Classic Works of Fine Art at the Manor

Serlachius Manor

06.04.2019

—31.12.2028

Serlachius Kartanon vanhan puolen salissa vanhoja maalauksia ja veistoksia.

Fine Arts Foundation’s collection works

Collection hangingOn display are classic works from the Golden Age of Finnish art and early Finnish modernism from Gösta Serlachius Fine Arts Foundations collections. The old manor home also presents old European master paintings from Holland, Italy and Spain.

The hanging has been designed to honour the old spirit of the manor. First-floor exhibition halls one may see works depicting common people or Paris-themes by renowned male artists such as Akseli Gallen-Kallela, Albert Edelfelt and Pekka Halonen. Women artist from the Golden age of Finnish art include Helene Schjerfbeck, Maria Wiik, Amielie Lundahl and Ellen Thesleff. 

On display is Hugo Simberg’s Garland Bearer (1905), a preliminary work for the frescoes of Tampere Cathedral. The body of works related to the cathedral is complemented by The Brothers (1904/1906) and a portrait of Gertrud Gadd (1903). The children posed for Simberg’s painting The Wounded Angel.

Claude Monet’s painting Haystack in the Evening Sun (1891) is accompanied by paintings by two other French artists. Maurice Brianchon and Roland Oudot were among the artists who were called “painters of poetic reality”.   

On the sofa of the manor library, you can rest for a moment and sense the old spirit of the manor. After a renovation work, through its windows one may once again admire the park view. The ceiling is decorated with Lennart Segerstråle’s al secco painting The Birth of Literature (1935). The space has several sculptures and photographs showing how the library looked like in the time of Gösta Serlachius.

Gösta Serlachius Fine Arts Foundation’s collection is one of the best private collections in Scandinavia. The foundation maintains two museums in the Art Town Mänttä-Vilppula located in Tampere Region, Finland: Serlachius Manor and Serlachius Headquarters.

Serious-looking, patriotic young Finnish soldiers and drummer boys marching on a snow covered ground.
Albert Edelfelt, Finnish Soldiers in the War of 1808–1809, 1892, gouache on paper, Gösta Serlachius Fine Arts Foundation. Photograph: Vesa Aaltonen.

Finnish Soldiers in the War of 1808–1809 on show

In the summer of 2025, the collection hanging once again features Albert Edefelt’s Finnish Soldiers in the War of 1808–1809 (1892), a work about the Finnish War, which became a symbol of Finnishness and Finland’s right to self-determination during the years of oppression at the end of the 1800s. 

Finnish Soldiers in the War of 1808–1809 is one of the key works in the Fine Arts Foundation’s collection. A work made with gouache on paper is fragile and loses its colours in the light. That is why it is only displayed for short periods of time. The work is on display in June-August 2025.

Burn-beaten and destroyed brownish landscape with a submarine and an airplane as visible objects in the view.
Anselm Kiefer, Väinämöinen Ilmarinen, 2018, emulsion, oil, acrylic, shellack, rope and lead on canvas, Gösta Serlachius Fine Arts Foundation. Photograph: Sampo Linkoneva.

Väinämöinen Ilmarinen returns

Anselm Kiefer’s Kalevala-themed work Väinämöinen Ilmarinen (2018) has now returned to its position in the former dining room of the mill owner’s manor home. It is surrounded by a body of works curated from the Foundation’s contemporary art collection.