DOI Heft:
No. 135 (May, 1908)
DOI Artikel:Bröchner, Georg: A Swedish sportsman painter: Bruno Liljefors
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.28254#0209
Bruno Liljefors
“ BLACKCOCKS, PAIRING SEASON ” BY BRUNO LILJEFORS
(By permission of E. Tliiell, Esq. : photo. Dahllopf, Stockholm)
Liljefors this enviable gift has been still further
enhanced. Nothing escapes his trained, sus-
ceptible eye, and nothing is beneath his notice;
the tiniest bird, the humblest herb, the most
desolate rock, all have their place in his art as
they have in Nature’s infinite realm.
Liljefors has said of himself that what he aimed
at was to depict the individual; he was a painter
of animal portraits. This assertion, if taken
literally, would, I am afraid, reflect somewhat
unkindly upon a host of “ real ” portrait painters,
for to how^ many of these is it given to render
■their sitter with such artistic individual fidelity,
much less to place him or her in that perfect
milieu which so helps to complete, not only the
picture, but also the likeness ? When Liljefors
says that he is a painter of the individual animal,
it savours somewhat of the scientist and the
museum, and although, of course, we must accept
his statement as true, it is not by a very long way
the whole truth, for, with lavish hands, he gives us
infinitely more than that. He may, for instance,
give us the portrait of an individual eagle—in
such a way, however, and with such authority, that
this eagle seems to become the type of its race—-
but at the same time, and in the same picture, he
gives us its world and its life, with its joys and
hardships.
No doubt Liljefors would indignantly resent the
compliment, or the libel, of being called a poet,
and with some reason, for a poet’s sentimentality
would ill suit a man like him, and might at times
lure him away from his own straight path. Still
his pictures often affect the beholder as some great,
powerful poem, more epic than lyric, certainly, in
which he glorifies Nature, the living and the lifeless.
I think this is because his artistic temperament, to
an almost unprecedented degree, seems to have
absorbed and become one with nature without
losing any of its own vigorous yet simple and
187
“ BLACKCOCKS, PAIRING SEASON ” BY BRUNO LILJEFORS
(By permission of E. Tliiell, Esq. : photo. Dahllopf, Stockholm)
Liljefors this enviable gift has been still further
enhanced. Nothing escapes his trained, sus-
ceptible eye, and nothing is beneath his notice;
the tiniest bird, the humblest herb, the most
desolate rock, all have their place in his art as
they have in Nature’s infinite realm.
Liljefors has said of himself that what he aimed
at was to depict the individual; he was a painter
of animal portraits. This assertion, if taken
literally, would, I am afraid, reflect somewhat
unkindly upon a host of “ real ” portrait painters,
for to how^ many of these is it given to render
■their sitter with such artistic individual fidelity,
much less to place him or her in that perfect
milieu which so helps to complete, not only the
picture, but also the likeness ? When Liljefors
says that he is a painter of the individual animal,
it savours somewhat of the scientist and the
museum, and although, of course, we must accept
his statement as true, it is not by a very long way
the whole truth, for, with lavish hands, he gives us
infinitely more than that. He may, for instance,
give us the portrait of an individual eagle—in
such a way, however, and with such authority, that
this eagle seems to become the type of its race—-
but at the same time, and in the same picture, he
gives us its world and its life, with its joys and
hardships.
No doubt Liljefors would indignantly resent the
compliment, or the libel, of being called a poet,
and with some reason, for a poet’s sentimentality
would ill suit a man like him, and might at times
lure him away from his own straight path. Still
his pictures often affect the beholder as some great,
powerful poem, more epic than lyric, certainly, in
which he glorifies Nature, the living and the lifeless.
I think this is because his artistic temperament, to
an almost unprecedented degree, seems to have
absorbed and become one with nature without
losing any of its own vigorous yet simple and
187