The Power of Song (Väinämöinen Playing the Kantele)

In late 1929, the University received the triptych sketch The Power of Song (1914) for the back wall of the Phoenix auditorium, donated by the artist himself, Elias Muukka. Five years earlier another mural sketch, Akseli Gallen-Kallela’s Lönnrot and Chanters of Kalevala (1913), was hung on the auditorium’s front wall. Muukka painted the poetic Kalevala-themed painting during his years in Turku, when he also worked as a teacher of many younger artists. In the triptych, Väinämöinen is sitting on a cliff by the water, enchanting all creation with his music, including water and wood nymphs and animals. Later, the work has also been referred to as Väinämöinen Playing the Kantele, but it seems that this title was intended simply as a description of the work for the purpose of identification. The painting was exhibited as part of Muukka’s retrospective exhibition at Turku Art Museum in 1928, the year he was awarded the title of Professor.

According to his own words, Muukka had started sketching Kalevala motifs while studying in Düsseldorf, but he only began implementing his ideas when he returned to Finland after 1900. The year marked on the work donated to the University is 1914, but a similar if not identical sketch had already been exhibited in spring 1903, in the annual exhibition of Turku Art Society, as evidenced by a review in Åbo Tidning. In December 1908 and January 1909, a “skiz” titled The Power of Song was also on display in his private exhibitions in Turku and Helsinki (no. 7). Muukka was primarily known as a landscape painter and did not receive acclaim for his stylistically outdated Kalevala motifs. However, at least in Turku, the ageing artist, who had been the teacher of many local artists, was treated kindly. Critic Antero Rinne described the retrospective exhibition as follows: “The Kalevala paintings exhibited by Muukka are an example of the contemporary renaissance of Kalevala. Muukka has approached Kalevala themes with a unique approach and great love, inventing many amusing details. […] In its poetic modesty, Muukka’s vision is anything but disagreeable.”

Elias Muukka (1870–1938), who was born in Lemi, in the region of Savonia, worked in Turku for the majority of his career. He was the second teacher at the Turku Drawing School in 1891–1907 when Victor Westerholm was the director, and an arts teacher at secondary schools in Turku in 1893–1918. Muukka and Westerholm had studied together in Düsseldorf in the 1870s, and Muukka had visited him in Önningeby on the Åland Islands. He moved to Savonlinna and from there to Mikkeli, where he worked as a school teacher in 1919–1925, after which he returned to Turku. However, he spent his summers at his new studio in Lemi. His housing company in Turku went bankrupt in the early 1930s, but the “Nestor among artists” was fortunate enough to get to spend his last years at the Lallukka Artists’ Home that opened in Helsinki in 1933.

Tutta Palin 2024