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Finland, Finland, Akseli Gallen-Kallela, 1925, a bronze medal by A. Pozail, bust three-quarters left, rev. four hands around woodpecker’s head right, 45mm. Extremely fine, very rare (£40-60)

Axél Waldemar Gallén, aka Akseli Gallen-Kallela (1865-1931), the right-wing cosmopolitan artist whose symbolic and later expressionist work is well represented in institutions in Finland. The reverse design of the medal derives from Gallen-Kallela’s The Great Black Woodpecker, painted 1892-4. A biography of the artist, who died after contracting pneumonia in Stockholm, is sold with the lot