Albert Gustaf Aristides Edelfelt (21 July 1854 – 18 August 1905) was a Finnish painter noted for his naturalistic style and Realist approach to art.

He then received a scholarship from the Finnish government to study history painting at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp, Belgium.

He studied under Nicaise de Keyser for several months in 1873-74,[3] and won an award for excellence for his painting of Alexander the Great on his deathbed.

[7] In the autumn of 1874, at the age of nineteen, following the advice of his teacher Adolf von Becker,[3] he moved to Paris and enrolled at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts.

Under the instruction of the French painter Jean-Léon Gerome he continued to focus on history painting, particularly scenes of the long series of wars involving the Russians, Swedes and Finns.

His major work of this time was Duke Charles IX of Sweden insulting the corpse of his enemy Klaus Fleming (1878).

This painting did not cause a stir in Paris, but it enjoyed a great success in Finland; it was purchased by the Finnish Society of Fine Arts.

[6][5] In 1879 he had his first success at the Paris Salon, with a history painting entitled The Burnt Village - a scene from the Finnish peasant revolt of 1596.

At the same time he never became entirely an impressionist, following his realist training to concentrate on precise details and using a broad and complex palette of colors.

[9] Throughout the 1880s, Edelfelt continued to paint outdoor scenes of life in Paris, displaying his talent for capturing the effects of light, combined with his precision of details.

[10][11] Edelfeld's portrait of Pasteur in his laboratory, painted in 1885, had a great success at the Paris Salon of 1886, and became one of the most familiar images of the scientist.

Edelfelt mobilised a network of Finnish artists and cultural figures with a petition to the Russian government, called "Pro Finlandia", seeking recognition of the independence of the arts in Finland.

For his painting of an outdoor church service on the coast at Haikko, near Porvoo, he made a series of oil sketches, to capture exactly the tonalities of the water and the sky.

[14] In 1880 his family bought a summer house at the coastal manor of Haikko, in the southwest part the country, and he installed a studio there in 1883.

In April and May 1881, Edelfelt spent five weeks in Spain where he learned many new aspects of art and studied the phenomenon called espagnolisme, which is the impact that Spanish influences had on France starting from the 1830s.

[18] Edelfelt also later dabbled in religious painting, and in his 1890 Christ and Mary Magdalene he set a biblical scene in the Finnish landscape, influenced by Kanteletar.