Some Finnish Women Painters By Helena Westermarck, Critic and Painter

RT in Finland, pictorial art, like much else in that country, is a young growth. It is in the nineteenth century that we are first able to verify its existence, and it is only in the year 1840, or thereabouts, that we find any traces of women who seriously devoted themselves to the study of painting. The pioneers in this may be said to be Mathilda Rotkirch and Victoria Abey. art oil paintings online
Somewhat later, in or about 1870, Fanny Churberg, after working in Düsseldorf and Paris, evinced much independent and original talent in landscape painting, her art having also an inaugural character, in that she was the first who applied herself to the decoration of textile fabrics, adapting to her purpose the old national Finnish patterns, a practice which has since then had a large following in the field of applied design. Her career,art oil paintings, unfortunately, was soon ended by illness and an early death. After her came the generation of women artists who are at present carrying forward a young school of enthusiastic workers.
In the sphere of painting, the women artists of Finland study under much the same circumstances as their male comrades. The Schools of Art subsidized by the State are open both to male and to female pupils, and this applies also to all prizes and rewards of merit. Some account of the principal women painters may be of interest. art oil paintings for sale

Maria Wiik (1853), after an apprenticeship in the Finnish Schools of Art and in Professor Becker's Private Academy, spent several years of study in Paris—occasionally moving her easel in the summers to Brittany, to Normandy, or even to St. Ives, in England. She has further developed her art in later years by visits to Holland and to Italy. Her talent lies in the direction of portrait and genre painting and she has now the name of being among the best Finnish portrait painters. She has executed many public commissions, such as the portrait of the Professor at the Rein University in Helsingfors,cheap oil paintings for sale, for the Finnish Literary Society, and that of the poet, Z. Topelius, for a large public school for girls. Many will remember her portrait of the School Inspector, Ohberg, which now hangs in the Helsingfors Board School. Maria Wiik has exhibited at the Paris Salons, and at picture exhibitions in Moscow, Copenhagen, and Dresden, and besides the prizes awarded her in her own country, she has received a bronze medal in Paris (1900) for a picture painted in St. Ives, called, "Out into the World." original oil paintings wholesale