiter.

Sadly, only months after Gallén completes the monumental Juselius Mausoleum cycle in August 1903, his frescoes begin to show signs of decay. The mausoleum’s construction material, porous sandstone, as well as the plaster used as a base for the frescoes contains minerals that induce a corrosive reaction on the painted surfaces. The initial destruction of Gallén’s fresco cycle becomes total when a fire sweeps through the Juselius Mausoleum in December 1931. Axel Gallén had died nine months earlier, on 7 March.

In 1933-1939, Axel’s son, the artist Jorma Gallen-Kallela, put aside his own career and recreated the Juselius Mausoleum frescoes from scratch. The Juselius Mausoleum frescoes that today adorn this private chapel are a father-son duo’s final collaborative work. Cavalry Lieutenant Jorma Gallen-Kallela, 39-years old, falls in battle on 1 December 1939 on the second day of the Finnish Winter War against the Soviet Union.

The Pori Juselius Mausoleum, 1900-1901, designed by Josef Stenbäck.

Building, detail of a study for a Juselius Mausoleum fresco, 1903.

The Spring Maiden, study for the Spring fresco at the Juselius Mausoleum, 1903.

1904

Gallén, worn out by three years of arduous work as a frescoist, spends the winter and spring in Austria and Spain. In Vienna, he becomes acquainted with the Wittgenstein family and is invited to exhibit at the Secession. He also participates in the Berlin Secession, and on both occasions his works are critically acclaimed. In the Austrian Alps, Gallén learns the technique of modern alpine skiing from its inventor, Matthias Zdarski, and becomes the first Finnish slalom skier.

In the spring, Axel and Mary travel from Austria to Italy, France, and onwards to Spain. In Granada, Gallén is stung by a malaria-carrying mosquito and is infected with the disease that will stay with him for the rest of his life. In May, the Galléns return to Finland and decide to spend the summer in Central Finland on the shores of Lake Keitele. Here Axel paints a series of lyrical landscapes that signal a new, more nostalgic turn in his art. In the autumn, the family rents a house at Kerava north of Helsinki, but Axel does not like the atmosphere in this small town.

Lake Keitele, 1904.

1905

The Galléns rent an apartment in the center of Helsinki and their social life picks up immediately. Axel is actively engaged in Finnish cultural politics and the passive resistance campaign against Imperial Russification policies. In the spring, Axel and Mary decide to return to Ruovesi where their beloved wilderness studio and home, Kalela, has waited for them, uninhabited, for four years. At Kalela, Gallén begins work on new, monumental Kalevalian scenes, The Theft of Sampo and The Lamenting Boat. In the autumn the family returns to Helsinki and witnesses at close range the social upheavals that are spreading from Russia to its western borderland, the previously so peaceful Grand Duchy of Finland.

The Theft of Sampo, study, 1905.

1906

Early in the year several revolutionary agitators from Russia travel to Finland to seek safety, among them Maxim Gorki who is wanted by the Russian Imperial Police. Gorki and Gallén become friends and Axel not only paints several portraits of Maxim but also provides him with a hiding place. By the end of February, Gorki makes his escape from Finland and Gallén leaves Helsinki for the wilds of Central Finland. At Konginkangas, he joins the company of rural hunters and paints a famous series of wintry landscapes, still ranked among the favorites of contemporary art buyers. He spends the autumn in Helsinki and adds final touches to the Kalevalian scenes begun at Kalela in the summer of 1905.

The Lynx Den, 1906.

1907

In March, Erich Heckel and his colleagues invite Gallén to become a permanent member of Die Brücke, the progressive group of expressionist artists based in Dresden. In the spring, Gallén and his family move to Heposaari, an island southwest of Helsinki. Here Gallén begins work on the illustrations for Aleksis Kivi’s The Seven Brothers, a landmark in the field of Finnish literature published in 1870. In the autumn, the Galléns move to an annex of the Alberga mansion, Mary’s childhood home, located a few kilometers west of Helsinki. Fusing Jugendstil forms with compulsive realism, Axel explores new visual languages and mediums, creating, for example, the first Finnish car advertisement in the form of a large lithographic print (Bil Bol). Axel Gallén changes his name officially to Akseli Gallen-Kallela, thus giving it a more Finnic ring. The new, two-part family name hearkens back to Italian Renaissance prototypes and the custom of naming artists after their place of birth (as in Leonardo da Vinci)—Akseli Gallen-Kallela’s ancestral home in Finland was the “House of Kallela” in western Finland, hence Gallen-Kallela.

Bil Bol, 1907.

1908

Early in the New Year Akseli, Mary and their two children travel to Hungary where the family spends the entire spring. Gallen-Kallela explores the Hungarian countryside and exhibits works in Budapest to critical acclaim.

