The art of Helene Schjerfbeck has
been dear to me since I was a child and I painted my first copy (for own
use) at the age of 12. In addition to loving her art I also felt a
strong understanding and belonging to her as a person, as she throughout
her life suffered from health problems and partly therefore was mostly
melancholic and depressed. She never married, painted all her life and
finished her last painting just one week before her death.

Schjerfbeck grew up under hard
circumstances in a Swedish-speaking family in Helsinki. She got a hip
injury at the age of four which contributed to that she would sit still a
lot of the time, and probably therefore she dedicated a lot of her time
to drawing. She was accepted to the Finnish Art Societies Drawing
School at the mere age of 11 years and was granted a free place at the
school. After she had completed her studies in Finland she continued
with the help of grants her studies in Paris and England. She often
recollects in her later letters that these years were the happiest of
her life. In a letter from 1918 to Einar Reuter she writes “In
my youth there was hope and love towards the work, it was fun to paint,
the only fun thing at all – the time in Paris and the first year in
England. Then in Finland there was no hope anymore, no joy, all that
contributed to that I won’t say here.” In the first movement “Balskorna” (“Dancing Shoes”),
named after a painting with the same name from 1882, I try to catch
that joy of life. She returns to the motive of “dancing shoes” several
times during her life, as she does to the happy memories from her time
in Paris and England.

While abroad Schjerfbeck got engaged
to an English painter, They was engaged for two years before her fiancé
broke up the engagement, probably because of her poor health. She burnt
all his letters and she also asked her friends to burn all of her
letters that considered him. Therefore we don’t know today who her
fiancé actually was. The burning of all letters can also be heard in the
first movement. In the 1920s she comments that through the broken
engagement she knew what pain was, but that she was happy about that she
had been able to choose art over all the duties she would have had as a
wife.

Although she didn’t have to fulfil
any duties as a wife, she still had to fulfil her duties of
housekeeping. A lot of time and energy went to sweeping and washing the
floors, cutting wood, lighting the fire, washing clothes, cooking and
washing the dishes. As she was weak and sick most of her life, these
duties robbed even more of her energy and limited the time she had left
for painting. In a letter to Einar Reuter from 1932 she writes “They
laugh at me when I say I have had a lot to do – I clean up, wash the
dishes, cook food at times, sew clothes, mend all the clothes, and that
is a lot, and every now and then I correct a painting — If I sit down to
paint there will come bills, never a calm moment. If only I could be
free from the household!”

In general everything that is
considered to have to do with women’s daily lives has been classified as
unimportant and uninteresting. Therefore it is not surprising that a
female artist would make a painting such as Schjerfbeck´s “Byktork” (“Drying Laundry”)
from 1883. It is a motive that probably no male artist would have
chosen. In the same way as Schjerbeck illustrates the female everyday
life with her art, I feel that as householding took such a large part of
her time and energy, it is essential to dedicate a quarter of this
piece exactly to laundry. In a letter from 1922 to Reuter she summarizes
her wishes with the words “I am not looking for fame but for money – because with money I get the possibility to paint more, and that is more than fame and honour to me.”

Schjerfbeck is maybe best known for her around 40 self-portraits. She writes in a letter to Ada Thilén in 1921: “When
I now so seldom have energy to paint, I have begun with a
self-portrait. You always have the model at hands, it is just not at all
fun to see yourself.” She
was also encouraged by the art dealer Gösta Stenman, who was her patron
and made sure to both sell her paintings and create a financial
independence for her. In two different letters from 1937 to her friend
Reuter she comments on this “I am weak – but I am beginning on the self-portrait that Stenman wants to have.” and “Isn’t it strange that he still keeps on wanting to have self-portraits!”. She liked to investigate the different options she had and writes in a letter to Dora Estlander in 1944 “I’m looking at a book with painters self-portraits. They who embellish themselves are boring – Dürer and also others.” In 1921 she writes to Reuter “I drew in front of the mirror, after 5 minutes the face falls together tired. It will be continued tomorrow…
This is the one life, an other hidden current is one’s own real one.” This own real one she always seemed to look for in all of her art. The third movement “Sjelvporträtt” (“Self-portraits”)
is a passacaglia consisting of 12 chords. Everytime the chord
progression is repeated it is instrumented slightly differently, with
different nuances. The first four chords are also the main ingredient in
the first and last movements and parts from self-portraits can be heard
in the second movement, when she is longing to paint

The last movement “Konvalescenten” is named after one of her famous painting “The Convalescent”
from 1888 which is also often called “The Pearl of Ateneum” (the
Finnish National Art Gallery). The motive is one of Schjerfbeck´s most
used motives (in addition to her self-portraits). The painting was
exhibited at the Paris Exhibition in 1889 (that time with the name “The
first greenery”) and won a bronze medal of first class. The Convalescent
can be seen as a contribution to the public debate, a tribute to Louis
Pasteur’s discoveries of infectious diseases and their cures. The
original title however seems to refer to an awakening after a winter or a
disease and appears to be a belief in the future. The paining has also
been interpreted by many as a sort of self-portrait, an insight and
introduction to a new phase in her painting and that she finally felt
liberated from the broken engagement. It is also speculated if she
returned to the motive so often due to suffering a lot from her hip
injury, and also her being ill during a large part of her life, and thus
being a convalescent herself. But since she was a shy person and has
not spoken about this topic, all this remains only as speculations.

- Cecilia Damström 2020