Hugo Backmansson

This beautiful portrait captures the delicate and intimate essence of a woman in profile, as she sits and looks through a magazine. Her gaze appears abstracted, perhaps indicating that she is viewing through a window, where the light shines upon her face. She is wearing a violet dress with gold trimmings. A bouquet of violets in a glass vase on a table completes the scene. Painted with oil on canvas, this piece is in excellent condition with only minor craquelure on the forehead and evidence of previous restoration. The artwork is signed and dated by the artist in 1923 and is accompanied by its original frame, a stunning gilded carved wood design.

There are many epithets that fit the Finnish talented and cosmopolitan Hugo Elias Backmansson. He was an officer, a battle painter, a world traveller and a chess master. Born April 17, 1860 in Paimio (at that time Finland belonged to the Russian Empire). He studied at Turku Drawing School (1870–73). After his officer's training at Cadet School of Fredrikshamn, Backmansson got a job in the Izmailovsky regiment in St. Petersburg and studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in this city (1894–99), there he also studied battle painting with excellent ingenuity. In 1905 he took part in the Russo-Japanese War as a war reporter and battle painter. Backmansson made his first trip to North Africa in 1898, when he fell in love with the light and colours and returned many times. He became known for his numerous depictions of military life and North Africa in watercolour and oil, but he was also a tireless portraitist and landscape painter for seven decades.

Backmansson is represented, among others, in Åbo Akademi, the Amos Anderson Art Museum, the Athenaeum Art Museum, Lahden Museum, Gösta Serlachius Museum, Turku Art Museum, Ett hem Museum and the Hermitage in St Petersburg.

The artist died November 19, 1953 in Helsinki, at the ninety-three, succumbing to a fall from a tramway.

Sources: Wikipedia; Hugo Backmansson - Artist, officer and adventurer, Swedish Literature Society in Finland, 2010.

Artist: Hugo Backmansson (1860-1953).
Signed and dated in the upper right-hand corner.
Medium: Oil on canvas.
Condition: Very good condition.
Dimensions : 52 x 63 cm. / 20 1/2 x 24 3/4 in.
Frame: 62 x 73 cm. / 24 1/2 x 28 3/4 in. Very good condition.
Origin: Finland.