For the summer, the family returns to Finland, but as summer turns into autumn their longing for more distant lands mounts. They leave Finland soon after Christmas.

Mary on the Bank of the Danube, 1908.

1909-1910

The Gallen-Kallelas spend the winter and spring in Paris where Akseli chooses to work on Finnish motifs evocative of his homesickness and nostalgia for a Finland that is slipping through his fingers.

In May, the family bids farewell to Paris and embarks on the most exotic journey of their life.

On 15 May, they board the Adolph Woermann steamship in Marseilles and thus begins their trip to British East-Africa, today Kenya, where Gallen-Kallela wants to reconnect with an authentic wilderness milieu. The artist family’s adventure-filled sojourn in Africa — unparalleled in the history of modern European art — lasts 16 months.

During this time Akseli paints hundreds of landscapes that constitute a unique addition to his already diversified oeuvre. The entire family, with the exception of Kirsti, contracts malaria and on several occasions the wings of death sweep by their bodies at close range.

Self-portrait with Cheetah, 1910.

The Artist’s Tent on the African Savannah, 1910.

1911-1913

Returning from equatorial Africa to frozen Finland in mid-February, Akseli, Mary and their two children experience a tremendous culture shock. Gradually they become reacclimatized, but now their longing is directed forevermore at their imagined African paradise. Akseli’s finances are in a terrible state, but this does not deter him from engaging in new projects, both large and small. In the summer of 1911 he travels to Karelia to reacquaint himself with the land of the Kalevalian rune singers. Upon his return to Helsinki in August, the artist decides to embark on a new atelier construction project to be realized on a seashore plot west of Helsinki which Mary had inherited from her parents. This time Gallen-Kallela would build his studio of stone. The construction of Tarvaspää, as the building was named, took two years and cost more than the artist could afford. He was able to carry the economic burden of this project only on account of loans from friends and, as importantly, his generally nonchalant attitude towards fiscal matters.

Akseli Gallen-Kallela on the courtyard at Tarvaspää, 1911-1912.

1914

Large series of Gallen-Kallela’s works are displayed at exhibitions in Sweden and Italy, notably the Venice Biennale where they are very well received. Italy’s Ministry of Education invites the artist to submit a Self-Portrait to permanent collection of the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. Gallen-Kallela, while grateful for the international honors bestowed upon him, feels tired and lacks inspiration. The beginning of World War I in August sends shockwaves through the continent and in Finland people worry about the prospect of their homeland becoming a battle zone and a pawn in European power politics.

Self-Portrait for the Uffizi Gallery, 1916.

1915

On 26 April, Akseli Gallen-Kallela turns 50 and becomes the object of a public celebration. He wants to withdraw from public life, however, and in August moves with Mary and Kirsti back to Ruovesi, to the solitude of Kalela. Jorma, meanwhile, embarks on a youthful journey around the world aboard the sailing boat Glenard. He reaches Argentina in the summer of 1915, but on account of the U-boat threat is instructed by his parents not to cross the Atlantic to Europe. Jorma lives in Buenos Aires until 1917 and during this period studies at Argentine’s Academia des Bellas Artes. Upon returning to his wilderness studio in August 1915, after a break of 15 years, Gallen-Kallela writes a private eulogy to the building: “The return to Kalela! 15 years! The happiness of peace! It is so incredibly quiet here that I can hear the needles fall from the pine trees and the tick of the atelier clock all the way to shoreline cliffs around which the lunch-soup perches swim in sepia-colored water. I would not have believed that this unique dreamland in its entirety has been in existence for 15 years, and has waited for us!”

Kalela at dawn.

1916-1917

Gallen-Kallela is able to relax in the peaceful milieu of his wilderness studio and again begins to work on mythological motifs inspired by the Kalevala. Jorma returns to Finland in March 1917 and at Kalela father and son set to work together. On December 6, 1917, the Finnish Senate declares Finland and independent republic. The declaration is taken under the cover of the turmoil that is spreading through the rubble of Imperial Russia. The dreams and aspirations of the Young Finns finally reach a political level.

Lemminkäinen and the Maidens of Saari, c. 1916.

Kullervo with his Heard of Wild Beasts, 1917.

1918

The nation’s independence still contingent on international recognition and internal political harmony, between January and May Finland fights a bloody War of Liberation that also is a Civil War. The country is split into Red and White factions. Akseli and Jorma Gallen-Kallela fight in the White Army that emerges victorious from the conflict. During the war months, Akseli establishes a relationship with General C. G. Mannerheim who is appointed Finland’s first Head of State after the War of Liberation. The artist and his son both assume official government-appointed posts as designers of national emblems and insignia. Akseli designs, for example, uniforms for the army and bills for the Bank of Finland. In the autumn, the artist retreats back to Kalela to contemplate the horrors of a fratricidal war.

