About this lot
Description
§ Tove Jansson (Finnish, 1914-2001) Fillyjonk and Hemulen with small girl and dog signed lower right "Tove" and inscribed "To Snooge and Oliver from Tove !" pen and ink 22 x 26cm (9 x 10in)
Provenance: A direct gift from the artist to the vendor's family and by descent Other Notes: Tove Marika Jansson was one of the most celebrated illustrators of the 20th century, and known internationally as the creator of the Moomin characters and books, a phenomenon which continues to stretch across generations. Her wider outputs of graphic illustration and painting, however, are relatively unseen outside her home country of Finland. Jansson was born in 1914 in Helsinki to the graphic artist, Signe Hammarsten and the sculptor Viktor Jansson. She grew up with her two brothers, Per Olov (b. 1920) and Lars (b. 1926), in an ambitious, artistic family, living and breathing art. The open-minded, bohemian atmosphere encouraged the talented young Jansson to search for her own artistic expression, which produced striking results with intuitive certainty from an early age. In the midst of the mass bombings of Helsinki in 1944, Jansson managed to get an attic studio in the centre of the city. The studio became her cherished home, a source of power and a haven, where she created her most renowned paintings and texts. It was there that Jansson finished her first story featuring Moomintroll. "The Moomins and the Great Flood" (1945) was the first volume in the series that was to become the most prominent and best-known part of Jansson’s career as an artist. However, as a writer, Jansson did not want the stunning success of Moomins to limit her freedom. After "Moominvalley in November" (1970), it was time for something new. The present drawings come from the collection of Dominic Green, son of famous portrait artist Kenneth Green, who was close friends with Jansson. Kenneth Green painted Tove Jansson's portrait which is now in the Helsinki Museum. Dominic Green said: "I remember Tove Jansson very well. She often used to visit our family at Christmas and was a huge character as well as being hugely talented. We used to travel to Finland to see her and as a child I was always fascinated by watching her draw. She was a close friend of my father's through their connections in the art world and she drew me these five pictures to keep when I was a child. Her nickname for me was 'Snooge', hence why this is written on the drawings in amongst the original Moomin characters".
Unframed and stuck down to card. There is a crease to the paper a third of the way from the bottom, runing horizontally and another crease to the left of Grandma.
Back to lot listings