Roses in a Blue-Green Vase 1942

This is Roses in a Blue-Green Vase by Helene Schjerfbeck, painted with understated elegance. Look at how the soft pinks and greens are set against a more robust, earthy background. It feels like Schjerfbeck is really savouring the paint, letting it sit and stain into the support, almost like a watercolor, and the roses, they're not shouting for attention, but sitting quietly, introspectively. There’s a stillness, but also a real tension in how she’s handled the space around the flowers, making you question the very nature of observation, what it means to really see something. I wonder if she was thinking about Vuillard and Bonnard, the way they captured intimate moments and domestic spaces. This piece feels so connected to her later works, where she really pared things down, reducing forms to their essence. It reminds us that artists are always having this silent conversation with each other, across time. Each brushstroke a meditation, each colour choice a question.