Jansson’s first solo show, held in 1943, was well-received by critics but many of her artistic peers eyed her evident commitment to symbolism with suspicion as art-world trends developed in the direction of abstraction. The painting, which shows an inky-black mountain streaked with rivers of alabaster-white alive with a supernatural glow, reveals an appetite for the fantastical that would come to fruition in the artist’s illustration work. The show opens with a room of early self-portraits, still-lifes and landscapes – the nuts and bolts of a fine-art education (Jansson studied in Stockholm and Paris, as well as at home in Finland) – and is dominated by Mysterious Landscape, c. Jansson’s illustrations may have been exhibited in Britain before, but Dulwich Picture Gallery is the first to make explicit those connections between the artist’s graphic work and her paintings.
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