The true likeness of Aleksis Kivi finally discovered?

The hunt for a photograph of Aleksis Kivi (10/X 1834 – 31/XII 1872; born Alexis Stenvall), considered by many to be the founder of Finnish fiction, has been going on for over a century.

No officially recognized and securely identified portrait of Kivi exists, despite Arne Hjalmar Ilmoni (1877 – 1960) having maintained until his death that his family owned the only photograph of Finland's national author. Several people corroborated this, saying that they had seen the photo and that it had «A. Kivi» written on the verso.

Now, while the Ilmoni family wasn't wealthy, Arne's father Axel Hjalmar Ilmoni (1835 – 1914) was a surgeon and quite a remarkable man. Akseli Gallen-Kallela wrote:

“I remember how the old Doctor Ilmoni, at an after-party during the time of Lauri Kivekäs,¹ in great agitation took it upon himself to raise the question of why I always depict the Finnish Kalevala heroes and others as so terribly ugly. If I were to change course, he said, it would certainly do me good. Then the Finnish people would carry me on their hands, he said.”

— Kallela-kirja (1924) [transl.]

¹) ~1887 – 1893

Arne's claim appeared even in print, but after his death the photo disappeared. The family's possessions that hadn't been taken by relatives (who weren't all that interested in most of them) were carried outside, an unknown portion was burned and the remainder left to rot in the rain and the house was torn down.

Did anything survive? I know for a fact that some of the culturally most valuable items did — Axel Hjalmar's copy of Mythologia Fennica (1789), which bears both his and Arne's ownership markings, is sitting on my desk as I'm writing these words! The National Heritage Agency also has some papers, correspondence et cetera, and some family photos survive in various places (including in print), but no photograph with the writing A. Kivi is known to exist today.

The three photographs presented here all come from the Ilmoni household. I have a photograph of Arne Ilmoni looking at a photo album in his living room, with the top-right photo in the collage visible, and the two other photos, which I discovered in the archives of the Vapriikki museum, along with some photos of Arne, were removed from the album and photographed by Ensio Kauppila in the 1950s. They were identified by the photographer only as being from the Ilmoni household.

The full uncropped photographs will be posted separately along with all the metadata I have managed to gather.

There was also an article titled “Aleksis Kiven valokuva, vakuuttaa Arne Ilmoni” [A photo of Aleksis Kivi, Arne Ilmoni insists] published in Uusi kuvalehti 1957:6, pp. 8–9, but I could not find a copy of it in time for Aleksis Kivi Day (10.10.2026).

The top-right photograph, which has not been authenticated as a portrait of Kivi, is available through Alamy. However, the presence of a historical photograph on a commercial image-licensing platform does not, by itself, establish copyright ownership. A faithful reproduction does not automatically create a new copyright in an otherwise public-domain image.

[ Wäinölä 🇫🇮 ]