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There were just three stipulations when Charles Sutton approached Tove Jansson about creating a Moomin comic strip for the London Evening News in 1952: no politics, sex or death.

This was fine with Jansson; legend has it she replied that she didn’t know anything about the government, sex wasn’t part of the Moomins’ anatomy, and she’d only ever killed a hedgehog.

Sutton, syndication director of Associated Newspapers, had headhunted Jansson for the position after the phenomenal success of English translations of the Moomin books. She prepared day and night for the meeting, with Sutton arriving in Finland to meet her on the first day of the national May Day celebrations; by the end of his visit, a seven year contract had been agreed.

Jansson’s work for the Evening News, a publication that went on to merge with this very newspaper in the 1980s, offered her the chance to earn a fixed income for the first time in her life. She hoped that this financial security would enable her to spend more time on her true passion: working as a fine artist.

The Moomins remain Jansson’s biggest creative legacy, but she was a remarkable painter - if not as prolific as she would have liked to have been. A major new exhibition at the Dulwich Picture Gallery, opening this week, will put these paintings on display, alongside drawings and cartoons from her extensive Moomin oeuvre. From her confident, bracing self-portraits to her atmospheric landscape paintings of her native Finland, her paintings are a tribute to her skills as both an artist and a storyteller.

Her cartoon work, though, helped to mark her as a political force and a philosophical soul. In 1929, she started to create covers for the satirical magazine Garm when she was just 15. In the exhibition catalogue, comic historian Paul Gravett writes that they were “a visual outlet for her staunch opposition to war, fascism and communism, even if it meant her courting controversy and censorship...She was a remarkable rarity for being such an outspoken and highly visible female political commentator.” These covers were also the birthplace for a small creature called Snork, a clear early version of Moomintroll, her now legendary plump, white cartoon hero.

The first Moomin cartoon debuted in the Evening News on September 20, 1954, after two years of intense discussions, planning and negotiations. Gravett spoke to me about the significance of this part in her life’s work as an illustrator. “The Evening News wanted her stories to be aimed at entertaining adult newspaper readers so they could be enjoyed on a variety of levels,” he explained to me. “She was tutored in house in how to write and design contemporary strips which incorporated speech balloons inside the panels, rather than the old-fashioned tradition of relying heavily on lengthy texts beneath the panels.”

Alongside this in-house work, Jansson was innovating by herself, Gravett said. “Tove innovated in particular by using elements of the setting and story to divide one panel from the next - a door, hat-stand, broom, tree - in a playful, inventive way to make her strips flow more cohesively without the empty white space usually between the panels.”

The first Moomin book, The Moomins and the Great Flood, was published in 1945, written by Jansson to comfort herself and a family gravely impacted by the recent war. By the time the comic strips began, she had published three more (Comet in Moominland, Finn Family Moomintroll and The Exploits of Moominpappa). Gravett is clear that the strips would never have happened without the proven success of her books.

“The strips took time away from her other work on paintings and writing, but they stand up as a remarkable outpouring of creativity, and further proof that Tove Jansson could turn her hand to many different artistic and literary forms and excel in them,” he says.

