Tove Jansson's artistry

Tove Jansson is known as a children's writer and illustrator of the Moomintroll books, but besides those drawings, her artwork included political cartoons, comic strips, murals and paintings. She considered her careers as author and painter to be of equal importance.

Her cartoons for the Swedish-language satirical magazine Garm mocked both Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin. They were drawn in pen-and-ink, often with areas of red as highlights. Her Moomin comic strips were warmly humorous, with technically skilful and innovative drawing. Her paintings included frescoes painted directly with dry-powder pigment onto newly-laid plaster, as with her works Country Celebration and City Celebration for Helsinki City Hall. Her Moomin books were mostly sharply illustrated in pure black-and-white using Rapidograph pens, in a switch from her first books where she had used grey washes. She took on some commissions to illustrate classic works such as Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark and Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, where her work brought the strangeness of the text to life. She also tried her hand at illustrating Tolkien, with a set of illustrations for the 1962 Swedish edition of J. R. R. Tolkien's 1937 children's book The Hobbit. She was however more interested in the landscapes than in Tolkien's characters, which she found commonplace.

Political cartoons

The author and artist Tove Jansson worked as an illustrator and political cartoonist for the Swedish-language satirical magazine Garm from 1929 to 1953, when the magazine ceased production.^[3] Among her many cartoons for Garm, in 1938 she drew Adolf Hitler crying, surrounded by great European leaders, who try to calm him down by offering him slices of cake labelled with the names of territories he wanted to acquire.^[2] Her cover illustrations for the magazine lampooned both Hitler and Joseph Stalin: in one, Stalin draws his sword from his impressively long scabbard, only to find it absurdly short; in another, multiple Hitlers ransack a house, carrying away food and artworks. In The Spectator's view, Jansson made both "Hitler and Stalin appear as preposterous little figures, self-important and comic".^[1]

In total, Jansson created around 100 covers for Garm and around 500 cartoons and other illustrations for the magazine. She worked with pen-and-ink, creating "crisp" line drawings with small areas of solid black; she frequently added areas of another colour (such as red) for the cover images.^[4] The comics expert Paul Gravett writes that Jansson was exceptional in being "an outspoken female political cartoonist" in that period; a 1941 vote rated her as the most humorous cartoonist in Scandinavia.^[4]

Comic strips

Jansson's earliest comic strips were created for productions including Lunkentus (Prickinas och Fabians äventyr, 1929), Vårbrodd (Fotbollen som Flög till Himlen', 1930), and Allas Krönika (Palle och Göran gå till sjöss, 1933).^[7]

The figure of the Moomintroll appeared first in Jansson's political cartoons, where it was used as a signature character near the artist's name. This "Proto-Moomin", then called Snork (in Swedish) or Niisku (in Finnish),^[8] was thin and ugly, with a long, narrow nose and devilish tail. Jansson said that she had designed the Moomins in her youth: after she lost a philosophical quarrel about Immanuel Kant with one of her brothers, she drew "the ugliest creature imaginable" on the wall of their outhouse and wrote under it "Kant". This Moomin later gained weight and a more pleasant appearance, but in the first Moomin book The Moomins and the Great Flood (originally Småtrollen och den stora översvämningen), the Immanuel-Kant-Moomin is still perceptible.^[8]

In 1952, after Comet in Moominland and Finn Family Moomintroll had been translated into English, a British newspaper man, Charles Sutton, asked if Tove Jansson would be interested in drawing comic strips about the Moomins.^[9] Jansson accepted the offer.^[9] The comic strip Moomintroll started in the London Evening News, which had a circulation of 12 million at that time, making it the world's largest daily newspaper.^[9] The strip spread to hundreds of other newspapers in 12 countries.^[9]

