50. Robert Wilhelm Ekman (1808-1873)

Kreeta Haapasalo (1813 - 1893) famous early singer-songwriter who toured both Finland and abroad singing and playing kantele to support her family of eleven children. Some of her composed own songs, including Kanteleeni and Kreeta Haapasalo's Christmas Carol, which was performed at concerts both in noble and bourgeois homes as well as in cottages. It is primarily Haapasalo's musical work that created the image of the kantele as a national Finnish symbol. Robert Wilhem Ekman's most famous kantele motif is Kreeta Haapasalo playing the kantele in a cottage from 1868, which is in the collection of the Finnish National Gallery / Ateneum Art Museum.