Erik "Eero" Nikolai Järnefelt (8 November 1863 – 15 November 1937) was a Finnish

painter Painting is a Visual arts, visual art, which is characterized by the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (called "matrix" or "Support (art), support"). The medium is commonly applied to the base with ...

and art professor. He is best known for his portraits and landscapes of the area around

Koli National Park Koli National Park () is a national park in the municipalities of Joensuu, Lieksa and Kontiolahti in the North Karelia region of Finland. It covers of forested hills on the western shore of Lake Pielinen. The park was established in 1991 a ...

, in the North Karelia region of Finland. He was a medal winner at the Paris ''Exposition Universelle'' of 1889 and

1900 As of March 1 ( O.S. February 17), when the Julian calendar acknowledged a leap day and the Gregorian calendar did not, the Julian calendar fell one day further behind, bringing the difference to 13 days until February 28 ( O.S. February 15 ...

, taught art at the

University of Helsinki The University of Helsinki (, ; UH) is a public university in Helsinki, Finland. The university was founded in Turku in 1640 as the Royal Academy of Åbo under the Swedish Empire, and moved to Helsinki in 1828 under the sponsorship of Alexander ...

and was chairman of the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts.

Biography

He was the son of General Alexander Järnefelt and Baroness Elisabeth Järnefelt (née Clodt von Jürgensburg). He came from a Swedish-speaking Finnophile family of artists, writers and composers descended from the Baltic aristocracy. Several of his eight siblings also became well-known: (a literary critic), Arvid (a judge and writer), Armas (a composer and conductor) and Aino (wife of

Jean Sibelius Jean Sibelius (; ; born Johan Julius Christian Sibelius; 8 December 186520 September 1957) was a Finnish composer of the late Romantic music, Romantic and 20th-century classical music, early modern periods. He is widely regarded as his countr ...

).Brief biography
@ Kansallisbiografia. After graduating from a private academy, he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts, Helsinki from 1874 to 1878, the Imperial Academy of Arts from 1883 to 1886 (where one of his teachers was his uncle, Mikhail Clodt), and the

Académie Julian The () was a private art school for painting and sculpture founded in Paris, France, in 1867 by French painter and teacher Rodolphe Julian (1839–1907). The school was active from 1868 through 1968. It remained famous for the number and qual ...

in Paris from 1886 to 1888, where he studied with Tony Robert-Fleury. A major influence was the Naturalism of Jules Bastien-Lepage. In 1889, he married the actress . In 1892, he made his first trip to the area around Koli with

Juhani Aho Juhani Aho, originally Johannes Brofeldt (11 September 1861 – 8 August 1921), was a Finnish author and journalist. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature sixteen times. Early life Juhani Aho was born at Lapinlahti in 1861. His ...

and his wife, the painter Venny Soldan-Brofeldt. He was impressed with the scenery there and would continue to visit regularly until 1936. In 1893, he traveled to

Finland Finland, officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It borders Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of Bothnia to the west and the Gulf of Finland to the south, ...

where he sketched and photographed agricultural workers which inspired his most famous painting, ''Under the Yoke (Burning the Brushwood)''. Later, he made several study trips; to Italy in 1894 and

Crimea Crimea ( ) is a peninsula in Eastern Europe, on the northern coast of the Black Sea, almost entirely surrounded by the Black Sea and the smaller Sea of Azov. The Isthmus of Perekop connects the peninsula to Kherson Oblast in mainland Ukrain ...

in 1899. That same year, he helped organize an international exhibition in Saint Petersburg, sponsored by '' Mir Iskusstva''. In 1901, he built a home that he named "Suviranta" (Summer Beach) at the artists' colony near Lake Tuusula, designed by Usko Nyström. He lived there only until 1917 when he moved to Helsinki, but it is still owned and used by his family.Suviranta
@ Ainola. From 1902 to 1928, he taught drawing at the

. He was appointed professor there in 1912 and served as chairman of the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts. His last major work was an altarpiece for the church in Raahe, which he completed in 1926. A major retrospective was held in 2013, which included several previously unknown works.

Selected paintings

Notes

References

External links

Arcadja Auctions: More works by Järnefelt

Finnish 10 Euro Coin (2013) honoring Eero Järnefelt
@ the Mint of Finland
Europeana
blog, from January 2020 {{DEFAULTSORT:Jarnefelt, Eero 1863 births 1937 deaths Artists from Vyborg People from Viipuri Province (Grand Duchy of Finland) Finnish people of German descent 19th-century Finnish nobility Finnish realist painters 19th-century Finnish painters 20th-century Finnish painters Painters from the Russian Empire Eero

Biography

Selected paintings

See also

Notes

References

Further reading

External links