A Tove Jansson exhibition - by Sue Purkiss

I somehow missed the Moomins as a child. I think after that I was vaguely aware that they existed (cue existential debate!), but the first Tove Jansson book I read was one for adults, The Summer Book. I came across it in a bookshop, and just liked the look of it; it's very blue, which is my favourite colour, and it shows a small island floating between sea and sky.

It's about a summer in the lives of a child, Sophie, and her grandmother, on a tiny island off the Finnish coast. Sophie's mother is dead; her father's there some of the time, but he's very much a background presence. It's about the small things that happen each day: the things you have to be careful of when you live on a very small island which is vulnerable to fierce storms, like tying your boat up securely; the flowers and shells you find; the talks you have; the people who occasionally visit. It's suffused with the calmness of the sea, but also the underlying threat of storms. Tove Jansson's prose is clear as a rock pool, as elegant and beautifully shaped as a sea-washed pebble.

I went on from there to read most of her other adult books, but The Summer Book remains my favourite. I've also now read a couple of the children's books, which share the same precise prose, apparently grave but with laughter underlying it. She's incredibly inventive. As you travel with the Moomins through their world, its landscape and inhabitants unfold perfectly naturally, as if they've existed forever.

A few years ago, I watched a documentary about her life, and saw the island and the house which feature in The Summer Book, and the footage of Tove taken by her partner, Tuulikki - of Tove dancing beside the sea with flowers in her hair. So a few weeks ago, when we were on holiday in Copenhagen and saw that an exhibition about her was to begin while we were there, it was too good a chance to miss.

It was fascinating. It showed how talented she was in so many ways. She started as an artist - and very much wanted to succeed as a painter, not only as an illustrator. So here are many of her paintings, as well as satirical illustrations from the war years (Finland was invaded by Russia in 1939) in a magazine called Garm, and illustrations she did for other books besides her own.

Alice in Wonderland

The exhibition was first put on in Helsinki, in 2014, 100 years after her birth, and now it's touring Europe. I'm not certain, but I think it may be the one that's going to be at the Dulwich Art Gallery from 25th October this year. It certainly has some of the same works. (I hope it also has the wonderful room for children which was at the top of the building in Copenhagen: a sort of enchanted forest with crayons dangling from white columns, where you are invited to make your own notes and sketches - see below.)

I thought the self-portraits were particularly interesting. Very honest - almost brutally so. She saw so very clearly.