The grave of senior municipal physician Urho Matinolli – Lyyraa soittava nainen (Woman Playing the Lyre)

Lyyraa soittava nainen (Woman Playing the Lyre)

Bronze sculpture
Eemil Halonen 1948
Intiö Cemetery, Oulu

Eemil Halonen began to design a work of sculpture for the Matinolli family grave after the death of Marjatta Matinolli. In October 1947, Eemil Halonen sent by rail to the Matinolli’s a package containing two studies of a young woman playing the lyre. The estimate of costs was 356,000 Finnish marks, including the plinth. The completion of the bronze statue was delayed by political strikes organized in May 1948 by the SKDL communist front party and the Communist Party of Finland to protest the expulsion of Communist Minister of the Interior Yrjö Leino from the government. Eemil Halonen’s letter to the Matinollis indicates that also the workers at Arttu Halonen’s casting works had participated in the strikes.

The bronze sculpture depicts a young woman bent down on one knee, a spirit figure with a raised gaze. Her left hand is holding a lyre which also leans against her left thigh, and her right hand is bent at the side, ready to play the instrument. Art historian Liisa Lindgren has pointed out that Eemil Halonen recycled and varied the visual motifs and poses of his funerary sculptures, as in the female figure with her gaze uplifted to higher forces in works similar to the Matinolli piece.

The widowed Mrs Elli Matinolli appears to have been very satisfied with the sculpture. She wrote as follows to Eemil Halonen on 20 January 1950:

– – I wish take the opportunity to ask the price of a very small replica of Marja’s grave statue. It has become so dear to me and now that I rarely have the strength to visit the grave, I have thought that it would be very pleasant to have a miniature version of it at home to put on a chest of drawers.

Photograph: Halonen Museum Foundation