AKSELI GALLEN-KALLELA Picturing Finland

Finnish painter Akseli Gallen-Kallela (1865–1931) was a national hero and international star during his lifetime. He made paintings and graphic works bridging Finnish culture, myth and landscape with influences from artistic centers such as Paris, Berlin, London and Vienna. He reminds us of the brilliant Russian mythology illustrator, Ivan Bilibin and also the Swedish artist, Carl Larsson. From ancient mythology to the modern world, Akseli Gallen-Kallela captured Finnish history, legends, land and snowscapes, and stark forests in deep snow. His distinct style  and subject matter identifies him as a painter of the Scandinavian world. We discovered Kallela several decades ago when we were still attending the annual American Booksellers Association show, which would showcase new and upcoming books. There was a lady who specialized in Scandinavian books, which she imported. Although they were all in a foreign language, Swedish, Danish, Russian...we would occasionally find wonderful artists and illustrators new to us. Kallela was one of these, and we handled at least two of his books with not a word of English inside. As far as I know, this could be his very first collection in English. He has a bold, imaginative style that reminds very strongly of Ivan Bilibin, who was painting Russian myth and legend at exactly the same time as Kallela. Bilibin's books published in Russian are today very highly collectible and expensive, even though they are only 16-24 page pamphlets. Kallela? I've never even seen one of his original books--it may be most of his work was only done for gallery display and did not make it into books during his lifetime, like Bilibin and Carl Larsson did. Did one influence the other?