Description:

signed middle left: MW; signed and dated middle right: M. Wiik / Paris 1877; inscribed lower right by Tony Robert-Fleury (1837-1911)
charcoal heightened with white on blue paper
610 x 470 mm

Provenance:

Bukowskis, Helsinki, 11 December 2004, lot 161
Private collection, Stockholm
thence by descent until 2023

Note:

In the autumn of 1875 Maria Wiik undertook her first study trip to Paris. Since the state École des Beaux-Arts was closed to women, she enrolled in the so-called Women’s studio at Académie Julian. Her teacher at the school was Tony Robert-Fleury (1837-1911). In the spring of 1878, she was awarded the school medal for the most outstanding student. In the summer the same year, she exhibited five drawings at the Finnish Society’s exhibition, which the art critic Carl Gustaf Estlander in a review of the exhibition judged to be ”downright excellent” (Finska Konstföreningens Exposition, in Finsk tidskrift, 1878, pp. 457, cited in  H. Westermarck, Tre konstnärinnor. Fanny Churberg, Maria Wiik och Sigrid af Forselles, 1937, pp. 78-79).

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