Explore Helene Schjerfbeck’s ‘The Lace Shawl,’ a 1920 Expressionist portrait of modern womanhood. Bold strokes & muted colors evoke beauty and sorrow. First US museum acquisition!
Discover Helene Schjerfbeck (1862-1946), Finland's leading modernist painter. Explore her evolution from realist self-portraits & landscapes to nearly abstract works, noted for their balance of paint and cryptic imagery. A pioneer in Nordic art.
Schjerfbeck titled this painting after the black lace shawl worn by Sigrid Nyberg, her friend and landlady in a town on the Finnish coast. As the artist worked, she transformed the shawl and torso into abstract shapes and passages of color. Bold strokes and thin layers of paint create a varied, textured surface. Nyberg’s face is stylized, with dramatic eyes, lips, and sleek hair evoking the modern woman of the 1920s. Schjerfbeck described the picture as conveying both beauty and "inner sorrow and emptiness." The artist’s style earned her a reputation as "Finland’s Edvard Munch." This is her first work acquired by a museum in the United States.
