Helene Schjerfbeck review – a chilling blast of Nordic noir

Royal Academy, London
The Finnish painter’s early work shows ability and vision, but this exhibition celebrates her long, brutal decline into decay and death

The Finnish painter Helene Schjerfbeck is not exactly a household name in Britain – and there’s no reason she should be. This is the first UK solo show of her sort-of expressionist works and it’s strictly for the dutiful. It might serve to cool you down on a hot day, though. Schjerfbeck’s uninspired miserabilism is a cold shower of second-rate art.

Born in Helsinki in 1862, Schjerfbeck had a long painting life that only ended with her death in 1946, her easel at her bedside. She is almost the exact contemporary of the Norwegian Edvard Munch and, like him, she painted the long dark night of the Nordic soul. However, in her art this teeters on bathos and descends into embarrassment. The curators have included three portraits of her mother, one a heavy-handed homage to Whistler’s Arrangement in Grey and Black No 1. The artist’s daughterly devotion is clear, yet there’s nothing in them to make the viewer share that interest. It’s hard to know why we need to intrude on this private world.

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