Lady Writing a Letter

The museum’s own account of the picture places it in Paris, where Edelfelt had arrived as early as 1874: a skilful history painter by training, he chose in the French capital to paint elegant scenes from bourgeois life, and the museum notes how closely he studied the way light falls in a room — down to the envelope in the woman’s hand, which the light makes transparent. The panel is signed and dated 1887 and measures 29 × 37 cm.

Albert Edelfelt (1854–1905) was born at Porvoo in Finland, studied in Helsinki and then at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris under Jean-Léon Gérôme, and became the first Finnish painter to win a wide international reputation; his portrait of Louis Pasteur, painted in 1885–86, hangs in the Musée d’Orsay. From 1883 he kept a studio at Haikko, near Porvoo, where he died. The painting is held in the Nationalmuseum, Stockholm.