Halonen Family of Artist

A family of artists

The cousins painter Pekka Halonen (1865–1933) and sculptor Eemil Halonen (1875–1950) are Finland´s art history top names. Their contemporaries often described them as the most Finnish artists. Pekka Halonen is best known for having represented the soul of the Finnish landscape, country people and the family idyll, while Eemil Halonen is known as a talented ethnographer, Kalevala´s interpreter and as an acknowledged portraitist. Both looked for the core of Finnishness and wanted to create original national art. Pekka Halonen said: "We tried to free ourselves from foreign influences and see our own conditions with our own eyes." For Pekka and Eemil Halonen, art also meant harmony, peace and development as a person.

Pekka´s brother Antti Halonen (1870–1945) made his career as a teacher of sculpting and architecture and as a custodian and developer of the peasant building tradition. He was also a gifted painter who preferably painted landscapes and continuously observed his surrounding looking for a suitable subject. Antti supported the artists in his family, was a partner in painting trips and a trusted person to talk to.

Eemil´s youngest brother Kalle Halonen (1899–1947) attended the Nation Theater Student School and at the beginning of the 1920s was already a promising actor, appreciated by both the public and the critics. Even Kalle, whose landscapes were on display between the 20s and the 30s in contemporary exhibitions, studied to become a painter.

The first professional Finnish art caster, sculptor Arttu Halonen (1885–1965), got the spark for art from his oldest brother Eemil. At that time bronze casting, a method covered by many professional secrets, was almost unknown to Finns. Arttu Halonen´s career as a caster lasted for half a century, and for 35 years it was an official job. He was the most active as a sculptor in the 1910s, after he came back from study trips to Berlin and Paris.

A sixth professional artist belonged to the Halonen artistic family: violist Heikki Halonen (1882–1932), who is included in the exhibition as immortalized by his brother Pekka.

Told by the collection

The widow of the sculptor Eemil Halonen, Mrs. Alli Halonen, considered it her life mission to nurture and protect the legacy of her distinguished husband. Interested partners were found in the Lapinlahti home region association, and Eemil Halonen Museum opened in the church village's old granary in 1965. At the museum were on display 250 sculptures that had been kept in storage in the house of Tervola. The Halonen Museum Foundation was founded (1971) to continue the work of the local community association, and the collections were exhibited in the rectory's old stone barn in 1975. The collections have been on display at the Museum of Fine Arts Eemil since 2017.

In 1980 Mrs. Alli Halonen, in addition to art and wealth, bequeathed to the Halonen Museum Foundation household furniture and objects. The works and objects that have been collected in recent years have been inventoried and catalogued. The Halonen Museum Foundation's collections are indeed an interesting and versatile whole, through which the exhibition offers a peek into the lives of Alli and Eemil Halonen as well. The objects in the exhibition have mostly been donated by Mrs. Alli Halonen.