Tove Jansson: Painter
by Chadd Scott · ForbesFinnish artist Tove Jansson (1914-2001) stands in a long line of under recognized 20th century female painters. Nothing unusual there. What makes Jansson’s circumstance unique is being overlooked as painter while simultaneously enormously famous as the author and illustrator of the Moomin children’s book series.
Moomin books have been translated into more than 60 languages. The characters and stories have spawned games, TV shows, theatre productions, an opera, ballet, a long-running comic strip, toys, and a theme park to scratch the surface of brand spinoffs. Finnair flies two Moomin decorated jets.
Isn’t it ironic?
“She always saw herself as a painter, foremost, and everything else, at least in the beginning, everything else was stuff she did to earn money,” Sophia Jansson, Tove Jansson’s niece and board chair at Moomin Characters Ltd., told Forbes.com. “When she started writing the Moomin books, she became more famous as a children's book author, and then, gradually, she started writing adult fiction, and by the end of her life, she was definitely most famous as an author rather than a painter.”
It would be inappropriate to consider that a shame. The Moomins touched millions of people around the world. Lasting childhood memories shared by parents and grandparents and kids. Impact a fine artist couldn’t dream of.
Still, Tove Jansson’s greatest passion was for painting.
“When I paint, I truly am,” she said.
She was damn good, too. Jansson’s paintings, particularly her insightful self-portraits, merit her recognition as a significant 20th century artist. The success of the Moomins, however, wash out the paintings like a spotlight shining at midday.
“As she got old and realized that younger people really didn't know that she painted, that must have felt not so pleasant,” Sophia Jansson said.
While the glow off the Moomins will never dim–nor should it–the wattage is being turned up on her painting. In Jansson’s hometown, the Helsinki Art Museum debuted “Tove Jansson–Paradise” on October 25, 2024. The presentation marks the first occasion that Jansson’s public paintings will be featured collectively in one exhibition. Filling half of HAM’s exhibition space on two floors, including a massive, top floor, hanger-like gallery, “Paradise” presents over 180 artworks including a notable collection of previously unexhibited sketches recently discovered in her Helsinki studio.
A special treat for Moomin fans, too, a tiny drawing from an outhouse wall–yup–the first known appearance of the Moomin character.
War Comes To Finland
“Paradise” provides an overview of murals Jansson painted on commission in public spaces during the 1940s and 1950s.
“Finland had to pay huge war reparations after (World War II), and Finland was incredibly poor after the war, and in the 50s, there was this real focus on rebuilding the nation, and though there was little money, there was a desire by the authorities to commission public works and somehow rebuild a lost identity during the war,” Sophia Jansson explained.
Pinched between Stalin’s Russia to the east and Hitler’s expanding Germany to the south, tiny Finland’s allegiances during the war require context. Having only gained independence from Russia in 1917, the Russians invaded Finland in 1939. The Germans were a friend, as the enemies of enemies tend to be.
World War II played a critical role in Jansson’s life and creative output. The Moomin stories were a reaction to the catastrophes around her and throughout Europe.
“She really felt like all her colors disappeared from her life, and she felt like she couldn't paint anymore,” Maija Keränen, guide at the Tampere Moomin Museum, said. “What Tova really wanted to be is a painter, of course, so she felt like she was going to have this escapist way of dealing with the war and the fear and the sorrow.”
She couldn’t paint, so she wrote. She wrote the Moomins.
“That is why there's no conflict in Moomin Valley, and there's no guns, and no war, and it's a peaceful haven. It's due to the war,” Keränen continues. “All the (Moomin) characters, although they are different, although all of them have pros and cons in their personalities, they still get along.”
The first two of Jansson’s 12 Moomin books can be read as war stories. In the first, a flood washes Moominpappa away from Moominmamma and son Moomintroll. A disaster. Displacement. Trauma. The creatures in Moominvalley are refugees. In the second, a comet threatens their existence. Death from above, like a bombing raid.
“The Moomins and the Great Flood” was published in 1945, the year the war ended. Eighty years gone by now. The Helsinki Art Museum exhibition kicks off 80th anniversary celebrations for the debut Moomin book.
“Rather than having balloons and cake, we wanted to celebrate this anniversary highlighting the chilling fact that perhaps the world today reminds us of 1945–especially Europeans–more than any other time, at least during my life,” Roleff Kråkström, Managing Director of Moomin Characters Ltd., said at a press conference October 23, 2024, previewing “Paradise.” “That is a chilling fact, but also tells us how enormously skilled Tove was in capturing universal values, making observations of humanity that are not bound to a certain culture, political system, religion. She carries universal values, and they are as topical today as they were in 1945.”
Finland shares an 833-mile border–currently closed–with Russia.
Moomin Characters Ltd is the official copyright holder of all the Moomin characters. The company was founded in the 1950s by Tove Jansson and her brother Lars Jansson, Sophia Jansson’s father, to manage the business side of the Moomin empire.
For the 80th anniversary, Moomin Characters and The Red Cross have extended their longstanding partnership. Part of the proceeds from selected products sold will be donated to The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) to contribute to its humanitarian work, often centered on refugees. Moomin Characters has also pledged a total of €100,000 to select Red Cross Societies to further their efforts in crisis relief and community resilience-building.
Tove Jansson: Painter
Jansson’s public murals offer a glimpse into the boundless depths of her rich imagination. They also reflect her dreamy longing for an idyllic escape from the horrors of war.
