Important Spring Sale presents 'Marta dansande (Svart kjol)' av Helene Schjerfbeck

Helene Schjerfbeck Marta Dancing (Black skirt)

Marta dansande (Svart kjol), which depicts Martta Sahrman (later Mäkinen, 1903-1991), holds a unique position amongst Helene Schjerfbeck’s production from her time in Hyvinge. This is because the composition portrays a girl in movement. Schjerfbeck usually preferred subjects characterised by their stillness, where the models were depicted seated or standing.

Einar Reuter (1881-1968), also known by the pseudonym of H. Ahtela, writes the following words in his extensive monograph on Schjerfbeck, published in Swedish in 1953: “In the late autumn, little Marta Sahrman arrives to dance for Helena as she had previously promised. During the summer the girl had actually been performing at a travelling village circus. But the dancing girl’s movements puzzled her. Helena has painted so many seated, resting people, she is wondering how Degas painted his dancing figures.”

The idea had come to Schjerfbeck the year before. In a letter (dated Hyvinge, 4th of November 1916) Schjerfbeck tells Reuter the following, partly quoting the model’s own words: “The girl is being painted in light yellow and grey tones with something of a strong pink in the clothes, a child of the circus. It is true that she only watched over Mr and Mrs Circus’s little children during the performances (3 days), but she’s the type and has that nature. She has promised to dance for me ‘for real on tiptoes, it is so ugly to dance on your whole foot’”. During the work, however, Schjerfbeck departed from the earlier planned palette: the composition was finally done in a more limited, sober and sophisticated range of colours.

Marta dansande (Svart kjol), preceded by Marta dansande (Head Study) (charcoal on paper, 23 x 21 cm, 1971, Athela no. 472, private collection), came about during a particularly eventful year for Schjerfbeck. In 1917 she visited, for the first time in fifteen years, the art museum Ateneum in Helsinki and was deeply affected by the paintings of Paul Gauguin and Paul Cézanne. After much persuasion from her friends Einar Reuter and Gösta Stenman, her first solo show at Stenman’s art salon was organised. The exhibition is said to have been a big public success for Schjerfbeck. The artist herself, however, did not see her own exhibition, and only accessed it through the exhibition catalogue (which included as many as 159 pieces) and through the newspapers’ reviews of the show.