Kennel Club receives portrait of its first female Chair

Kimmo Koivisto is a Helsinki-based painter, whose earlier works include portraits of two university professors and the CEO of Kone Corporation. “Animals and nature have always been close to the heart of Kimmo Koivisto. For Eeva, dogs have been, and continue to be, important aspects of nature. This is reflected in the painting, which is a cooperative effort between her, Kimmo Koivisto and her English Setter Wilde,” Helena Suni, the current Finnish Kennel Club Chair, said at the portrait's first showing.

For the vast majority of the Finnish Kennel Club's 125-year history, it has been chaired by men. “It is quite descriptive that Eeva Anttinen, the first female Chair of the Board and current Chair of the Council, is, in a sense, a representative of the world of men. Trained as an economist, she is an executive in the male-dominated world of business, a second-generation entrepreneur and Chair of the Board of Directors of her family business, a technology trading and importing firm,” Helena Suni notes.

Suni is certain that the experiences and skills Eeva Anttinen developed in her professional life have been of benefit to the Finnish Kennel Club, both in her management of its domestic activities and its international cooperation with the Nordic countries and the World Canine Organisation FCI.

Anttinen has been a Finnish Kennel Club member since 1965, Chair of the Board of Directors in 2000-01 and Chair of the Council since 2005. She has been a member of the Finnish Gundog Association since 1966 and has served in various positions of trust for long periods of time. 

Eeva enjoys hunting with her dog and has competed in gundog hunting trials. Her best results were achieved with Finnish Champion Essex, an English Setter she bred herself. She bred one litter of English Setter pups in 1987 together with her husband Johannes Anttinen and this litter included the mentioned Essex.

Helena Suni brought up a favourite topic of Eeva Anttinen: “Eeva has often pointed out that the most important part of this hobby is the dog. This is the cause she works so hard for, as hopefully do the rest of us as well. Just like the dog works for us. This makes the portrait's revealing a most appropriate launch to the Finnish Kennel Club's jubilee year theme Good living with dogs.