Magnus Enckell was a Finnish symbolist painter. At first he painted with a subdued palette, but from 1902 onwards used increasingly bright colors. He was a leading member of the Septem group of colorist painters. In 1891 he went to Paris for the first time, where he became a student of Jules-Joseph Lefebvre and Jean-Joseph Benjamin-Constant at the Académie Julian. There he was drawn to the Symbolist movement, and was influenced by the painter Pierre Puvis de Chavannes as well as Symbolist literature. It is generally believed that Enckell was homosexual, as seems indicated in some erotic portraits which were quite uninhibited for their time, but his homosexuality has never been officially proven. "His love affairs with men have not been denied. Enckell's naked men and boys are openly erotic and sensual." (Robert Aldrich, Garry Wotherspoon) In his own time, the sensuality of his paintings was explained away as something caused by his Swedish-speaking background.