Luonnoksia, ompeleva tyttö, pöytä, viinilasi, nainen selin 1878 - 1888

Helene Schjerfbeck made this sketch of a sewing girl, with additional studies of tables, a wine glass, and a woman seen from the back, in Finland, sometime in the late 19th or early 20th century. Schjerfbeck shows the woman absorbed in her sewing, a common subject in art history which typically represented women as confined to the domestic sphere. The table with books and the wine glass suggest a bourgeois setting, but they may also be associated with bohemian life. The quick, light marks of the graphite communicate the ephemerality of the modern world. Schjerfbeck studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki, where she would have learned the conventions of academic painting, but she moved away from naturalistic representation towards a more simplified, abstract style. To understand the meaning of this sketch more fully, we could consult Schjerfbeck’s letters and diaries, as well as exhibition reviews and other documents that record the reception of her work in her own time. What do you think this work tells us about the changing place of women in society at the turn of the century?