Arvid Liljelund

Exchange of Watches is one of Arvid Liljelund’s most important paintings on an Ostrobothnian theme. The artist made numerous summer painting excursions to the Ostrobothnian coast, which was still a cultural region unknown to the general public at that time. As his painting location in the summer of 1880, Liljelund chose to work about 30 miles south of the city of Vaasa in the settlement of Korsnäs, where the people were still known to wear colourful festive folk costumes. This summer turned out to be one of his finest creative periods, as the exotic attire of the archipelago folk captivated his attention and he began committing these images to canvas. Liljelund sought to portray these visions amidst the kind of events in which they could be encountered in real life, and Exchange of Watches depicts a popular festive pastime in which men showed one another their pocket watches and sought to bargain favourable exchanges. The scene obviously has something to do with a wedding reception, as one of the men is wearing the rosette of a pageboy or even of the bridegroom on his cap.
While studying at the Düsseldorf Art Academy, Liljelund had adopted a habit of embedding his ethnographic discoveries within some narrative. Even though elsewhere the winds of realism had already begun blowing narrative and abundance of detail out of fine art, Liljelund insisted on minutiae with a pedantry so thoroughgoing that, when subsequently completing Exchange of Watches in Düsseldorf, he even asked his brother in Vaasa to send him a genuine Korsnäs shirt in order to verify that he had depicted it correctly. Using this resource, he reproduced the tiny crochet patterns in the red portions of the shirt with such precision that it was later possible to use the painting in the work of restoring the shirt. Besides the shirt, Exchange of Watches faithfully records the entire handsome festive costume of the Korsnäs man, complete with red-trimmed shoulder straps, watch string and tobacco pouch.
The encounter between various people making a deal is woven into the narrative of the painting, with the artist observing them as personality types and seeking to reveal their characteristic attitudes in a transaction. We are presented with a head-on collision between polar opposites: the suspicious, laconic inlander and the roguish seagoing trader.
Exchange of Watches was warmly praised by the critics in Finland, marking a point at which Liljelund had successfully lightened his palette and broken away from the previously dark and variegated colours of his indoor works, even though some material alluding to this unfashionable approach was still present.
The painting caught the eye and captured the interest of Eliel Aspelin when it was displayed at the Paris Salon in spring 1881, and he purchased it or brokered it for relatives when the work returned to Finland. It is now on sale again for the first time since this original purchase from the artist.

Marianne Koskimies-Envall