DOI issue:
No. 92 (October, 1904)
DOI article:Frykholm, Sunny: The imaginative and realistic art of Carl Larsson
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.26962#0399
Carl Larsson
principally to decorative
work, and we may then
expect that he will give
to his finished work what
his sketches lack —
characterisation and well-
balanced figures, and that
the double-sidedness of his
character and his art will
at last, also in the more
complicated phases of art,
give rise to a style in which
realistic principles will be
harmoniously blended with
the superior ones of
decoration.
In a most simple way
Larsson’s ideas for decora-
“father’s room” from a coloured drawing by c. larsson tion have been successfully
sketches. This is, however, far from the case.
Larsson does not feel the necessity for making
sketches for his numerous illustrations, or for his
landscapes and portraits in water-colours. This
indifference to preparing studies went so far at
the beginning of his career as an illustrator that
he made his original designs direct on the wood-
blocks, for wood-engraving was then the general
method of reproduction in Sweden. It is to be
regretted that in this way his first illustrated work,
in which he gave expression to his romantic ideas,
stamped as they were by great originality, was
destroyed, as the wood-cutter was a bad craftsman.
At that time illustration was at a very low stand-
point in Sweden, but thanksprincipallytoLarsson’s
influence, it has gradually been raised to a fine art
For his decorative work during late years, wall-
paintings in tempera or in secco, or oil-paintings
for mural decoration, Larsson has naturally made
use of sketches, but up to the present he has
only once, in decorative paintings in secco for
a girls’ school, been able to allow himself
sufficient time to work them out. They have
thus remained as sketches, and this part of his
work must therefore be looked upon merely as
“ suggestions.” Some of these wall-paintings
prove that he should be specially fitted to make
cartoons for tapestry; it is therefore to be re-
gretted that in this kind of work only copies, no
originals, have up to the present been ordered
of this artist, whose leading trait is originality.
Larsson now intends to give himself up
“the prior's tale”: illustration to “singoai.la”
BY C. LARSSON
3°I
principally to decorative
work, and we may then
expect that he will give
to his finished work what
his sketches lack —
characterisation and well-
balanced figures, and that
the double-sidedness of his
character and his art will
at last, also in the more
complicated phases of art,
give rise to a style in which
realistic principles will be
harmoniously blended with
the superior ones of
decoration.
In a most simple way
Larsson’s ideas for decora-
“father’s room” from a coloured drawing by c. larsson tion have been successfully
sketches. This is, however, far from the case.
Larsson does not feel the necessity for making
sketches for his numerous illustrations, or for his
landscapes and portraits in water-colours. This
indifference to preparing studies went so far at
the beginning of his career as an illustrator that
he made his original designs direct on the wood-
blocks, for wood-engraving was then the general
method of reproduction in Sweden. It is to be
regretted that in this way his first illustrated work,
in which he gave expression to his romantic ideas,
stamped as they were by great originality, was
destroyed, as the wood-cutter was a bad craftsman.
At that time illustration was at a very low stand-
point in Sweden, but thanksprincipallytoLarsson’s
influence, it has gradually been raised to a fine art
For his decorative work during late years, wall-
paintings in tempera or in secco, or oil-paintings
for mural decoration, Larsson has naturally made
use of sketches, but up to the present he has
only once, in decorative paintings in secco for
a girls’ school, been able to allow himself
sufficient time to work them out. They have
thus remained as sketches, and this part of his
work must therefore be looked upon merely as
“ suggestions.” Some of these wall-paintings
prove that he should be specially fitted to make
cartoons for tapestry; it is therefore to be re-
gretted that in this kind of work only copies, no
originals, have up to the present been ordered
of this artist, whose leading trait is originality.
Larsson now intends to give himself up
“the prior's tale”: illustration to “singoai.la”
BY C. LARSSON
3°I