B.A. Godenhjelm and C.E. Sjöstrand, the First Teachers at the Helsinki Drawing School

The Helsinki drawing shool, a parallel college to the one established earlier in Turku and which had been founded in 1848, faced a difficult problem immediately after the decision to found it: Where to find a teacher? The problem was solved by appointing Berndt Abraham Godenhjelm (1799-1881), who had long worked and received his training in St. Petersburg.

Godenhjelm's oeuvre stands as a good example of the way Finnish art developed during the Biedermeier period. His work rested on the excited admiration and respect suddenly enjoyed by the new style in a country traditionally lacking in art. In this situation all kinds of novelties were readily welcomed and as workers for national enlightenment artists sometimes enjoyed rather indiscriminate approval. Especially paintings which were in a lofty spirit and which advocated nationalist values usually received unqualified praise. On the other hand there were still doubts as to whether Finnish art could ever reach very high standards or the level of other countries:

Finland is too cold, too poor and let it be said bluntly, too uncivilized a country for the brilliant and colourful flowers of art, that daughter of the radiant southern sun, to take root in these granite heats.

Berndt Abraham Godenhjelm had received a legal training. The social pressures of the age must have compelled this descendant of a noble family to secure himself a conventional and respectable occupation. His career as lawyer was however short-lived, and Godenhjelm is one of the few Finnish artists that went to Russia, to the St. Petersburg Academy to study art. During his twenty years in St. Petersburg Godenhjelm painted icons, portraits and alterpieces, and sometimes miniatures. The invitation to become teacher in the Helsinki drawing school meant a return to his home country for the almost fifty-year-old artist; it also meant pioneering work in creating a basis for systematic teaching in the country's principal art school. The teaching was still limited to preliminary studies and for further studies it was still necessary to go to art schools abroad.

B.A. Godenhjelm's own artistic work was set back by his teaching work. And in fact the St. Petersburg period, the time before he took up teaching, is the most significant phase in his art.

B.A. Godenhjelm and C.E. Sjöstrand, the First Teachers at the Helsinki Drawing School