Accidentally buying artwork by a legendary master painter is rare, but that's exactly what happened to a couple from Tampere.
However, it took quite a while before they realised the real value of the painting they bought at an auction around six years ago.
In an effort to maintain privacy, the couple asked to remain anonymous, with the husband asking Yle to only use his first name, Joona. The couple were the subject of a podcast series available on the Yle Areena service.
Joona is an art lover and often goes to exhibitions. One day in 2017, he and his wife went to an auction looking for lamp fixtures.
The auction also had a number of paintings to be sold, with a few unframed portraits in poor condition. One of them stood out to Joona right away.
"'That's a great oil painting, done by a real artist,'" Joona recalled telling his wife.
The time came when the portrait was put on the auction block, but there was no information offered about who painted it, nor details about who the person in the portrait was.
"I raised my hand to bid. None of the others [at the auction] were interested in the piece. We were the only ones making an offer," Joona explained.
The couple therefore bought the painting for 100 euros, plus a 25 euro auction fee.
Joona said he wondered to himself how he managed to get such a nicely painted piece of art for such an affordable price.
They took the portrait home, where the couple would occasionally discuss getting the painting properly restored and framed. But they learned that wouldn't be cheap to do.
Hit with oatmeal, put in a closet
"The painting was hung on a kitchen wall with a string. Once it was hit with some of our eldest child's oatmeal," Joona explained.
The painting moved around their house, occasionally atop a closet shelf and sometimes it was in the living room.
"It was as if a strange man had moved in to stare and observe our lives. [The man in the painting] had become a part of our home," Joona said.
One spring day, the sun shone through a window onto the painting. Joona said they noticed faint lettering on the back of it, and shortly afterwards he realised what was written there.
"I immediately realised the word had to be Edelfelt!" Joona exclaimed, adding that his suspicions were confirmed after he wiped off some of the dust on the artwork.
There it was: A.Edelfelt.
Albert Edelfelt (1854–1905) is one of Finland's most significant and well-known artists, and created more than a thousand paintings during his career.
However, Edelfelt is also known to be one of the most counterfeited artists in Finnish history, so Joona initially presumed their painting was likely a fake.
But a subsequent search of sketchbooks at the National Gallery and Edelfelt books from the library did not bring Joona any closer to what it might be a forgery of. He also reached out to Helsinki's Ateneum Museum but they, like others, did not recognise it.
Search continues
Taking the matter into his own hands, Joona bought a UV lamp which are commonly used to verify authenticity of paintings or to inspect damaged or repaired works.
"I also visited every possible museum and looked at Albert Edelfelt's paintings under a microscope," he said.
Eventually, he found the answer with help from a Finnish art historian Bertel Hintze who died more than half a century ago. Joona started looking through a catalogue the historian compiled about all of Edelfelt's paintings.
Joona scrolled through the list and thought painting number 346 looked familiar.
"It was a wonderful moment - like in a movie," Joona said, adding it was then that it became clear who had created the mystery painting.
Hintze's catalogue confirmed that the artwork was an Albert Edelfelt portrait of Adolf Wasenius (1861–1884), a master of philosophy who died of tuberculosis in Switzerland at the age of 23.
Before his early demise, Wasenius was set to become the next director of the Tervakoski paper mill, located nearly midway between Helsinki and Tampere.
"In a way, the [portrait] has a sad component. It was a memorial to a son who was supposed to become the head of the family, commissioned by the family's father in the midst of enormous grief," Joona explained.
No reason to doubt
Then Joona took the painting to Helsinki-based art conservator Tuulikki Kilpinen, who told him it was in exceptionally poor condition.
She told Yle that it was blurry and in "dangerously bad shape."
"The paint was coming off in many places. It had also suffered water damage at some point," she explained.
Extensive work on restoring the artwork began.
In a statement in January 2022, Kilpinen said that she said there was "no reason to doubt" that the portrait was by Edelfelt.
The painting that Joona and his wife bought for just over one hundred euros is now insured for a "significant amount," and valued at "tens of thousands of euros."
However, that sum is not large compared to the amounts other pieces by Edelfelt have fetched. His Among the Roses painting sold at a Swedish auction in March for around 300,000 euros.
But Joona emphasised the painting's monetary value was not his main concern.
"Ever since I was little, I've tried to look for treasure. It was great that we learned the painting's story and had an adventure that can't be measured in money," he said.
The portrait will not be featured in an exhibition of 232 Edelfelt works that starts on Friday at Art Museum Ateneum in Helsinki.
However, the piece made its public debut at the Albert Edelfelt Studio Museum in Porvoo on Wednesday.
Would you like a roundup of the week's top stories in your inbox every Thursday? Then sign up to receive our weekly email.