The artist’s mother, Mathilda Gallén, is portrayed here as a strong-willed person with a firm sense of purpose. Stretching out behind her is an enigmatic symbolic landscape. Mathilda Gallén was an amateur painter and shared her son’s interest in spiritualism and theosophy. In 1897 she served as his model for Lemminkäinen’s Mother, a subject from Finland’s national epic, the Kalevala. Gallen-Kallella, who collected Japanese art, introduced a Finnish nationalism coloured by Far Eastern influences.