Work by Akseli Gallen-Kallela sold fo a fantastic final price of 252 342 €

Bukowskis continues to demonstrate its strengths as a digital front-runner with its online auction, Selected Finnish Classics. The highlight of the auction was a previously unknown painting by Akseli Gallen-Kallela that sold for a fantastic final price of 252 342 €. The painting has been with the same family since 1910 and was now sold at auction for the first time.

The so-called Golden Age of Finnish Art is considered to span years 1880 to 1916 and it coincided with the Finnish national awakening. Among the artists of the Golden Age, it was undoubtedly Gallén-Kallela who studied the Finnish national soul with the greatest degree of devotion and fascination. An integral part of this frenzy for the purely Finnish spirit was a love of the nature, which, in Gallén-Kallela’s view, reflected the Finnish national character.

In this piece the interaction of light and shadow and flaming colours are typical elements that keep recurring in Gallén-Kallela’s art. Some of the features in it take one’s thoughts to the view from the tower of Tarvaspää, but the oblong scenery, the serenity and the two rowers in the foreground presumably indicate that the artist wanted to illustrate the ideal landscape, as if a celebration of the Finnish nature.