"Afton" (Evening)
Signed Eugène Jansson. Executed in 1894. Oil on canvas 104 x 77.5 cm.
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Provenance
Sveriges Allmänna Konstförening (Swedish Association for Art, acquired directly from the artist in 1894); Engineer C.G. Forselius, Stockholm (won in the aforementioned Association's Art lottery in 1894); Bukowski Auktioner, Stockholm, Sale 510, "Internationella höstauktionen", 25 Nov 1998, lot 106; J.E. Safra Collection (acquired at the above Sale).
Literature
Nils G. Wollin, "Eugène Janssons måleri", SAK, 1920, catalogued under year 1894, p. 167, no. 48.
More information
“Evening” is a colourist masterpiece by “the blue painter” Eugène Jansson, still seen as a peculiarly unique figure in international art history. The artist’s portrayals of a Stockholm on the verge of increasing modernity in shimmering blue dawns and dusks have attracted huge attention worldwide.
“Evening”, painted in 1894, has been identified by Nils G. Wollin as a view of Årstaviken from Södermalm. Despite the influx of modernity, at that time Stockholm still comprised large areas of green space, almost countryside. At this period Tantolunden was virtually a wilderness on the doorstep of the artist’s home at Bastugatan 40 and it is precisely this that has clearly attracted the artist in the painting’s romantic landscape depiction in which lyricism and longing wander through the still Stockholm night hand in hand with weakness and melancholy.
