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Artist or Maker: Albert Edelfelt (1854-1905)
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Provenance: Ernst Bojesen, Copenhagen.
Anonymous sale, Bruun Rasmussen, Copenhagen, 24 April 1979, lot 31.
Acquired at the above sale by the present owner.
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Exhibited: Helsinki, Ateneum, Albert Edelfelt, Minnesutställning, April - July 1910, no. 165.
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Literature: Julrosor, 1898.
B. Hintze, Albert Edelfelt, vol. III, Helsinki, 1942, no. 840, p. 172.
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Notes: Executed in 1898, the present work is a study for the stunning oil of the same title (Hintze 839; private collection, Finland). Comparing the present work to the other known studies (Hintze 841-842 & Christie's, London, 29 March 1990, lot 178), it is certainly the most complete and also the most alike to the finished version, particularly in the serene and beautiful face of the young Virgin. Interestingly, all three studies catalogued by Hintze (840-842) are executed in portrait format, while the finished version is extended at both sides by the architecture of the rose garden to become horizontal.
Edelfelt's work of the late 1880s and 1890s reveals a growing interest in religious and mythological subjects, while also demonstrating the influence of the Pre-Raphaelite movement, whose work had achieved some success at the Paris Salons in the early 1890s. The Virgin Mary in the rose garden is inspired by a poem by the Swede Viktor Rydberg from 1891, in which he describes Mary sewing a winding cloth for her son, with a blood red border symbolising his death. Edelfelt often used the subject of the Virgin to portray an image of purity and motherhood and the sacrifice and suffering inherent in the story is wonderfully conveyed by the intensity of her gaze. The subject must also have had personal resonances for the artist in his adoration of his mother and in the troubled mental state of his wife who was diagnosed as suffering from hysteria in 1893. Nevertheless, The Virgin Mary in the rose garden is a haunting and beautiful image, executed with a spontaneity and expression that demonstrates Edelfelt's mastery of his medium.
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