100 Markkaa Helene Schjerfbeck

Helene Schjerfbeck (1862–1946) spent much of her career in relative isolation, working from Hyvinkää and later Tammisaari, largely disconnected from the mainstream European avant-garde. Her rehabilitation as a major figure in Finnish art history was substantially posthumous — by the 1990s she had been reassessed as one of the most significant Nordic painters of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This coin was issued the year Finland joined the European Union's exchange rate mechanism, making it one of the last commemorative markkaa series before euro adoption effectively foreclosed the currency's commemorative role.