Laura Honkasalo, reporting on the first seminar (August 2000) on the Moomin comic strips in Kulttuurivihkot, noted that they use a warm humour, not laughing at anyone's expense, and that the humour relies on slow narrative. She notes Juhani Tolvanen's analysis that Lars Jansson's drawing is technically skilful and innovative, such as with thematic panel boundaries.^[5] Moomin.com notes that the vertical boundaries between the comic strip panels are not always just lines: Tove and her brother Lars Jansson sometimes "delightful[ly]" enlivened the strips by making the boundaries scenic elements such as doors, ropes, curtains, or trees.^[6]

Paintings

Although she became known first and foremost as an author, Tove Jansson considered her careers as author and painter to be of equal importance. She painted throughout her life. She exhibited during the 1930s and early 1940s, holding her first solo exhibition in 1943. Despite generally positive reviews, criticism induced Jansson to refine her style; her 1955 solo exhibition was simpler in detail and content. Between 1960 and 1970 she held five more solo exhibitions. The National Biography of Finland describes Jansson as going "against the conventional image of an artist with her unusually even balance between visual art and writing."^[8][11]

Jansson's 1941 painting of her friend Eva Konikoff was exhibited at Helsinki's "Young Artists" exhibition in 1942. The scholar of literature Boel Westin describes Konikoff as embodying "freedom, power, and will" to Jansson.^[10] Westin writes that the portrait of "a free woman" was of "great importance" to Jansson, as it embodied both her determination as an artist, and her friendship with Konikoff.^[10] In Westin's view, the fact that Eva is wearing only her slip increases the power of the work; she notes that Konikoff's family were disturbed by it. At the exhibition, the critics called it an "accomplished" study of a figure. Jansson had not tried to sell the work: she intentionally priced it high enough to prevent a sale, keeping the painting for herself; at a later date she changed her mind and gave it to Konikoff.^[10]

Murals

Throughout her career, Jansson created a series of commissioned murals and public artworks, including:

• The canteen at the Strömberg factory at Pitäjänmäki, Helsinki (1945)^[8]
• A pair of frescos for the cellar restaurant of Helsinki City Hall (1947)^{[b][13][14][12]}
• The Aurora Children's Hospital in Helsinki^[15]
• The Seurahuone hotel at Hamina, Kymenlaakso^[8]
• The Ten Virgins altarpiece in Teuva (Swedish: Östermark) Church (1954), South Ostrobothnia,^[8] her only church painting^[16]
• Fairy-tale murals in schools, including the kindergarten in Pori, Satakunta (1984)^[8]

The frescoes in Helsinki City Hall were painted with dry-powder pigment straight onto newly-spread plaster. Jansson was assisted in the technique on the first one, Country Celebration^[c], by the fresco restorer Niilo Suihko, but created the second fresco, City Celebration,^[d] on her own.^[13][17]

The City fresco depicts several elegantly-dressed figures, including Jansson seated at a table with a fan, drink, vase of flowers, cigarette, and small Moomintroll.^[13][17] Philip Oltermann, in The Guardian, suggests that the Moomintroll is not so much a piece of branding as "a kind of spirit animal to the artist herself".^[18] Just behind Jansson, and clearly recognisable, is her lover Vivica Bandler,^[13][17] daughter of Helsinki's treasurer, Erik von Frenckell,^[17][19] dancing with a man in a tailcoat.^[13] Jansson's biographer, Tuula Karjalainen, comments that the work shows "a Paradise influenced by culture", and that it seems to depict Jansson's life. Karjalainen writes that the fresco was "a declaration of love", becoming a memory of that time, and "a picture of courage", as she was openly depicting a secret and then-illegal relationship.^[17]

Illustrations

Moomin books

Jansson wrote and illustrated nine books about the exploits of the Moomins, as well as picture books for younger children.^[21] She became known principally as their author, despite her continuing work as an artist.^[22] In the illustrations of her first Moomin books, as in the 1946 first edition of Kometjakten, she used grey washes to implement shading.^[20]

For the 1948 Trollkarlens hatt (Finn Family Moomintroll), she switched to "a new technique", pure black-and-white, drawing with one thin and one thick Rapidograph pen. She redrew the illustrations for Kometjakten's 1951 English edition, Comet in Moominland, using only pen-and-ink. The result was a sharper and more dramatic effect.^[20]

