Provenance: Donation from the artist to the Finnish Red Cross. Provenance: Private collection, Sweden. The Finnish writer, poet, illustrator and painter Tove Jansson is famous worldwide as the woman behind the Moomins. Her stories build on the innate curiosity of children to discover and understand the world, and Jansson’s imaginative universe strikes a balance between idyll and eeriness, vitality and melancholy, magic and everyday life. That same open and personal sensuality is expressed in her visual art: “Every still-life, every landscape, every canvas is a self-portrait!!”. Because Tove Jansson was so much more than the creator of the Moomins. She had a highly productive artistic career, as can be seen in her diverse works, which range from surrealist paintings to modernist, experimental and lyrical works, and she is today considered one of Finland’s most important artists of the period. Raised by artistic parents, Tove Jansson was, from the outset, a rare bird who undauntedly followed her own path. Before and during the war, she provided critical satire for the political magazine Garm and courageously protested against Finland’s collaboration with Nazi Germany. Just as her Moomins – despite their outward naivety – warned against the consequences of war, xenophobia. Tolerance, diversity and joy of life in interaction with the dark and antagonistic thus remained the essence of her art. In her private life, too, her path was unconventional. The position, independence, creativity and equality of women were particularly important to her, and she questioned ingrained thought patterns and prejudices – not as a vociferous agitator, but as a quiet revolutionary whose entire existence was in line with her beliefs. Her life, art and love were thus closely linked. As a young woman, she had relationships with both men and women, but she spent the last 30 years of her life with the graphic artist Tuulikki Pietilä, who is celebrated in the Moomin universe by way of the character Too-Ticky. It was clear from an early age that painting was her passion in life, and at the age of 16, Tove Jansson began her art studies in Stockholm. She continued her education at the Ateneum in Helsinki, and in the late 1930s, she travelled to Paris, where she was inspired by the French Colourists and Impressionists. Her works from the 1940s have a distinctly modernist expression, where colour and composition come together to great effect. In the beautiful still-life that Bruun Rasmussen has the pleasure of offering, her passion for colour shines through clearly. Bright blue and fiery rusty red contrast strongly with each other, while orange and delicate rose create range. The perspective is pushed right into the foreground, giving the motif presence; an intensity that is enhanced by the many objects on the table: A vase decorated with stylised grapes, a knife, recently used to artfully peel an orange, balanced on the edge of the table, a dog-like creature, crisp, green-red apples and fresh flowers.