A major retrospective of the career of early modernist painter Helene Schjerfbeck (1862–1946) is on display at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art for the last time on Sunday.
Seeing Silence: The Paintings of Helene Schjerfbeck opened at the Met in December, eight decades after her death. Featuring nearly 60 works, it is the first exhibition of her work at a major US museum.
It is also the first solo exhibition of a Finnish artist at the Met, one of the world’s leading art institutions — and one of few shows ever at the museum to focus on a European woman artist.
The artist’s self-portraits have attracted particular interest, as well as one of the all-time favourite Finnish paintings, The Convalescent, the last shown in this video.
Born in Helsinki, Schjerfbeck studied in Paris in the late 1800s and spent summers in Brittany and Cornwall. She later lived in Hyvinkää and Ekenäs (Tammisaari), and in her final years at a spa near Stockholm.
Interest from big European museums
The attention the exhibition received in the United States surprised Anna-Maria von Bonsdorff, director of the Ateneum Art Museum, which co-organised the exhibition.
“We didn’t dream of such a great reception,” she says.
The Met’s exhibition has brought new requests for exhibitions to the Ateneum. According to von Bonsdorff, there is now intense interest in Schjerfbeck.
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First we take Manhattan: The vast Metropolitan Museum of Art is located on the edge of New York’s Central Park. Image: Josefin Flemmich / Yle
“I have received a lot of contacts from around the world. Negotiations are underway. We will see major Schjerfbeck exhibitions in Europe in the future,” she says.
Some of the works on display in New York will be featured in other shows. In addition to the Ateneum, works were loaned from Finland by the Didrichsen Art Museum, the Serlachius Museum, the Riihimäki Art Museum, the Chappe Art Museum, the Turku Art Museum, the Ostrobothnia Museum and others.
Beginning on Monday, the show will be dismantled and the works packed up for the trip home to Finland.
Von Bonsdorff is delighted that the public has shown interest in a previously unknown Finnish artist.
The Met welcomes over five million visitors each year. The museum does not disclose the number of visitors to individual exhibitions, but von Bonsdorff says that “the exhibition halls have been full”.
Elsa Brule’s gift to Finland
The exhibition was made possible by Elsa A. Brule, an American philanthropist of Finnish descent. She grew up in Michigan with a grandfather who emigrated from Kainuu.
In 2022, Brule made a million-dollar donation to the Sibelius Academy’s Global Music Department at the University of the Arts Helsinki.
Brule then donated an disclosed sum to the Met to organise an exhibition featuring a Finnish artist.
“I was excited when the Met chose Helene Schjerfbeck for a solo exhibition,” Brule tells Yle. She described the show as her “gift to Finland”.
“It’s rewarding for me that it’s had a greater impact than I could have imagined,” she adds.
She has already seen the exhibition eight times and planned to visit again before the closing.
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One of Schjerfbeck’s final self-portraits from 1945. Image: Matias Uusikylä / Signe ja Ane Gyllenbergin säätiö
Brule has been particularly touched by the artist’s self-portraits.
“I’m always deeply moved when I stop by each painting,” she says.
Brule says she heard about a museum visitor who has visited the exhibition every day it has been open for four months.
“Phenomenal Finn”
Brule points to the many rave reviews of the show, noting that “the reviews have been exceptional!”
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The US press has hailed Schjerfbeck as an “icon of Finnish art” and a “Finnish master”. Image: Karoliina Juntunen / Yle
The Wall Street Journal referred to Schjerfbeck as a “phenomenal Finn”.
The New York Times expressed the hope that the exhibition would bring Schjerfbeck out of obscurity and make her better known in the US. The Financial Times published a long article about the artist and the exhibition, including a selection of pictures.
The exhibition’s curator, Dita Amory, spoke about Schjerfbeck on British art historian Katy Hessel’s podcast The Great Women Artists.
Schjerfbeck is known as a master of still lifes, landscapes and portraiture, but especially for her self-portraits.
In 2019, her works were shown at the Royal Academy of Arts in London. That followed the 2015–16 exhibition that toured four museums in Japan.
However, the attention on the New York exhibition has been exceptional.
“Few news stories from Finland reach such a wide readership and audience,” notes von Bonsdorff, pointing out that the exhibition has been good publicity for Finland.
“I hope that this will increase understanding in Finland of how much we work to promote the image of Finland by exporting our art to the world,” she says.
Seeing Silence: The Paintings of Helene Schjerfbeck at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 5 December 2025–5 April 2026.