Finland back in the frame, inc. its 'golden age' of painting showing in Paris...

Paris off the beaten track - wonderful exhibitions to discover. Just opened:?Gallen-Kallela: Mythes et Nature?in one of Paris's hidden gems - the magnificent Musée-Jacquemart André on Blvd. Haussmann. And?Albert Edelfelt: Lumière de Finlande?at the Petit Palais. Soon to close:?True to Nature, Open-air Painting in Europe 1780-1870?at the Fondation Custodia, Rue de Lille.

Among the many evocative landscapes by Gallen-Kallela at the Musée Jacquemart-André is the talismanic?Lake Keitele (see below). It was acquired by the London National Gallery at Sotheby's in 1999, an inspired acquisition that set in train the re-discovery of the artist's work. At the time it established a new world-record price for Gallen (now long-since eclipsed); was the first major work by him to enter a public collection outside the Nordic countries (since when stellar examples have entered the collections of several, including the Art Institute Chicago and the Musée d'Orsay), and was the first example by the artist that I had the privilege to 'hammer down' (as the company's new head of 19th Century European Paintings).

Chris Riopelle at the NG masterminded its purchase. As a Canadian long versed in the work of his native ‘Group of Seven’ landscape painters, Chris immediately recognised the power of the motif. And over the last twenty years Lake Keitele has gone on to become one of the Gallery's most recognisable and popular images. It now enjoys virtual equal billing alongside such giants as Leonardo's Virgin of the Rocks, Monet's?Japanese Bridge and Seurat's?Bathers?at Asnières.

Whether on gift shop ephemera, or blown up big to hide scaffolding across the front of Trafalgar Square's most cherished fa?ade, it is a leitmotif of the collection. Indeed, right now the painting is the feature image on the NG's home page. But this poster child of the UK's leading national picture collection - arguably Finland's greatest cultural export (move over Marimoko and the Moomins) - is a painting everyone recalls, yet few can remember the name of the mighty talent who painted it.

Despite lacking in name recognition, however, over the last two decades Gallen-Kallela has been the subject of a number of significant exhibitions, including at the Orsay in Paris, and the Kunsthalle in Düsseldorf, and was the focus of a carefully curated show at the National Gallery in London which coincided with 100 years of Finnish Independence in 2017. His work has also often stolen the show in different themed exhibitions, for example in 2012 in Van Gogh to Kandinsky, Symbolist Landscape in Europe, 1890-1910 at the Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh when his politically messaged Broken Pine was one of the stand-out works. ?

But as the Jacquemart-Andre exhibition reveals, Gallen was no one-trick pony. As well as landscape he captured in the most compelling visual form the book of Finnish myth and legend The Kalevala; designed and decorated the landmark Finnish Pavilion at the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1900 and built and crafted his remarkable ‘wilderness studio’ in the forest overlooking Lake Ruovesi in Kalela. He also travelled widely, including spending a number of years in both modern-day Kenya and in America, in particular in Taos, New Mexico.

Throughout, he painted, drew, etched, produced wood cuts, worked in stained glass and learnt fresco techniques to become Finland’s artistic touchstone of the day. And underlying everything he turned his hand to he vividly evoked Finnish history, its legends and its traditions, holding up a visual torch to illuminate the country’s passionate desire for independence from an increasingly over-bearing Russia. Yes, how deep-seated these struggles are, and how history does repeat itself…

Yet as his political interests grew (he changed his name from Axel Gallén to the pure Finnish Akseli Gallen-Kallela in 1907, ‘Kallela’ associating him with Finland profonde and its nationalist clamour), the risk with Gallen is to lose sight of the individual behind the work. And what is refreshing in the Paris exhibition is to discover Gallen at his most intimate and revealing: in his portraiture.

Unsurprisingly, given its theme, portraits in the Paris exhibition are few. Equally, as landscape is the traditional bedrock of his market appeal, the artist's figurative work is much less-widely known. Yet he won first prize in Finland’s state sponsored portrait competition as early as 1892, and figurative works jostle for our attention across all the decades that Gallen painted. It is clearly an aspect of his work that is crying out for a closer look.

A stand-out example in the Musée Jacquemart-André exhibition is Gallen-Kallela's intimate contemplation of Mary his elegant young wife intent on her embroidery on the balcony of his wilderness studio on the shore of Lake Ruovesi in 1897 (see lead/ header image above). Typical of his best work, it combines unflinching immediacy with a compelling intimacy, which reveals fascinating glimpses of the artist's true self. Realism at its most convincing. Gallen’s consummate ability to capture the ‘here and now’ is also true of a provocatively revealing painting by Gallen that I am offering for sale. And it’s equally true of Gallen’s early-self portrait of 1885, the very first painting in the exhibition. (see below)

Painted when he was twenty-years old, almost certainly whilst studying in Paris, it is significant that he presents himself seated on a medieval-style folding chair. Elegantly clad, surrounded solely by painting paraphernalia - easels and canvases – he is in an otherwise bare interior, with apparently no fellow students to distract him. Glancing up momentarily from the canvas before him, the young painter’s frank and open gaze fixes with the viewer. It is a quietly powerful statement of intent, from an artist clearly serious of mind and evidently committed to what would be a remarkable journey ahead. Through such deeply personal, honest, and as yet much less fêted work, we delve deeper into Gallen-Kallela the man.

Edelfelt at the Petit Palais & True to Nature at the Fondation Custodia

Gallen-Kallela's early break - to come to Paris to study - was supported by his elder compatriot Albert Edelfelt. Serendipitously Edelfelt is the subject of a dedicated show in Paris that also opened within the last week in the palatial surroundings of the Petit Palais. Despite Edelfelt spending long periods of time in France and claiming that he felt more at home in Paris than anywhere else, the exhibition clearly boasts a full range of his work, from Finnish lakes to Parisienne chic. But probably because it is the Petit Palais you need to book (sadly, this time, I could only make it to the bookshop and come away with the catalogue).

If caught short of a billet therefore, and in search of further access to the Great Outdoors, head instead straight to the Fondation Custodia on the Rue de Lille on the opposite bank. I wager there will be no refused entries, simply a last chance to see a beautifully curated gem:?True to Nature - Open-air painting in Europe 1780-1870.?Exquisitely chosen and most elegantly hung in the refined interiors of the H?tel Turgot, it celebrates the common but oft over-looked and under-appreciated ?art of sketching en plein-air.

It was a practice that was already common-place in the century before Impressionism, and the exhibition is packed with small format pictures by minor-masters, as well as some major names like Corot and Degas, featuring every possible permutation of how artists contemplated and captured the world outside. Many drenched in the light of the Roman Campagna, the crucible from where this particular painting phenomenon developed, these delightful works show nature in all its diversity, whether studying the ‘tufting’ of leaves on a tree (left), the majesty of Rome, or just being out in the landscape, pitch perfect to perch and paint a panorama (below).

It is an exhibition that offers a very welcome antidote to the exhausting blockbuster shows that shout for our attention (yes, the polar opposite to the remarkable Mozorovs’ collecting habit, also soon to close at the Fondation Louis Vuitton). Quiet and considered, you come away regenerated and indeed refreshed. True to Nature… ends in Paris on 3rd April, but happily opens at the Fitzwilliam Museum here in the UK a month later. It's definitely worth a closer or indeed a second look. And its guaranteed to fill the lungs and feel perhaps yet more breezy still on a spring day in Cambridge in May.