Gustaf Fjaestad

It was his winter paintings that brought Gustaf Fjaestad fame, but at the same time, it's evident that he was a very versatile artist. The first curator of the Rackstadsmuseet, Per Inge Fridlund, goes so far as to call him versatile, "almost like a Renaissance painter." We see evidence of this in the current painting at the auction. During the summer, Fjaestad used a rowboat he had built himself to explore various aspects of the Värmland landscape on Rackensjön. Fjaestad's wife, Maja, wrote to her mother about it:
"It was a celebration, I must say, when Gustaf got the boat ready; then he went out for a test sail, and we walked around the point, following it with our eyes; it looked great on the lake. The next day, he sailed over to Ahlgrenssons and brought them here, and in the afternoon, we all rowed out to a little island called 'Kampöla' and had punch and indulged in lingonberries left over from last year. It's a splendid oak boat and can hold a great many."