Juho Rissanen (1873-1950) did not have to go searching for peasants and workers to pose for his pictures, for he was a member by birth of that common people, so glorified for their primitiveness in the capital. A son of an unskilled labourer from Northern Savo, he could have told his upper-class comrades the other side of the story: the begging, the hardships of poverty, the unending hunger and insecurity.
There seemed to be no place either for this child of the people in the educational system of his calling. The Art Society school required four years of primary school education of its entrants and Rissanen had never had the time or the opportunity to acquire it. Rissanen's artistic training might have failed altogether without the help of his influential protector Albert Edelfelt.
Rissanen found his painter's paradise in the village of Savonkylä in his native Eastern Finland. In that remote district, among his own people, Rissanen painted his most important works. In the neighbouring village of Käärmelahti there lived an old woman of 94 who had been blind for half a century. Rissanen wanted to paint the Blind Old Woman (1899) as simply and unpretentiously as possible. This he understood, through the old woman, to be the innermost nature of the whole of the Finnish people. The old woman is the picture's unquestionable central figure, a monumental nucleus covering its entire surface. There are hardly any details to hinder the old woman's slow and hesitant progress; her links with the ouside world, the hand on the stick and the ear are unusually large and drawn with great care.
The Blind Old Woman was done in water-colour, a medium to which
Rissanen remained faithful throughout his early production. The form
relies on a tightly circumscribed outline. Rissanen coloured the areas
inside the pencil outlines carefully. He himself called his work plodding
and grinding, so slowly and laboriously it seemed to progress. In order
to emphasize the outline Rissanen re-drew it once more over the
whole work.
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The Decades of Realism and National Romanticism 
Walter Runeberg : Apollo ja Marsyas Amor ja Bacchus lapsina Johannes Takanen : Aino Andromeda National Romantic Karelianism Adolf von Becker : Äidiniloa Victor Westerholm : Knutsbodan vuoret Kukkivia hedelmäpuita, Suresnes Albert Edelfelt : Ellen Edelfelt Kuningatar Blanka Lapsen ruumissaatto Pasteurin muotokuva, harjoitelma Pariisin Luxemburgin puistossa Ruokolahden eukkoja kirkonmäellä Gunnar Berndtson : Peilin ääressä Morsiamen laulu Aukusti Uotila : Lammaspaimen Kalastuspaikka kuutamolla Akseli Gallen-Kallela : Kullervon kirous Ilmarinen kyntää kyisen pellon Poika ja varis Mädäntynyt kuha Aino-taru Lemminkäisen äiti Velisurmaaja Tytön pää, Pikku Anna Kevät Démasquée Eero Järnefelt : Taiteilijan pojan muotokuva Matilda Wreden muotokuva Kaislikkoranta Pielisjärven syysmaisema Raatajat rahanalaiset Pekka Halonen : Viulunsoittaja Oijustie Avannolla Syksyinen raita Tienraivaajia Karjalassa Helene Schjerfbeck : Vihreä asetelma Istuva valkopukuinen nainen Toipilas Kansakoulutyttö Mustataustainen omakuva Omakuva 1944 Maria Wiik : Hilda Wiikin muotokuva Maailmalle Juho Rissanen : Sokea Povarissa Rauta kaulassa Lapsuuden muisto
