Axel Gallen and the Constructed Nation: Art and Nationalism in Young Finland, 1880-1900

The dissertation examines the intersection of art and politics in the work of Finland's national painter, Axel Gallen (1865-1931) (after 1907, Akseli Gallen-Kallela) during the pre-independence period that witnessed Finland's evolution from a buffer zone of the Russian empire into a self-conscious and determined modern nation. In contrast to earlier investigations of Gallen's art, the study focuses upon the inner mechanisms of regional nationalism (the politicization of an indigenous people's history and cultural heritage) as witnessed in the artist's appropriation of Finnish oral traditions and fading regional customs. Examined in detail are Gallen's relations to his patrons, French and German artistic circles, Finnish rural inhabitants of different social classes, and his colleagues in the nationalist Young Finland circle. The dichotomy between Finno-Swedish and Finno-Finnish culture as evinced in Gallen's art is considered as a civil conflict spawned by severe economic, social, and political inequities between different segments of the Finnish population historically. Also, the schism between city and country, mirrored in the clash between literate and oral cultures, is explored as a polarity that shaped Gallen's constructed image of modern Finland. A secondary objective of the dissertation is to re-evaluate misunderstood aspects of Gallen's career (his relation to European Naturalism and Symbolism, for example) and to introduce new documentary and visual material. The rediscovery of Gallen's 1880s masterpiece, Peasant Life (1887), which was thought destroyed in World War I, opens a new path for understanding the amalgamation of real and fictive elements in Gallen's naturalist works. Examining the significance of biblical motifs in the artist's 1890s works, neglected in earlier scholarship, illuminates the intersection of international and regional myths in late nineteenth-century Finnish art. Finally, an analysis of Gallen's mythological works inspired by Finland's national epic, the Kalevala, demonstrates how the artist refuted the autonomy of written language and assumed the mantel of a painter-creator within a shifting socio-political context. Although thematically and geopolitically anchored to Finnish terrain, the dissertation seeks to make a significant contribution to broader re-examinations of European nationalist movements and to investigations of art inspired by oral cultural traditions.