International studio (34.1908)

Studio-Talk


“SENATE SQUARE, HELSINGFORS, WINTER

BY COUNT LOUIS SPARRE

well-known Swedish family. The first twelve years
of his life he spent in France and in Italy, but
after his mother’s death he went with his father to
Sweden, and was educated in Stockholm, the Paris
of the north. From his earliest years he had shown
a great fondness for art, and many of his youthful
sketches give proof of a nice feeling for composi-
tion and for colour harmony. In spite of the
opposition of his father he decided to devote his
life to art, and at twenty went once more to Paris,
where he studied at the Atelier Julian. One of his
comrades here was Axel Gallen, now, perhaps, the
most famous of Finnish artists. Inspired by the
enthusiasm and dominated by the virile and mas-
terful personality of Gallen, Count Sparre gave up
his intention of seeking fame in England or Scot-
land, and instead wrent with Gallen to Finland.

a strong movement toward the people, and together
with several other young artists they went to the
far north to seek their inspiration from primitive
peasant life. With characteristic energy and the
warm enthusiasm of his Southern temperament,
Count Sparre devoted himself to interpreting these
new and, to him, unfamiliar phases of life. We have
from this time a number of interesting studies of
peasant interiors, the most notable of which is
The First Snow, which shows a peasant family
seated at a table in a dimly lighted hut; and
from this time also dates the Spring Brook, an
April landscape full of charm and poetic feeling.

Though spring and summer are full of beauty,
winter in the far north is long and dreary, and
often, for weeks at a time, heavy clouds obscure
the low rising sun, and the light is so dim that
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At that time there was throughout the country