Erik "Eero" Nikolai Järnefelt (8 November 1863 – 15 November 1937) was a Finnish painter and art professor. He is best known for his portraits and landscapes of the area around Koli National Park. 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), 2 ...

, and he taught art at the

University of Helsinki The University of Helsinki ( fi, Helsingin yliopisto, sv, Helsingfors universitet, abbreviated UH) is a public research university located in Helsinki, Finland since 1829, but founded in the city of Turku (in Swedish ''Åbo'') in 1640 as the ...

and was chairman of the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts.

Biography

He was the son of General

Alexander Järnefelt August Alexander Järnefelt (2 April 1833 – 15 April 1896) was a Finland, Finnish general, topographist, governor and senator. Early life Aleksander Järnefelt was born in Tohmajärvi, the son of crown overseer Gustav Adolf Järnefelt and Auro ...

and Baroness

Elisabeth Järnefelt Elisabeth Järnefelt (née Clodt von Jürgensburg; 11 January 1839 – 3 February 1929) was a Finnish salonist, known as "the mother of Finnish art and culture".Biografiskt lexikon för Finland 2. Ryska tiden (2009). Life Elisabeth's parents we ...

(née

Clodt von Jürgensburg The House Clodt von Jürgensburg (or Klodt; russian: Клодт фон-Юренсбург) was a Russian nobility, Russian noble family of Baltic Germans, Baltic German origin, whose members were prominent soldiers and artists. Notable members ...

). 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 The Arma people are an ethnic group of the middle Niger River valley, descended from Moroccan invaders of the 16th century . The name, applied by other groups, derives from the word ''ar-rumah'' ( ar, الرماة) "fusiliers". N. Levtzion, "No ...

(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 and 20th-century classical music, early-modern periods. He is widely regarded as his country's greatest com ...

).Brief biography
@ Kansallisbiografia. Eero Järnefelt by Gallen-Kallela

After graduating from a private academy, he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts, Helsinki from 1874 to 1878, the

Imperial Academy of Arts The Russian Academy of Arts, informally known as the Saint Petersburg Academy of Arts, was an art academy in Saint Petersburg, founded in 1757 by the founder of the Imperial Moscow University Ivan Shuvalov under the name ''Academy of the Thre ...

from 1883 to 1886 (where one of his teachers was his uncle, Mikhail Clodt), and the

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

in Paris from 1886 to 1888, where he studied with Tony Robert-Fleury. A major influence was the Naturalism of

Jules Bastien-Lepage Jules Bastien-Lepage (1 November 1848 – 10 December 1884) was a French painter closely associated with the beginning of naturalism, an artistic style that emerged from the later phase of the Realist movement. His most famous work is his lan ...

. In 1889, he married the actress . In 1892, he made his first trip to the area around

Koli Koli may refer to: Places * Koli, Finland, a hill in Finland * Koli National Park, a national park in Finland * Koli, Iran (disambiguation), several places in Iran * Koli Airfield, a former airfield in the South Pacific Other uses * Koli people ...

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 twelve times. Early life Juhani Aho was born at Lapinlahti in 1861. His pa ...

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 ( fi, Suomi ; sv, Finland ), officially the Republic of Finland (; ), is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It shares land borders with Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of B ...

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, crh, Къырым, Qırım, grc, Κιμμερία / Ταυρική, translit=Kimmería / Taurikḗ ( ) is a peninsula in Ukraine, on the northern coast of the Black Sea, that has been occupied by Russia since 2014. It has a pop ...

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 Lake Tuusula or Lake Tuusulanjärvi ( fi, Tuusulanjärvi, italics=no; sv, Tusby träsk, italics=no) is a lake on the border of the municipalities of Tuusula and Järvenpää in Southern Finland. The lake has an area of 6.0 square kilometres. Sinc ...

, designed by

Usko Nyström Zachris Usko Nyström, known as Usko Nyström, (6 September 1861 – 6 January 1925) was a Finnish architect and one of the most influential professors of architecture at Helsinki University of Technology; among his students were later notable a ...

. He lived there only until 1917 when he moved to Helsinki, but it is still owned and used by his family.Suviranta
@ Ainola. Järnefelt selfportrait

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

Biography

Selected paintings

See also

Notes

References

Further reading

External links