Born in 1914, Tove Jansson was a painter and novelist who achieved renown in both forms. Her parents were artists, and from 1930 to 1938 she studied art in her native Helsinki as well as in Stockholm and Paris. During this period, Jansson also began drawing comic strips. The first solo exhibition of her paintings came in 1943, and her debut novel, The Moomins and the Great Flood, came two years later. It was the first in Jansson’s series of highly popular, self-illustrated Moomins books, which concerned a family of fairy-tale characters that resemble albino hippopotamuses. Her art style in these stories, as in her paintings, is naturalistic, influenced by fantasy and a Through the Looking-Glass appreciation for the unreal. This massive exhibition presents Jansson’s public murals, sketches, and illustrations. —Jack Sullivan