Helene Schjerfbeck enters the Metropolitan Museum and Orsay

19/11/23 - Acquisitions - New York, The Metropolitan Museum and Paris, Musée d’Orsay - Hitherto absent from American and French museum collections, the Finnish painter Helene Schjerfbeck has entered the Metropolitan Museum and the Musée d’Orsay at almost the same time. The New York museum purchased a portrait (ill. 1) from the Åmells gallery in Stockholm, which recently reappeared on the Finnish art market [1]. This title takes up the artist’s initial mention of the work in a letter to her friend and mentor the painter Einar Reuter on September 26, 1920, a few months after she had announced her intention to depict Sigrid Nyberg in "a black floral lace shawl". As already mentioned in the news item of 2016 devoted to the artist’s Self-portrait acquired by the Ateneum Art Museum (see news…