In his own time, the painter Axel Gallen was especially admired by Finnish nationalist circles. He changed his name from Axel Gallen to more Finnish sounding Akseli Gallen-Kallela in 1907.
The visual style known as 'national-romantic' is mainly his creation. He became known to the public at large as the illustrator of two key works of Finnish literature, the Kalevala and Seitsemän veljestä (Seven Brothers). In the 1920s the supporters of the new, 'modern' art no longer appreciated Gallen-Kallela, but he later came to be admired for his versatility in particular.
Alongside with the painter Albert Edelfelt, Akseli Gallen-Kallela was one of Finland's most important visual artists. He was above all a pioneer of the Finnish national style of art and the most important figure in its development. He was also a trailblazer in the fields of art handicraft and graphic art and a source of inspiration for architects.
The artist's mother Mathilda Gallén was a strong-willed and spirited woman who had become estranged from the State Church and from religious dogmas during the period of religious and philosophical crisis of the 1870s and 1880s. She later became interested in spiritualism and theosophy. Mathilda Gallén was a keen amateur painter and she was interested in her son's artistic career.
Gallén belonged to a generation that was already able to receive a remarkably good training without going abroad. Adolf von Becker was his most dependable teacher in the area of French realism, and the influence of Edelfelt's plein-air paintings is visible in such works as Boy with a Crow, painted in 1884.
Gallén lived in Paris from autumn 1887 to summer 1889. He continued at the Académie Julian and also worked at the Atelier Cormonin from 1887 to 1888. His Paris paintings were characterised by a passionate attitude; in his small paintings, views of the city are immortalised in the form of visual percepts reminiscent of impressionism. In late 1888, commissioned by Antell, he painted Démasquée with its presentiments of symbolism. During this stay Gallén moved on to depicting scenes from the Kalevala. This epic had for many years gripped his imagination. He began by painting an Aino triptych, which he completed in 1889. In the same year he was awarded a second-class medal at the Paris Universal Exposition.
In 1909, Gallen-Kallela moved to Nairobi in Kenya with his family, and there he painted over 150 expressionist oil paintings and bought many east African artefacts. But he returned to Finland after a couple of years, because he realized Finland was his main inspiration. Between 1911 and 1913 he designed and built a studio and house at Tarvaspää, about 10 km northwest of the centre of Helsinki.
From December 1923 to May 1926, Gallen-Kallela lived in the United States, where an exhibition of his work toured several cities., and where he visited the Taos art-colony in New Mexico to study indigenous American art. In 1925 he began the illustrations for his "Great Kalevala". This was still unfinished when he died of pneumonia in Stockholm on 7 March 1931, while returning from lecture in Copenhagen, Denmark.