![]() Self-portrait With Black Background, 1915. At the top of the painting, her name appears faded, with indistinct silver lettering “like the a gravestone,” 1 (p69) she later wrote.įigure. In this painting, 4 layers of paint are applied some layers are thick, whereas others are scraped away or additionally whitened. She paints herself ( Figure) in clear white against a black background. Because this portrait of her is an invited, formal portrait as an artist, unlike her other self-portraits, she includes a red pot with paint brushes. Schjerfbeck was the only woman among them. The Society commissioned 9 prominent artists to provide self-portraits for its boardroom. One of her best-known self-portraits, Self-portrait With Black Background, completed at the behest of the Finish Arts Society, is illustrative of her second phase. Nor did she focus on her personal suffering she simply presented herself as she was at particular moments in time. She did not depict herself in particular roles or costumes as did Rembrandt, 4 and she rarely painted herself as an artist. Unlike Rembrandt, Vincent Van Gogh, Edvard Munch, or Frida Kahlo, Schjerfbeck focused only on her head and upper body in her portraits. Her third phase, particularly in the last 2 years of her life, produced uncompromising self-portraits of old age. In the second phase, from the age of 50 until her old age, she produced stylized self-images on canvas. In the first phase, before the age of 50, the portraits are conventional realistic images. Schjerfbeck's self-portraits appear in 3 phases. Following a hip fracture at the age of 4 years that resulted in a lifelong handicap, Schjerfbeck was homeschooled until her talent was recognized and she entered art school, freeing herself from confinement at home. 1, 3 Although the model is a child, the theme of convalescence is vicarious and poignantly points back to the isolation of her childhood. ![]() Perhaps the earliest of these is her “hidden self-portrait,” The Convalescent. Schjerfbeck, like Rembrandt and Van Gogh, completed many self-portraits throughout her lifetime, especially in her later years. It was a propitious time filled with innovation, and it allowed her to absorb impressionism and modernism, the art movements of the 1880s. At 18 years of age, after graduation, she went to Paris on an art scholarship and remained mainly in Europe for the next 10 years where she studied with leading artists and copied old masters at the Louvre Museum. 2 A child prodigy, she entered the Finnish Art Academy in Helsinki at 11 years of age as a special student. Last year was the 150th anniversary of the birth of Nordic artist Helene Schjerfbeck (1862-1946). Shared Decision Making and Communicationīut the exhaustion of old age is something completely different-liberating, too, because you can let things go their own way, and are left with nothing but the sensitivity of the brush.-Helene Schjerfbeck (letter to Einar Reuter, November 28, 1926).Scientific Discovery and the Future of Medicine. ![]()
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