Magnus Enckell

Knut Magnus Enckell (Hamina, November 9, 1870 – , November 27, 1925) was a Finnish symbolist painter. At first he painted with a subdued palette, but from 1902 onwards used increasingly bright colors. He was a leading member of the 'Septem' group of colorist painters.

Knut Magnus Enckell was born on 9 November 1870 in Hamina, a small town in eastern Finland, the son of Carl Enkell, a priest, and Alexandra Enckell (born Appelberg). He was the youngest of six sons.

In 1889, at the age of 19, he began his artistic studies in Helsinki, at the Drawing School of the Finnish Art Association, but he dropped out and continued his studies privately under Gunnar Berndtson. Enckell was the first Finnish artist to break with Naturalism, which was the established style during his education in Helsinki 1889-1891.

In 1891 he went to Paris for the first time, where he became a student of Jules-Joseph Lefebvre and Jean-Joseph Benjamin-Constant at the Académie Julian. There he was drawn to the Symbolist movement, and was influenced by the painter Pierre Puvis de Chavannes as well as Symbolist literature.

During a stay in Brittany he made two paintings in spare colors: Self-Portrait and Breton Woman. He was enthusiastic about the Renaissance and about the idealistic and mystical ideas Sâr Péladan, from whom he took the androgynous standard of beauty which he applied in his work.

During his second stay in Paris in 1893, he painted The Awakening, in which he used a rigorous composition and transparent colors to suggest a spiritual atmosphere; and, through contact with the Swedish artists, O. Sager-Nelson and I. Agueli, he deepened his interest in mysticism.

Enckell was homosexual, as seems indicated in some erotic portraits which were quite uninhibited for their time. As Routledge's Who’s who in gay and lesbian history puts it, "His love affairs with men have not been denied ... Enckell's naked men and boys are openly erotic and sensual.".

...
Wikipedia