Self-Portrait

Vilho Lampi spent almost his whole short life in Liminka, a flat farming district in northern Finland, painting its fields, its people, and above all himself. He made this self-portrait in 1933, in his mid-thirties, as he increasingly turned inward. His career lasted only about 15 years, but in that time he moved through rough expressionism, the cool precision of New Objectivity, and a fine, dappled brushwork in his last canvases. Three years after this picture, in 1936, Lampi drowned in a river near his home, most likely by his own hand. The portrait is now in the Ateneum, Finland's national gallery in Helsinki.