Eva Acke

Eva Maria Acke née Topelius (1855–1929) was a Swedish-speaking Finnish artist who painted watercolours in the Realist plein air style. In 1891, she married the Swedish artist J.A.G. Acke and moved to Sweden.

Born on 4 September 1855 in Nykarleby, Finland, Eva Topelius was the daughter of the Finnish writer and academic Zachris Topelius. She studied art at the Finnish Art School and then privately under Carl Møller in Copenhagen, Luigi Premazzi in St Petersburg as well as in . She frequently travelled to Italy with her father where she painted landscapes.

Topelius spent several summers on Åland where she joined the Finnish-Swedish artists colony in the village of Önningeby. It was there she met the Swedish painters J.A.G. Acke and Anna Wengberg who were planning to marry. In the end, Acke married Topelius in 1891. Thereafter they moved to Uppsala where J.A.G. Acke was restoring the cathedral's frescos. In 1901, they settled in the Villa Akleja in Vaxholm. They had no children of their own but in 1903 they adopted the Italian boy Fausto Padovini who became an Olympic gold-medallist.

Like many female artists of the times, Eva Acke was more interested in her husband's career than her own. After he died in 1924, she continued to paint, not only Naturalistic landscapes but also flower paintings and interiors. She exhibited both in Finland and at the Swedish Academy in 1925.

Eva Acke died in Vaxholm on 23 March 1929.

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