WESTERHOLM, Victor Axel - b. 1860 Turku, d. 1919 Turku

Finnish painter. He studied at the School of Drawing in Turku from 1869 to 1878. In 1878 he travelled to Düsseldorf and enrolled at the Kunstakademie, where he attended classes on landscape painting by Eugen Dücker (1841-1916) until 1886. He spent his summers in Finland, on the Aland Islands, preparing sketches that provided the groundwork for many of the paintings he produced in Düsseldorf. Although Westerholm began working according to the principles of studio painting, his vivid studies are often imbued with the crispness of the plein-air style. In the early 1880s he concentrated on painting autumnal scenes and rapidly became the leading landscape artist of the younger generation.

In 1886 he joined the painters’ colony in Önningeby, its programme being devoted to open-air painting. In 1887 he abandoned the idealising style of painting and began to work in Impressionist manner. In the 1890s he was influenced by Symbolism.

The Seine at Paris

Westerholm painted the present picture in spring 1888, during his first sojourn in France. The cloudy sky, the river diagonally crossing the canvas, and the tree that anchors the composition, were all in line with classic landscape art. But the picture also betrays a modern eye. The three factory chimneys positioned as counterpoints to the tree, and the iron bridge marking the divide between water and sky, document the advance of modern civilization.