L'incendio della sterpaglia

Jaernefelt spent the summer of 1893 at a farmhouse in Northern Savo and painted much of this on the spot, watching peasants clear forest the old way, by burning it, to win a season or two of arable ground from the ash. The smoke drifts across a scorched hillside behind them. In the front stands a girl, streaked with soot, looking straight out at you while the adults labour on. She was a real 14-year-old, Johanna Kokkonen, who took part in the burning. Jaernefelt worked partly from photographs he took that summer, and gave the picture a heavier Finnish title, roughly 'wage slaves', pointing at how little all this punishing work returned.