Akseli Gallen-Kallela was one of the most significant painters in Finland. Ha started his career with realistic genre paintings, and later with romantic and with Kalevala (Finnish national epic.) and with Karelian themes. He created important paintings in the 1890s also with symbolic and realistic style.
His popular paintings in Finland are, for example the Defence of Sampo, Symposium, the Boy with Crow and Old Woman with a Cat.
Gallen-Kallela studied painting in Paris, and painted there some bohemian life paintings, but gradually nature, deep forest and people living there started to attract him more and more.
Gallen-Kallela had an important role in the Word Exposition in Paris 1900. He painted in the roof of the pavilion frescos with Kalevala theme and he also designed furniture ther. He had studied fresco painting in Italy.