Astri Aasen

[3] According to the writer Glenny Alfsen, her artistic work consisted of an "uncomplicated naturalism": she created portraits without extraneous interpretation.

[2] Between 1900 and 1912, she was also taught by the artists Asor Hansen [nb], Viggo Johansen, Christian Krohg, Halfdan Strøm, and Léon Bonnat.

[7] Aasen visited the assembly to create a series of pastel portraits of the attendees, some of which were named after specific people (such as one for Daniel Mortensen), and some of which were nondescript (such as Old Sámi Woman).

[10] Historically, the wearing of a gákti was hindered by pastor Lars Levi Laestadius's fundamentalist branch of Christianity (Laestadianism), though they increased in popularity in the 1840s.

[10] Bart Pushaw, a historian of the circumpolar region, said that Aasen was aware of acts of violence connected to Laestadianism — such as the Kautokeino rebellion of 1852 in the hamlet of the same name — when she painted Finskog.

[12] This quick and unpolished technique allowed her to paint many participants of the conference, and according to Pushaw, gave her portrait of Finskog a "more imaginative and even modern rendering" by rejecting "precise verisimilitude".

[12] After the conference, Valdemar Lindholm for the magazine Idun wrote that the paintings were of "interesting types" — a view seen by Pushaw as exoticising the Sámi and contributing to ignorance of their culture.

[15] According to art curator Rebeka Helena Blikstad, they show that, like many women artists of the period, she was interested in portraiture and interior painting, but also geometric shapes of a "purely abstract form".