Tove Jansson at Dulwich Picture Gallery 11 show all Tove Jansson at Dulwich Picture Gallery 1/11 Tove Jansson at Dulwich Picture Gallery Tove Jansson, Family, 1942, Oil, 89 x 116 cm, Private Collection. Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Hannu Aaltonen. 2/11 Tove Jansson at Dulwich Picture Gallery Tove Jansson, Smoking Girl (Self-Portrait), 1940, Private Collection. Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Yehia Eweis. 3/11 Tove Jansson at Dulwich Picture Gallery Tove Jansson, Sleeping in the Roots, 1930s, gouache and Indian ink on paper, 22.1 x 26.7 cm, Moomin Museum, Tampere Art Museum Moominvalley Collection. Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Yehia Eweis. 4/11 Tove Jansson at Dulwich Picture Gallery Tove Jansson, Self-Portrait, 1975, Oil, 65 x 47 cm, Private Collection. Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Yehia Eweis. 5/11 Tove Jansson at Dulwich Picture Gallery Tove Jansson, Mysterious Landscape, c. 1930, Oil on plywood, 61 x 152.5 cm, Ateneum Art Museum. Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Hannu Aaltonen. 6/11 Tove Jansson at Dulwich Picture Gallery Tove Jansson, Lynx Boa (Self-Portrait), 1974, Oil, 73 x 60.5 cm, Private Collection. Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Yehia Eweis © The Estate of Tove Jansson 7/11 Tove Jansson at Dulwich Picture Gallery Tove Jansson, Illustration for the book Comet in Moominland, 1946, wash and indian ink, 15,8 x 15,8 cm, Moomin Museum, Tampere Art Museum Moominvalley Collection. Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Hannu Aaltonen. ©Moomin Characters TM 8/11 Tove Jansson at Dulwich Picture Gallery Tove Jansson, Cover illustration for the magazine Garm, 1944, Tampere Art Museum Moominvalley. Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Yehia Eweis. ©Moomin Characters 9/11 Tove Jansson at Dulwich Picture Gallery Tove Jansson, Garm N:o 10, 1938, Private Collection. Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Jenni Nurminen. 10/11 Tove Jansson at Dulwich Picture Gallery Tove Jansson, Comic strip Moomin on the Riviera, 1955, British Cartoon Archive, University of Kent. Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Jenni Nurminen 11/11 Tove Jansson at Dulwich Picture Gallery Tove Jansson, Abstract Sea, 1963, Oil, 73 x 100cm, Private Collection. Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Hannu Aaltonen. 1/11 Tove Jansson at Dulwich Picture Gallery Tove Jansson, Family, 1942, Oil, 89 x 116 cm, Private Collection. Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Hannu Aaltonen. 2/11 Tove Jansson at Dulwich Picture Gallery Tove Jansson, Smoking Girl (Self-Portrait), 1940, Private Collection. Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Yehia Eweis. 3/11 Tove Jansson at Dulwich Picture Gallery Tove Jansson, Sleeping in the Roots, 1930s, gouache and Indian ink on paper, 22.1 x 26.7 cm, Moomin Museum, Tampere Art Museum Moominvalley Collection. Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Yehia Eweis. 4/11 Tove Jansson at Dulwich Picture Gallery Tove Jansson, Self-Portrait, 1975, Oil, 65 x 47 cm, Private Collection. Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Yehia Eweis. 5/11 Tove Jansson at Dulwich Picture Gallery Tove Jansson, Mysterious Landscape, c. 1930, Oil on plywood, 61 x 152.5 cm, Ateneum Art Museum. Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Hannu Aaltonen. 6/11 Tove Jansson at Dulwich Picture Gallery Tove Jansson, Lynx Boa (Self-Portrait), 1974, Oil, 73 x 60.5 cm, Private Collection. Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Yehia Eweis © The Estate of Tove Jansson 7/11 Tove Jansson at Dulwich Picture Gallery Tove Jansson, Illustration for the book Comet in Moominland, 1946, wash and indian ink, 15,8 x 15,8 cm, Moomin Museum, Tampere Art Museum Moominvalley Collection. Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Hannu Aaltonen. ©Moomin Characters TM 8/11 Tove Jansson at Dulwich Picture Gallery Tove Jansson, Cover illustration for the magazine Garm, 1944, Tampere Art Museum Moominvalley. Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Yehia Eweis. ©Moomin Characters 9/11 Tove Jansson at Dulwich Picture Gallery Tove Jansson, Garm N:o 10, 1938, Private Collection. Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Jenni Nurminen. 10/11 Tove Jansson at Dulwich Picture Gallery Tove Jansson, Comic strip Moomin on the Riviera, 1955, British Cartoon Archive, University of Kent. Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Jenni Nurminen 11/11 Tove Jansson at Dulwich Picture Gallery Tove Jansson, Abstract Sea, 1963, Oil, 73 x 100cm, Private Collection. Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Hannu Aaltonen.

He describes the comic strips as “equal to any of Tove’s other creations.” But although they were internationally syndicated and earned her the income she needed to live and work in her Helsinki studio, they were also exhausting to work on. “They demanded a lot of her in terms of ideas and stamina, even with help from her brother Lars (who took the comics over in 1959 for sixteen years).”

At the time she was working, it was still rare for female cartoonists to have their own daily strip. Jansson was definitely in the minority and stands out as one of the most innovative and successful, says Gravett. Preceding her work was the Daily Mail’s Flook, created by Wally Fawkes, and Panda, a Dutch import from Marten Toonder. “The Moomin strips stood out in the landscape of post-war British newspaper strips,” Gravett tells me.

Despite their popularity, many of the Moomin cartoons were not preserved, and only one compilation of the strips was created during their lifetime. Their recent rediscovery was helped by Gravett himself, who shared photocopies of this book with other admirers, one of whom notified a Canadian publisher. They are now able to inspire younger cartoonists working today. “A notable British example is Luke Pearson. His popular Hilda’ book series from Nobrow Press, now animated, draws partly on his appreciation of the Moomins,” Gravett says.

Jansson was a woman of numerous talents; alongside her paintings, childrens’ books and cartoons, she also made murals, designed stage sets and wrote novels and short stories for adults. Her comic work deserves to be seen on the same high level as the rest of her work.

“Comics are harder to make than most people think, especially to do them brilliantly,” Gravett says. The Moomin strips drew on the skills Jansson honed at Garm and her clear, precise writing for her Moomin books, all whilst adding new themes, characters and ideas to the existing Moomin world.

The changing, fickle tastes of the art market may have stopped Jansson from making her living full-time as an artist, Gravett suggests - her playful, narrative style seemed less at ease with the rise of abstraction.

“In contrast, within the medium of comics, Tove Jansson was a truly remarkable cartoonist and excelled at it,” he says. "The Moomin strip has matured like a fine wine." It has been reprinted successfully - yes, you’ll be able to buy it in the Dulwich Picture Gallery gift shop - allowing it to continue to reach a growing audience. The themes resonate, the stories warm the heart. If only she were still around: the world today through Jansson’s generous, thoughtful eyes would comfort us all.

Paul Gravett is a comic historian and the author of Mangasia: The Definitive Guide to Asian Comics (published by Thames & Hudson)

Tove Jansson opens at Dulwich Picture Gallery tomorrow (October 25) and runs until January 28; dulwichpicturegallery.org.uk