International studio (34.1908)

Bruno Liljefots

unselfish personality. He takes us by the hand
and shows us Nature’s wonders ; he opens our eyes,
and I am tempted to say our ears, for do we not
seem to hear the screech of the owl, the chirping
of the robin, the call of the capercailzie ? Do we
not fancy we can hear the roar of the breakers
against the barren shore and the wind sighing
amongst the mountains ?
Although study, intimate and indefatigable, one
might almost say old-fashioned study, to which
Swedish painters are not otherwise particularly
partial, is the keynote ofLiljefors’ art, his technique
is in many respects essentially modern, imbued with
verve and energy, always adequate, and more often
than not masterly. In spite of the way in which
he accounts for details, they are never allowed to
detract from the breadth or the freedom of the
picture, and never interfere with that plastic force
and effect which distinguish so many of his large
canvases.
Liljefors is great as a colourist, though still
greater, perhaps, as a draughtsman. His manner
of rendering animals in motion, especially birds, is
assuredly not only unsurpassed but unapproached.
One wonders how he, unseen and unheard, has
been able to watch all these scenes of animal life ;

and one marvels at the way in which he perpetuates
them with pencil or brush. In some of his large
pictures he rises to the highest decorative effect,
and some of the stirring dramas he depicts are
almost tragic in their intensity. He raises the
curtain for many a scene man but rarely witnesses,
and we behold with wondering admiration and
implicit belief the passionate struggle between two
grand eagles, the bear in his greedy meal off a
luckless deer, the solitary bird soaring high above
the vast, desolate sea.
There is a different though a none the less
distinct charm over many of his more modest
canvases, where he simply revels in the study of
field or moor, and where you sometimes have to
look twice before discovering, hidden amongst the
grass, that cluster of small birds from which the
picture takes its name, and which has, no doubt,
inspired it. What subtle studies are not many of
these smaller pictures, and what a master is not
Liljefors in “ arranging ” or “ composing ” (words,
I know, which are but ill suited in this connection)
his pictures, giving nature, be it field or forest or
sky or shore, its measure of width and greatness,
and to the individual animal just what is its due !
The sense of the eternal fitness of things never


“ON THE ALERT” (OIL PAINTING) BY BRUNO LILJEFORS
(In the Collection of H. R. H. Prince Carl of Sweden)

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