Akseli Gallen-Kallela

The Finnish painter Akseli Gallen-Kallela, born Axel Waldemar Gallén, first trained in Helsinki, where he attended the drawing school of the Academy of Fine Arts from 1878. He continued his studies in Paris, at the Académie Julian from 1884 to 1889 and at the Atelier Cormon from 1887 to 1889. In 1890, he married Mary Helena Slöör and travelled with her to Kuhmo and Karelia. He officially adopted the name Akseli Gallen-Kallela in 1907.

A significant part of his work takes the Kalevala, the Finnish national epic, as its subject. Large paintings depict episodes from it, including The Defence of the Sampo (1896) and Lemminkäinen’s Mother (1897). For the 1900 Paris Exposition Universelle, he also created frescoes for the dome of the Finnish pavilion, with motifs drawn in part from this epic. His work on the Kalevala continued in a publishing project: in 1920, he concluded an agreement with WSOY for the planned publication of the Great Kalevala. A less decorative version, the Koru-Kalevala, was first published in 1922. In 1919, he was appointed Mannerheim’s aide-de-camp.

Wundfieber, also titled Mute Suffering, is an oil on canvas from 1889, signed and dated «Axel Gallén 1889». The work is recorded in the Continental Gallery’s summer exhibition in London in 1890, then in the exhibition of the Société nationale des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1891 under the title Souffrance muette. It was also included in Axel Gallén’s solo exhibition held at Ugo Barroccio in Berlin in March 1895. Its published provenance mentions the gallery, a private owner in Berlin who is said to have acquired it in 1895, then private ownership in Strasbourg from around 1919 and, by inheritance, private ownership in Basel. His work was shown in Helsinki, at the Musée d’Orsay and at the Museum Kunstpalast in Düsseldorf between 2011 and 2012, then at the Musée Jacquemart-André in Paris in 2022.

Works recorded at auction

Artcurial Beurret Bailly Widmer · Lot 50

Wundfieber, 1889

Oil on canvas

Original catalogue wording

Wundfieber, 1889
huile sur toile

Catalogue period : 2017-06-21

Published result : 535040 CHF

Including buyer’s premium

Estimate : CHF 30000–40000

View the lot at the auction house ↗