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qatsiBook Review: Lake Keitele - A Vision of Finland, by Anne Robbins
A short book from a free exhibition, which I must have skipped but R must have visited. I have, nevertheless, seen the National Gallery's own painting by Akseli Gallen-Kallela when presented in its permanent collection. The text is brief and biographical; identified as a young talent, he was given scholarships to study more widely in Europe. As well as the four versions of Lake Keitele, he is famous for many works based on stories in the Kalevala (such as Lemminkäinen's Mother), but these and the Symposium are mostly missing here, with the focus on landscape; there's also a portrait of the artist's wife and a piece of stained glass - rather unusually, he installed a glass furnace in his studio. The book also shows some interesting works not in the exhibition; Gallen-Kallela's visit to Africa yielded some interesting landscapes of Mount Kenya and Mount Donia Sabuk, while John Brett's The British Channel seen from the Dorsetshire Cliffs makes for an interesting comparative on the treatment of water surfaces.
A short book from a free exhibition, which I must have skipped but R must have visited. I have, nevertheless, seen the National Gallery's own painting by Akseli Gallen-Kallela when presented in its permanent collection. The text is brief and biographical; identified as a young talent, he was given scholarships to study more widely in Europe. As well as the four versions of Lake Keitele, he is famous for many works based on stories in the Kalevala (such as Lemminkäinen's Mother), but these and the Symposium are mostly missing here, with the focus on landscape; there's also a portrait of the artist's wife and a piece of stained glass - rather unusually, he installed a glass furnace in his studio. The book also shows some interesting works not in the exhibition; Gallen-Kallela's visit to Africa yielded some interesting landscapes of Mount Kenya and Mount Donia Sabuk, while John Brett's The British Channel seen from the Dorsetshire Cliffs makes for an interesting comparative on the treatment of water surfaces.
