Tove Jansson
Covered by droit de suite
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Reading by the river.
Signerad Tove. Duk 67 x 62 cm.
Provenance
A gift from Tove Jansson to Kerstin Rein (daughter to Henry Rein, founder of magazine Garm).
Thence by descent to the present owner.
More information
The privately owned oil painting Paradise (Paratiisi in Finnish) by Tove Jansson was made during the Winter War in 1940. Before the Moomin stories, at the beginning of her artistic career, Tove painted this almost two metre wide painting depicting Paradise.
During the war, Tove felt that dreaming was necessary to escape fear and darkness. Sometimes Tove dreamed of living and working far away from Finland, and she even considered founding an artists' colony in Morocco or Tonga. In the early 1960s, Tove found her paradise when she found the island of Klovharun with her partner Tuulikki Pietilä. Tove and "Tooti" lived there for more than 30 summers together.
This work is reminiscent of Paratiisi in its colours and in the sense that Tove has chosen not to cover the entire canvas with paint. It is a dreamlike composition where we meet a woman sitting by the river with a letter in her hand in the company of a deer. The lightning storm has not yet hit her in the upper part of the painting. The fantastical foliage, trees, and flowers are also recognisable from Paratiisi and the present painting must have been executed around the same time.