Artistic life becomes organized

The scarcity of Finnish artists was naturally in part due to the fact that no art education of any kind was still given in the country. It demanded great perseverance, purposefulness and means to leave one's native country to seek training in a strange environment. Gradually however serious attention was being paid to the lack of an art school in the country. As the national and cultural significance of art was eventually understood, the question of training came up more and more often.

Organized art training started in Turku, the old capital. In 1830 master painter Carl Gustaf Söderstrand initiated the founding of a painting school. It was primarily intended for artisans, but more ambitious aims were also involved. One and a half decades later the school for painters and decorators was converted into a drawing school with the aim of directing the teaching to serve more and more artistic purposes.

The Turku drawing school preindicated great changes: Finnish art was going through a process of organisation. The year 1846 can justifiably be regarded as the great year of Finnish art, for in that year was founded the Finnish Art Society. The role of this organisation was to lay the foundation for Finnish artistic life; as yet there were no art museums, no regular exhibitions and no public criticism of art in Finland. The Society made it its ambitious aim to take care of all these sectors in art. Furthermore it wanted to see to it that there were artists in Finland at all. Talents were to be found, they were to be sought all over the country to receive education a nd training for their future role as pillars of the nation's artistic life, as workers for national culture.

For a long time the disposition of the Society was dictated by Fredrik Cygnaeus, a literary historian whose lifelong dream was an even higher goal: a Finnish Art Academy. In the field of art Cygneus was a typical representative of the age's authoritarian social order. He dictated, guided, promoted and organised the gradually awakening Finnish artistic life in the direction that seemed best to him.

Thus the Finnish Art Society became the carrying force, the governing system that finally drew together those elements in society that were able to create a basis for national culture. The core of the Art Society consisted besides Fredrik Cygnaeus of a number of educated statesmen and influential politicians; one of the country's few artists was also included.

According to the author and journalist August Schauman the chairman of the Art Society Carl Johan Walleen conducted business in a solemnly dignified manner: Mr Walleen, the chairman, was a mighty man and he had the sense to be formal about things. Through his mediation the society was conferred the honour of having Grand Duke Alexandr (who was at the time of the society's founding aged one, becoming later Alexandr III) as its eminent patron, and as it so happened that the anniversary was on the same day as the above mentioned patron's birthday, it was to be celebrated in the manner of imperial holidays; all members were required to come to the meeting held in the society's rooms that were at the time situated in the Heidenstrauch house, beside the market square, in full festival attire with uniforms, decorations and ribbons . . .

When Finland's first art exhibition was held a year before the foundation of the Art Society, the event was described in the papers by saying that 'the main and perhaps only significance of the exhibition was that it marked a beginning to something'. But although artistic life was only starting its growth, the most important thing had already been achieved: attention had been drawn to the visual arts. The gentry regarded their drawing pursuits as a part of their all-round education and sketching was considered an amusing pastime.

Artistic life becomes organized