Jansson adopted a fresh approach for her picture books, starting with the 1952 Hur gick det sen? Boken om Mymlan, Mumintrollet och Lilla My (The Book about Moomin, Mymble and Little My), bringing the Moomins to small children. It made innovative use of a modern style of artwork, its use of colour, and the holes through each of the pages. Jansson designed it to provide its young child readers with a series of surprises.^[23][24]

Illustrating Lewis Carroll

Contrasting approaches to Lewis Carroll's
The Hunting of the Snark

Henry Holiday's 1876 illustration "The Landing"

Jansson's radically different "moominesque" version^[25]

As well as illustrating her own books, Jansson illustrated Swedish translations of classics such as Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark and Alice's Adventures in Wonderland,^[25] at the invitation of Bonniers's Åke Runnquist; he became her publisher and they exchanged letters for many years.^[26]

Jansson had not seen Henry Holiday's original 1876 illustrations for The Hunting of the Snark, and in 1958 created a radically different approach to depicting Carroll's nonsense poem.^[25] The publishers described the finished illustrations as being of the "highest class".^[25] The British Library commented that "Jansson depicted a cast of large-eyed, long-snouted moominesque figures in contrast to Holiday's caricatured, large-headed humans, both bringing the absurd to life in their own ways."^[25]

In 1965, she illustrated Runnquist's version of Alice in Wonderland. She wrote to Runnquist that she saw it as "horror ... the story is terrifying and can in no way be seen as an idyll, but it causes shivers of pleasure."^[25] He asked her to tone down the horror, but in the British Library's opinion that element remains "in the uncanny, magnified or magnifying underworld", with Jansson's artwork conveying the story's "inherently uneasy and confounding fantasy."^[25]

Illustrating Tolkien

She created a set of illustrations for the 1962 Swedish edition of J. R. R. Tolkien's 1937 children's book The Hobbit, titled Bilbo: En hobbits äventyr,^[25][e] at the request of the Swedish children's author Astrid Lindgren.^[27] Jansson was far more interested in Tolkien's landscapes than his characters, which she found "commonplace", whereas, she wrote, "the scenery is seductive in its macabre ferocity".^[27] She liked "coal-black rivers, moonlit moors with fiery wolves – a whole world of catastrophe" that she knew she could express in her illustrations.^[27] She was concerned to avoid her Moomin style of "careful line-drawing and painstakingly filled surfaces", so she intentionally developed a freer style, while she kept the figures small, sometimes "really small".^[27]

The scholar of literature Björn Sundmark states that Jansson's work helped to define how Tolkien's Middle-earth fantasy could be depicted visually.^[29] The edition with her illustrations was not reprinted for many years,^[f] even though reviewers and "Tolkienists" liked Jansson's "expressive"^[30] images. Sundmark suggests that the reason was that in the 1960s, a new, more realistic style became the norm for fantasy art.^[30]

Legacy

In 2024, the Helsinki Art Museum held a retrospective exhibition, named "Paradise", of Jansson's public art work, in preparation for the 80th anniversary of her creation of the Moomins. It included five of her murals alongside full-scale sketches for them, and her competition paintings.^[18]

Notes

References

Sources

• Gravett, Paul (2022). Tove Jansson. The Illustrators. Thames & Hudson. ISBN 978-0-500-09433-4.
• Karjalainen, Tuula (2016) [2013]. Tove Jansson: Work and Love. Penguin Books. ISBN 978-0-141-97882-6.
• Tolvanen, Juhani (2000). Muumisisarukset. Tove ja Lars Jansson – Muumipeikko-sarjakuvan tarina [Moomin siblings: Tove and Lars Jansson – The Story of the Moomintroll Comic] (in Finnish). WSOY. ISBN 978-951-0-23633-8.
• Westin, Boel (2014). Tove Jansson Life, Art, Words: The Authorised Biography. Translated by Mazzarella, Silvester. Sort of Books. ISBN 978-1-908745-45-3.