![Musée No:413.018](http://www.museehome.co.uk/cdn/shop/products/413.018_{width}x.jpg?v=1605204301)
Musée No:413.018
Regular price £25.00Edith
Artist: Antti Favén
Date:1922
Antti Favén (1882-1948) was a Finnish Impressionist & Modern painter born in Helsinki. In the 1920s and 1930s, he was Finland's leading portrait painter, immortalizing the political and military elite of the first Republic of Finland, and also of Sweden. He studied at the Finnish Art Association's drawing school in 1900-01. Then lived and studied in Paris from 1902-13, his first major works date from this period. Finnish critics soon began to praise his work, and he was said to be the "new Edelfelt " (a Musée Home favourite). He was known for his well-groomed and fashionable attire along with a luxurious and extravagant lifestyle. Favén was a skilled portraitist, landscape painter and caricaturist influenced during his travels by modern Spanish painting and the French Impressionists. His works are mainly realistic but have features of romance and surrealism and are done in soft colours. In 1939, he fled the war to live in Sweden and lived there for the rest of his life. Although he continued to work in Sweden, he didn't achieve the same success as in Finland. He died more or less forgotten at the Stockholm garrison hospital two years later. His ashtray was brought to Finland and buried in Kylmäkoski Cemetery.
The subject is Edith Helena von Bonsdorff , (1890 –1968), a Danish-Finnish ballet dancer and choreographer. She sat for him at least twice.