Important Spring Sale presents Carl Larsson

Bukowskis presents "Bolla. II" by Carl Larsson at the seasons largest live auction – Important Spring Sale.

The girl named Bolla was depicted in two versions, both in a watercolour executed in 1913 and in an oil on canvas (the present painting) the same year. The watercolour (now in the collections of the Jämtlands läns museum in Östersund) portrays Bolla in full figure, while the oil painting focuses on her face and upper body in profile. Ulwa Neergaard recounts the following in her extensive biography of Carl Larsson:

"Who Bolla was is told by Carl Larsson in a letter from Sundborn to his daughter Lisbeth on 18 January 1913. He writes: 'Here we have had a little youth (well, that is, 28 years old, or so) a Bolla Nilson, sister-in-law to Glasell, who has modelled for us, but has now gone to another sister in Hudiksvall.' Glasell, whom Carl Larsson mentions in his letter, was Theodor Glasell, a beloved and talented drawing teacher in Falun."

Neergaard, again, describes the watercolour as follows:

"Carl Larsson has painted Bolla in the Reading Room at Lilla Hyttnäs in Sundborn, as she sits in the most comfortable reading chair with a book in her lap. On the long narrow table beside her lies, under a multitude of books, a canvas, which, as an effective border in the foreground, has a tapestry woven by Carl Larsson's wife, Karin. The closed door behind Bolla leads into the Old Room, the Larsson family's guest room."