Gunnar Berndtson

GUNNAR BERNDTSON, ITALIAN WOMAN SITTING, 1870

Gunnar Berndtson began studying art in the drawing room of the Finnish Art Society in Helsinki, but as this facility only provided instruction in drawing, he also naturally took master classes under some well-known artists. These teachers were noted in a memorial to Berndtson published in Finlands Allmänna Tidning (predecessor of the contemporary Official Gazette) on 10 April 1895, which refers to the portrait painters Erik Johan Löfgren (1825–1884) from Sweden and Bernhard Reinhold (1824–1892) from Germany.

Perhaps because of his nationality, Reinhold is often omitted from histories of artistic life in Helsinki. He is known to have taught some distinguished students including Ida Silfverberg in Dresden, and to have leased a downtown apartment for use as a studio in Helsinki after arriving in autumn 1869. Albert Edelfelt attended Reinhold’s master classes while still at school between 1869 and 1871. Gunnar Berndtson is similarly known to have taken lessons from Reinhold, at least in 1871. This also explains why he began painting portraits at this particular time, as portrait painting was Reinhold’s specialty. Edelfelt and Berndtson were the same age and attended the same secondary school, which is nowadays known as Helsinki normal lyceum. This means that Berndtson may well have been taking lessons in oil painting at the time of creating his Italian woman sitting in December 1870. The newspapers of the day reported that Reinhold was then working on two large paintings with an Italian theme. He had brought sketches and studies with him from Italy, and these probably served as precursors for the work done in Helsinki.

Berndtson was just 16 years old and still two years short of matriculation when he painted the Italian woman sitting. His oil painting technique and choice of subject certainly suggest that the work was created at Reinhold’s studio. The painting also bears Berndtson’s signature as an original. It would have been designated “Cop.” if the work had been a reproduction.

The painting has an interesting provenance. The artist gave it to his cousin Emelie de la Chapelle (1853–1919) as a Christmas gift in 1870, at which time his father Fredrik Berndtson – a journalist who was also a member of the board of the Finnish Art Society – wrote a poem on the back of the canvas describing the origins of the work. Miss de la Chapelle had lost her mother as a four year-old, and according to Elsa von Born, she had lived for a year in Switzerland and been much impressed by Mont Blanc and the Alpine mountain range. Her journey explains why she received a painting on this very subject as a gift.

Marina Catani