DOI issue:
No. 237 (December 1912)
DOI article:Studio-talk
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.21158#0276
Studio-Talk
where the Artists’ Association (Konstnarsforbundet)
opened one of the most important exhibitions of
modern art that have been offered to the Swedish
public for a very long time. It is seven years
since this society met in one common exhibition
in the capital of Sweden, on which occasion it
celebrated the twentieth anniversary of its foun-
dation. The exhibition this year was of quite a
different character. The golden age of Swedish
“ stiimning ” painting—the painting expressive of a
mood—is past. Eugen Jansson’s night visions of
Stockholm, Karl Nordstrom’s gloom-filled west
coast breakers, Thegerstrom’s moonlight parks,
which had replaced the transparent everyday
pictures of the eighties, have had in their turn
to make way for new and sunnier artistic ideals.
Prince Eugen, whose work dominated the second
largest room at the exhibition, still stands with one
foot fast fixed on the ground where he has created
so many delightful works of art. I lately had the
opportunity of describing in the pages of this
magazine the course of his artistic development,
the stages of which were illustrated in this exhi-
bition by a choice collection of his finest landscapes.
But that which attracted the chief attention of the
beholder was the great altar-piece for Kiruna
Church. The very idea of choosing a landscape
as the motif of an altar-piece is as new as it is
remarkable. Its signification, at a time when the
ability to give a new and simple, yet convincing,
reading to old Biblical subjects seems to be almost
entirely dead—the Danish artist Joakim Skov-
gaard is the one brilliant exception—cannot easily
be over-estimated, even if, as often enough happens
perhaps, it is misunderstood and abused. It is
hardly necessary to speak of the purely artistic
value and the immense decorative qualities of this
vast canvas. But no one who does not know what
the Kiruna mining district is, no one who has not
trodden these streets which begin at the point, so
to say, where tree-growth ceases and which at no
time during the year are entirely free from snow,
can in full measure appreciate the geniality of the
way in which the entire subject has been grasped.
For the fertile central Swedish landscape depicted
here, with its light, cool colours, its overflowing
sunshine, its noble and magnificent form prompt-
ing the imagination to flights far beyond the
horizon, must, to a soul tortured by a wearisome,
month-long winter night, be a veritable vision of
the glades of Paradise.
“snow and open water, sandhamn”
254
FROM THE OIL PAINTING BY AXEL SJOBERG
where the Artists’ Association (Konstnarsforbundet)
opened one of the most important exhibitions of
modern art that have been offered to the Swedish
public for a very long time. It is seven years
since this society met in one common exhibition
in the capital of Sweden, on which occasion it
celebrated the twentieth anniversary of its foun-
dation. The exhibition this year was of quite a
different character. The golden age of Swedish
“ stiimning ” painting—the painting expressive of a
mood—is past. Eugen Jansson’s night visions of
Stockholm, Karl Nordstrom’s gloom-filled west
coast breakers, Thegerstrom’s moonlight parks,
which had replaced the transparent everyday
pictures of the eighties, have had in their turn
to make way for new and sunnier artistic ideals.
Prince Eugen, whose work dominated the second
largest room at the exhibition, still stands with one
foot fast fixed on the ground where he has created
so many delightful works of art. I lately had the
opportunity of describing in the pages of this
magazine the course of his artistic development,
the stages of which were illustrated in this exhi-
bition by a choice collection of his finest landscapes.
But that which attracted the chief attention of the
beholder was the great altar-piece for Kiruna
Church. The very idea of choosing a landscape
as the motif of an altar-piece is as new as it is
remarkable. Its signification, at a time when the
ability to give a new and simple, yet convincing,
reading to old Biblical subjects seems to be almost
entirely dead—the Danish artist Joakim Skov-
gaard is the one brilliant exception—cannot easily
be over-estimated, even if, as often enough happens
perhaps, it is misunderstood and abused. It is
hardly necessary to speak of the purely artistic
value and the immense decorative qualities of this
vast canvas. But no one who does not know what
the Kiruna mining district is, no one who has not
trodden these streets which begin at the point, so
to say, where tree-growth ceases and which at no
time during the year are entirely free from snow,
can in full measure appreciate the geniality of the
way in which the entire subject has been grasped.
For the fertile central Swedish landscape depicted
here, with its light, cool colours, its overflowing
sunshine, its noble and magnificent form prompt-
ing the imagination to flights far beyond the
horizon, must, to a soul tortured by a wearisome,
month-long winter night, be a veritable vision of
the glades of Paradise.
“snow and open water, sandhamn”
254
FROM THE OIL PAINTING BY AXEL SJOBERG