Helene Schjerfbeck was considered to be a child prodigy of her time when she started at the age of eleven her art studies at the Finnish Art Society's drawing school. Her career as an artist was long and productive, extending  through many artistic phases. Schjerfbeck's early works were already impacting on Finnish art, even though her contemporaries did not always understand her artistic experiments. Her still and silent images often portray reading women, children or people close to her everyday life, family and neighbours. She was much inspired by her models and saw these ordinary people as princes and princesses.