The Age of Romanticism

The beginning of the next century bore great changes in the political life of Finland. The separation from Sweden in 1809 caused Finland to be incorporated into the Russian empire, but cultural connections with the former mother country were not disrupted by this upheaval; artists still went for their training to the Royal Academy in Stockholm. In fact very few Finnish artists studied in St. Petersburg, it was more of an exception than the rule to do so. It was not even attempted to bring Finnish art under the influence of the St. Petersburg Academy.

Hence the two most important Finnish artists of the Romantic era, Alexander Lauréus and Gustaf Wilhelm Finnberg studied in Stockholm and, like their predecessors, spent a great part of their lives there.

When the new century dawned there had been no improvement in the social position of artists. Artists as a profession still belonged to no established social class: they were not gentry, but neither were they ordinary craftsmen. The cencus of 1830 contains the first mention of artists as a profession. In the social scale they were above servants, but clearly below doctors and medical officers.

The Age of Romanticism