Le Jardin du Luxembourg, Paris

Albert Edelfelt was a Finn who had lived in Paris for more than ten years by 1887, well known in its art world, and yet in all that time this is the only large painting he made of the city itself. He set it in the Luxembourg Gardens on a bright summer afternoon: children playing on the sandy ground, nursemaids in their long ribboned caps, women resting on the park's hired chairs in the sun. The loose, light handling shows how much he had absorbed from French painting around him. Back home in Finland the picture became something of an emblem of national art, and it later entered the Ateneum through the Antell collection.