My husband (MH), a man of proud Scandinavian descent, does a lot of surfing on the internet. His Facebook feed gets a much more diverse set of articles than mine. Some time ago he read a 2017 article on three Finnish brothers known for their paintings of birds as well as scientific illustrations. Neither of us had ever heard of them.
He passed the article along to me but it has taken me some time to get around to telling you readers about these brothers.
My knowledge of bird art is primarily from owning several volumes of the bird and mammal paintings of John James Audubon, who took the more static art of earlier ornithologists such as Alexander Wilson (whose book I have, too) and made the birds seem to come alive.
 |
| Golden eagle, by Ferdinand von Wright (Public domain image from Rawpixel) |
But that doesn't mean I can't look into the work of others. So here is a short bit on the von Wright brothers - Magnus, Wilhelm and Ferdinand.
According to the article, from research department of the Finnish National Gallery, the brothers are "iintegral figures in the history of science and culture in 19th-century Finland and Sweden."
In addition, "It is clear, when we look at their work, that their careers unfolded at the intersection of science and art, and it is sometimes difficult to tell the two apart. While the works are regarded stylistically as part of the tradition of Biedermeier or Romanticism, the scientific accuracy and detail of the pictures is far more important. On the other hand, the brothers’ works communicate a special affection for nature, while also representing the ideals of beauty of the time."
Well, that's nice.
Apparently the oldest and youngest brothers, Magnus and Ferdinand respectively, focused more on nature while Wilhelm was more of a scientific illustrator. There was no art academy in Finland at the time so the brothers had to travel to Sweden for further schooling to develop their techniques.
From the article: "The great majority of Magnus’s output consists of landscapes, but his earliest works feature horses and birds. He also made pictures of both ordinary people and historical persons, such as a local cobbler named Lindros or the last King of Poland, Stanislaus Poniatowski. Stylistically, most of his early works are rather simple, and the bird pictures in particular are mostly records of ornithological observations."
Eventually he was asked to illustrate a compendium of Swedish birds, and had his brother Wilhelm come to Sweden to help him. While Magnus would later return to Finland, Wilhelm stayed in Sweden and became best known for his watercolor scientific illustrations.
Ferdinand, the youngest, eventually traveled to Sweden, too. According to the article, his artistic career was the longest of the three brothers with the peak of his career as a landscape painter in the 1850s and as bird painter in the years 1859–70.
Audubon died in 1851. To me he was clearly an influence on the brothers, whether they knew it or not - particularly Ferdinand, as the golden eagle picture above shows.
Why do few outside of Scandinavia know of the von Wrights? Consider:
The status of Magnus, Wilhelm and Ferdinand von Wright in the history of Finnish art has changed over the decades – unlike their recognition as scientific illustrators. The most important period in the artistic careers of Magnus and Ferdinand was in the mid-19th century, when the art scene in Finland was still rather small. When young artists set out to study in Düsseldorf in the 1850s and again later to Paris in the 1860s, new ideas and influences began making themselves felt in Finnish art. As this trend gained a firmer foothold in Finland, the Von Wright brothers’ art began to seem hopelessly antiquated. This was also when Magnus’s and Wilhelm’s careers in art came to a close, whereas Ferdinand continued to paint bird motifs until the end of the century, when he was acclaimed primarily as an old master.
So there you have it. I'm no art historian but I admit that of the three the bird paintings of "old master" Ferdinand interest me the most. They remind me of an older master - Audubon.
