Albert Edelfelt

Albert Edelfelt (1854-1905)
Study for ”Interior of a crofter´s cottage”
Signed and dedicated: á Roll 1889.

In spring 1892, Edelfelt exhibited the work "Study for Interior of a crofter's cottage” (1889) together with five other paintings at the so called New Salon in Paris. The works were mainly portraits of different members of the Pasteur family and of prince Carl of Sweden. On show was also a painting of the port of Copenhagen, commissioned by the Russian Empress Maria Feodorovna, born princess Dagmar of Denmark. The interior from the cottage in Uusimaa was thus the only one of these works that had a connection to Edelfelt´s home region.

Since 1880, Edelfelt had exhibited works, in Paris, that showed rustic life near his home at Haiko in Uusimaa, in Finland.
Inspired by one of his closest friends, the artist Jean-Pascal Dagnan-Bouveret, he took an interest in the lives of those of the local population that represented the true spirit of his home region. In this painting, Edelfelt harmonizes the motif and the colourism where the emphasis is on the contrast between the reflection of light on the table and the gloomy interior of crofter Klang’s cottage where Tilda Klang, the young daughter of the house is looking after her little brother, Robert. This everyday scene gives an insight into the lives of the rural population, where children had to do house chores while their parents were working in the fields. The cottage was destroyed in a fire at the end of the 1940s.
The dedication “á Roll” indicates that Edelfelt and his French colleague, the artist Alfred Roll (1846-1919) had exchanged paintings.
Marina Catani