Mademoiselles Who Dabble With Paints

This is a four-part series I wrote about nineteenth century (into the twentieth century) Finnish female painters.  It's not about artistic criticism as much as about social criticism.  Or trying to use one specific example to increase our understanding of the way privilege works.  Someone oppressed can still have specific sneaky openings into power, depending on the various intersections between social class, gender, language and geography in this case, and also naturally between ethnicity, religion and race more generally. 

The four stories I tell in the series are all different, yet they share certain same features.  And the paintings are fun, too.

Part 1:  Fanny Churberg

Part 2:  Ellen Thesleff

Part 3:  Maria Wiik

Part 4:  Helene Schjerfbeck (she was awesome!)