"Örgården mellan träden"
Signed Eugen and dated 1918. Oil on canvas 38 x 62 cm.
During a series of summers from the 1910s onwards, Prince Eugen painted motifs from the Örberga region in Sweden. In 1916, he was able to inaugurate his new summer residence, Örgården, located just outside Vadstena and overlooking Lake Vättern and the surrounding plains. Örgården, which was built according to his own designs, was used by the prince until 1944.
What primarily attracted Prince Eugen's painterly eye in Örberga were the expansive views, the sky with the region's characteristic cloud formations over Lake Vättern, and the intensely blue waters of the great lake. He was also fascinated by the harvest work in the fields; grain stacks, hayricks, and harvested fields now appeared as appealing subjects.
In a letter from 1913 to his friends Ellen and Theodor Lundberg, the prince wrote: "I would wish for you to have such a wonderful place to stay as I have found here on this hill, where all the world's rye stacks have gathered to walk in long rows down to the blue water. Here one sees the sky as large as it is, and all light streams down over the earth."