Treehouse with figure and animal
Colour chalk on paper, image 17.5 x 22 cm.
Provenance
Auktionsverket, Stockholm, 4 December, lot 52.
Private collection, Sweden.
More information
In the present drawing where the flooded landscape seems to have drowned everything except the isolated trees, there are connections both to the "flood theme" as noted by Nils Lindhagen in general, as well as to individual similar examples such as "Trees entwining houses" (colour chalk, 18 x 22.5 cm, Malmö Art Museum).
Nils Lindhagen writes in one of his analyses of similar motifs: "It is often completely futile to try to trace the origin of Hill's countless remarkable tree formations, for the phases of transformation are simply too many. These trees, which seem filled with immense forces, become during certain periods the most important conduits for the draughtsman's intentions."
Lindhagen also makes connections to potential sources of inspiration regarding motifs like the one in question. Highly interesting in this context is, according to Lindhagen, the ancient tale of Philemon and Baucis: "which seems to have greatly occupied Hill's imagination. Hill's main source on the subject, Fr. Nösselt's handbook on the mythology of the Greeks and Romans, quotes at length Ovid's vivid depiction of how the two old people were saved by the gods during a devastating flood unleashed upon the earth; and upon their simultaneous death, they were transformed into trees. A whole series of drawings indicate that Hill carefully contemplated this tale with its close connection to his own flood fantasies."
More about Carl Fredrik Hill
Carl Fredrik Hill was a Swedish artist born in Lund. Hill is considered one of Sweden's formost landscape painters. His fate and artistry are perhaps the strangest but most interesting in Swedish art history. Born in an academic home in Lund, despite his father's protests, he managed to begin studies at the Art Academy in Stockholm and then traveled to France, where he came in contact with Corot's landscape painting. He found his inspiration in Barbizon and later on the River Oise, in Luc-sur-Mer and Bois-le-Roi. He painted frantically with the hope of being accepted into the Salon de Paris. Already during his student years, he struggled with an incipient mental illness and at the age of 28 he was taken to the mental hospital in Passy. During the hospital stay he began his rich production of drawings and then continued with the production after his return to Lund, where he was cared for by his family for the rest of his life. In thousands drawings, a fantasy world of figures scenes appears. Today, Hill's river landscape and flowering fruit trees from the years in France, together with the visionary drawings from the period of illness in Lund, have received great recognition. His art depicts a loneliness and longing that is easy to get caught up in. He is mainly represented at the Malmö Museum and at the National Museum in Stockholm.
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