Helene Schjerfbeck Artist
Helene Schjerfbeck (July 10, 1862 – January 23, 1946) was a Finnish painter. She is most widely known for her realist works and self-portraits, and less well known for her landscapes and still lifes. Throughout her long life, her work changed dramatically.Her work starts with a dazzlingly skilled, somewhat melancholic version of late-19th-century academic realism…it ends with distilled, nearly abstract images in which pure paint and cryptic description are held in perfect balance.(Roberta Smith, New York Times, November 27th 1992)