“I’ve never dreamt and planned as much as I have in these past few years. Not as a game–but as an absolute necessity,” Jansson wrote in a letter to her friend Eva Konikoff in October 1944.
“It was norm-defying for an artist of her day to paint murals of mermaids, unicorns, rainbows and Moomins, and that is precisely what makes them so ‘Tove’–her murals are bold, unabashedly playful, and even a little defiant,” “Paradise” curator Heli Harni said.
Jansson’s imagery inspired by books Tove’s mother read to her as a child.
“There was this tradition in the family of reading all the old fairy tales and sagas, Nordic sagas. There's a very old Swedish publication ‘Bland tomtar och Troll (Among Gnomes and Trolls).’ That was one of (Tove) and her mother's favorite books and it has a lot of fairy tales with princesses and trolls, and people riding in on horses, and magicians and all kinds of things,” Sophia Jansson explained. “There were several books like that floating around in my consciousness from my childhood and from the literary canon that (Tove) might have read through with her mother. In the public works, I see them because there are a lot of references to princesses and fantastical things and shells and seamen, a lot of those very fairy tale like elements.”
“Paradise” includes six large charcoal drawings–never before shown to the public–and the two crown jewels of Helsinki Art Museum’s collection, a pair of monumental frescoes: Party in the City (1947) and Party in the Countryside (1947). Look for the Moomin in both.
“There's a lightness to (Tove’s public works) that's very appealing. They're colorful. They’re not stark, realistic pictures. They are about that wonderful fantasy land that she had somewhere going on in her consciousness,” Sophia Jansson said. “They were meant to lift the spirits because Finland had gone through these very tragic times. The public works commissions were meant to say, ‘We're a wonderful nation and we still exist.’ She was given a free hand to be this sort of fairy tale lady who drew all these beautiful landscapes with fantastical people and things in them.”
Also featured in “Paradise” are a handful of Janssen’s self-portraits, as a group, among the finest in art history. Tove Jansson, painter, shining. So too with her extraordinary Family (1942), an intriguing, psychologically rich portrait of her family, herself included, painted at the height of the war. As family portraits go, it belongs in a category with Francisco Goya’s The Family of Charles IV (1800). The best of the best ever produced.
All belong to private collections, making their display irregular and prominence slight. Sadly. These are the pictures that make art lovers murmur under their breath about the Moomins and the demands they placed on Jansson’s time. Were it not for them, who knows where Jansson’s painting might have ascended? Her artistic productivity was prodigious. She might have completed hundreds of more paintings if not “preoccupied” by the Moomins.
The Moomins did eventually become a burden to her. She was a painter, she wanted to paint, but the world needed the Moomins. Jansson’s partner, Tuulikki Pietilä (1917–2009), helped convince her of that, and keep the series going.
The Girls
Same sex relationships were illegal in Finland until 1971. Janssen was gay. She became romantically involved with Pietilä, also an artist, in 1956, and the two stayed together through the end of Jansson’s life.
“Her personal choices were incredibly courageous. She doesn't worry about convention or the law. She falls in love with a woman and wants to spend the rest of her life with her, and she does it,” Sophia Jansson said. “(Tove Jansson) doesn't parade (the relationship) around town. After 1972, they can be seen together, and they can go out together, they can be in public as a couple, but I think up until then, they're careful, but not super careful, not with friends or family–everybody knows–they’re called ‘the girls,’ and everybody knows about them, but they're not on the barricade (as activists).”
Understanding Jansson’s life is impossible without appreciating Pietilä’s immense role in it. They were everything to each other for more than 40 years.
Tove Takes Over
Anyone interested in Tove Jansson who can’t make it to Helsinki or Tampere, Jansson will be coming to you.
Moomin80 celebrations include exhibitions at Waldemarsudde, Stockholm, Sweden (February 15–August 17, 2025); Lodz Film Museum, Poland (May 22–November 23, 2025); ASCE, Hong Kong (November 22, 2024–January 5, 2025); and the Mori Arts Center Gallery, Japan (July 2025–June 2027).
The Moomins are nearly as popular in Japan as they are Finland.
Moomin Characters will also collaborate with renowned fashion retailers and designers to launch collections bringing Moomin gifts and lifestyle products to new audiences in the United States and worldwide throughout the anniversary year. Beginning in November 2024, a new partnership with retailer Urban Outfitters brings an exclusive collection of Moomin-branded products into all 195 U.S. stores. Leading Finnish furniture designer Artek will launch a new Artek + Moomin collection. On October 23, 2024, Japanese designer Tao Kurihara debuted a Tove Jansson-inspired runway collection, to be followed by a Moomin-inspired collection launching in 2025.
Reinforcing Jansson as one of the previous century’s creative giants, in addition to her children’s books, illustrations, paintings, and murals, she wrote adult novels as well. The most highly regarded of them, “The Summer Book,” has been adapted into a movie hitting screens in 2025. “The Summer Book” captures a unique friendship on a small island in the Gulf of Finland between a young girl and her grandmother, played by Glenn Close.
“Emily in Paris” star Lilly Collins is a Moomin super-fan. She co-hosts a Moomin podcast.
All of this on top of Moomin Characters entering partnership with Barnes & Noble in 2023 bringing Jansson’s books and Moomin merchandise to stores in America.
“We've really tried to bring to people's knowledge that she was more than–and I hesitate say just the creator of the Moomins–but that she did so many more things,” Sophia Jansson said. “I don't want to put words into her mouth, but I'm sure by the end of her life she was probably quite at ease with how it panned out.”
A happy ending.
Just like all the Moomin books.