International studio (34.1908)

Bruno Liljefors



“eagle-owl” (oil painting)
their eggs and feed their young ; he has watched
them at play and in deadly combat—and Liljefors
forgets nothing of what he sees, not a
single movement of bird or beast, nor
the waning light on the hillside; he
stores it all in the vast treasure-chamber
of his memory.
It almost goes without saying that a
man and an artist of this stamp must
to an unusual extent become an auto-
didact, working out his own ends,
and by intuition and unceasing study
acquiring those methods of expression
which best suit his artistic tempera-
ment. Liljefors, however, has had a
fair share of academic training, for
having completed his education at
ancient Upsala, he studied some three
years at the Academy of Arts in
Stockholm, and afterwards went abroad
for a couple of years. But his indi-
viduality was already then sufficiently
pronounced so as not to be greatly
influenced by what he saw. No doubt
he was impressed by, and learned
something from, the Japanese—part of
his earlier work bears out this, more
especially some of his drawings—but
his strong personality soon asserted
itself, both in conception and execu-
tion, and the evolution which time has
wrought in Liljefors’ art, as it does in
186

that of all true artists, is unusually
consistent; there has been no
wavering and, apparently, no mis-
givings. Although his views
widened and expanded, his funda-
mental conception was but slightly
modified, but by degrees his mode
of expression became broader and
bolder, his motifs grander, as he
more and more fully attained to
the mastery of his craft.
Liljefors must be endowed with
senses more enduring yet more
sensitive than those of ordinary
men, and I should not be surprised
were I told that some good fairy
had given him a talisman enabling
him to hear the fox whisper shrewd
advice to her young or to hear the
grass grow. True, many Swedes
have a rare appreciative faculty for
intimately observing and intensely
enjoying Nature in all her moods, and the multi-
farious life she harbours and sustains, only in

“COCK AND hen” (oil) BY BRUNO LILJEFORS
(By permission op E. Thiell, Esq. : photo. Dahlloff, Stockholm)

BY BRUNO LILJEFORS