Remorseful Kullervo, 1918.

1919-1921

The family lives at Kalela, beyond the reach of politics and publicity, but in March 1919 their idyll is broken. General Mannerheim invites Gallen-Kallela to be his aide-de-camp and the artist cannot refuse. He moves back to Helsinki and assumes a public post at Mannerheim’s side. His tenure lasts until July when K. J. Ståhlberg wins Finland’s first presidential election. Gallen-Kallela returns to his wilderness studio to pursue his artistic work in solitude. He again engages the Kalevala as a source of inspiration and starts to contemplate the possibility of realizing an illustrated edition of the epic. Gallen-Kallela lives with his wife and daughter at Kalela until September 1921. Jorma, meanwhile, pursues his art studies in Europe.

Lemminkäinen by the Fiery River, 1920.

1921-1923

In September 1921, Gallen-Kallela moves with his family to Porvoo, a coastal town located 40 kilometers east of Helsinki, where he completes the illumination of the so-called Koru-Kalevala (“Decorated Kalevala”) and also oversees its publication. At the same time he dictates the first part of his memoirs, which are published in 1924 (Kallela-kirja).

The Elk of Hiisi, 1922, illustration for the Koru-Kalevala.

1924-1926

After completing his book projects in Porvoo, Gallen-Kallela decides to travel to the United States. A large collection of his most important works had been sent to the Panama Pacific World Fair in San Francisco in 1915, and on account of the turmoil of World War I this collection had been confiscated by the American authorities. When the postwar pleas of Finnish diplomats fell to deaf ears and the collection was not returned to its owner, Gallen-Kallela decided to take matters into his own hands. He arrives in the United States in December 1923 and retrieves his collection that is put on display, in his honor, first at the Chicago Art Institute and then at several other venues. Regrettably, ten works have been sold from the artist’s private collection without his authorization. The present whereabouts of these works are unknown. (The Kalela Museum asks that any information concerning these lost, unrightfully sold paintings be forwarded to the representatives of the museum.) Instead of returning to Finland, Gallen-Kallela decides to settle down in the United States for a few years. During this period he receives multiple portrait and other commissions from various organizations as well affluent industrialists. In the spring of 1924, the artist sets out to explore rural America. He travels to El Paso and from there onwards to New Mexico. Feeling homesick and lonely, Akseli asks his family to join him. Mary and Kirsti arrive in Houston in October 1924 and, with father at the wheel, drive to Taos, New Mexico, where Akseli has rented a house. They spend the winter amidst the majestic Rocky Mountains. In Taos Gallen-Kallela meets D. H. Lawrence, paints several mountain landscapes and portraits of Native American Indians, and also works on a fresh series of illustrations for an illuminated Great-Kalevala (unlike the 1923 black-and-white edition, the new edition of the epic would be printed in full color). While the Unites States was a land of opportunity for Gallen-Kallela, he could not rid himself of his homesickness for Finland. Thus, he turns down a prospective offer for a senior teaching position at the Cranbrook Academy of Art (opens in 1932) and in the spring of 1926 returns to Finland with his family. Gallen-Kallela’s role in the conception of the Cranbrook Academy of Art appears to have been instrumental.

Wintry Landscape at Taos, New Mexico, 1925.

1926-1928

Akseli and Jorma Gallen-Kallela work together on the cupola frescoes of the Finnish National Museum in Helsinki completing the project in the spring of 1928. This is Akseli Gallen-Kallela's final tour de force. The completed fresco cycle approximates the cycle that the artist had frescoed in the ceiling of the Finnish pavilion at the 1900 Paris Exposition Universelle.

During this period, the artist’s Tarvaspää atelier home undergoes major renovations.

Akseli and Jorma Gallen-Kallela, Cupola frescoes of the Finnish National Museum in Helsinki, 1928.

1928-1930

The aging artist paints a series of portraits of General C. A. Mannerheim, works on the Great-Kalevala illumination project with Jorma, and accepts a large fresco commission from the National Stock Bank in Helsinki.

Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim, detail, 1929.

1931

In late January, Gallen-Kallela travels to Copenhagen to deliver a lecture on “Modern Art”. On his way back, he contracts pneumonia and takes a room at Stockholm’s Hotel Reisen. He dies in this room on 7 March 1931 at the age of 65. Jorma Gallen-Kallela continues his father’s artistic and cultural lifework until his own premature death in battle on 1 December, 1939. Jorma is survived by his wife Pirkko (1906-1999) and daughter Aivi Gallen-Kallela who is the present Director of the Kalela Museum.

Akseli Gallen-Kallela at a dinner reception in Copenhagen, February 1931, the last photograph of the artist.