Lake View

Lake View from 1901, now in the Ateneum, shows Gallen-Kallela working in the mode of pure landscape contemplation that balanced his more ambitious figure and mythological compositions. The Finnish lake landscape — with its still water, its surrounding forest, its vast sky — had been a central subject of Finnish painting since the National Romantic movement began in the 1880s. Gallen-Kallela's lake views are typically less dramatic than his storm or mythological subjects, finding instead a meditative stillness that characterised some of the finest Finnish landscape painting of the period.

The still water surface provides an ideal mirror for the sky and forest — Gallen-Kallela exploits the reflective quality to double the landscape and create compositional depth through the relationship between actual and reflected forms. The horizontal emphasis of lake and sky contrasts with the vertical rhythm of the surrounding forest stands.