Important Spring Sale presents August Strindberg | June 10–12
"Enslingen"
In the Nationalmuseum's exhibition catalogue "Strindberg – The Painter and the Photographer" (2001), Per Hedström paints the following picture of August Strindberg's painting during the 1890s:
"Strindberg's 1890s were marked by the deepest crisis of his life up to that point, the so-called Inferno crisis, which reached its peak in Paris in 1896. For almost seven years, Strindberg was largely unproductive as a fiction writer. Instead, he devoted himself to scientific experiments, and during certain periods, he painted. It is now that his painting suddenly becomes something more than the amateur's cautious attempts to depict nature. The first reviews of Strindberg's production as a painter could be read in the summer of 1892. Strindberg had exhibited a small number of new paintings in a venue in Stockholm called Birger Jarl's Bazaar, and the exhibition was noted by several newspapers. In some cases, the reactions were cautiously positive. But one could also read a type of ironically mocking reviews that often, both before and later, afflicted modern art."
During the spring and summer of 1892, August Strindberg's literary creation seems to have hit a dead end. His good friend Per Hasselberg then offered the good advice to resume painting. In May 1892, Strindberg wrote to Richard Bergh to invite him to Dalarö over Whitsun: "I have some painting studies, from imagination, to show you. A 'new direction' that I have invented myself and want to call forest nymphism (ask Bob!)."
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Strindberg's good friend Robert Thegerström, "Bob," whom he had met in France, had a summer house on Dalarö. He helped Strindberg rent a cottage on the island in the late summer of 1891, and in the spring of the following year, Strindberg returned to Dalarö and resumed painting and socialising with Thegerström.
Per Hedström continues about the period:
”Han hade haft svårt att få sina pjäser spelade och skilsmässan med Siri von Essen höll på att fullbordas. För första gången på närmare 20 år börjar han åter måla i olja. […] Målningarna från Dalarö 1892 kan närmast karakteriseras som bilder av minnen från ytterskärgården och havsbandet. Strindberg renodlade och utvecklade nu det motivförråd han skapat under 1870-talet. Det är det öppna havet, den raka horisonten och de vida himlarna som dominerar bilderna”.
Isolated in a small cottage out on Dalarö point, he embarked on an intense creative period with colour and palette knife. The technique suited Strindberg's restless temperament; the unmixed oil paint is applied directly onto panels of wood, metal, or cardboard. The texture that arises from the movements of the palette knife often becomes as significant as the colours and motifs themselves. The paintings from this period are strikingly free from literary elements. Instead, they are dominated by the harsh nature of the archipelago – stormy seas, dramatic skies, and the sparse vegetation that characterises the rugged landscape.
"Forest nymphism," after the forest nymph, which is a dialect word for skogsrå, that Strindberg writes about to Richard Bergh, was his theory of "automatic" art. Göran Söderström writes: "Strindberg's working method was distinctly spontaneous even in his literary and scientific work. [...] All the paintings from 1892 are, however, pure fantasy compositions, even if the motifs have an experiential background from the archipelago. [...] Initially, 'forest nymphism' likely did not yet imply any conscious striving towards abstraction, but merely a method of allowing the details of the painting to be built up by the inherent form-willingness of the colour spots."
"The Solitary One" is an excellent example of this idiosyncratic landscape in the outer sea, potentially a symbol of untamed nature and the recalcitrant life itself. The solitary spruce stands on a rocky islet with the white-blue sea glimpsing three grey-brown skerries and, closer in the foreground, the scant vegetation. Strindberg has developed the rain-heavy sky in the spontaneous manner he would later describe in his artistic manifesto, "On Chance in Artistic Creation," written in Dornach in 1894: "To reproduce nature approximately, to imitate above all nature's way of creating."
Hugo Fröding described the auction painting in 1912, which he and his wife Märta, August Strindberg's niece, then owned: "He called it 'The Solitary One.' He thought of himself in that regard."
Frans Estenberg, who looked after the Gopsmor cottage for Zorn, wrote in his diary in January 1907 that “Zorn paints Kesti carrying water”, referring to the auction painting “Hämta vatten”. Kesti was none other than Hållams-Kesti, one of Zorn’s favourite models. The beautiful Mora girl Hållams-Kesti also posed for Zorn in “En flykting”, where he had originally intended to depict two girls skiing through a snowy landscape. However, he changed his mind, removed one of the girls, and transformed Hållams-Kesti into none other than Gustav Vasa himself, among other things by adding the monarch’s characteristic beard. Among the winter paintings from early 1907 — such as “Moraflicka på skidor”, “Rättvikskulla i snö”, and “En flykting” — “Hämta vatten” ranks among the very finest. Hållams-Kesti is portrayed wearing the beautiful winter costume of the women of Mora, where the red ribbon in her hair revealed to those in the know that she was still unmarried. In the background can be seen the long skis — a necessity for reaching Gopsmor during winter and also a popular leisure activity — together with another industrious Mora girl occupied with carrying firewood into the cottage. Of the painting “Hämta vatten”, Tor Hedberg wrote that “the colouring here is softer and more melting, with the ivory-yellow sheepskin coat exquisitely set against the white snow and the brown timber. Zorn’s lovingly painted furs could deserve a chapter of their own; one sees how greatly he delighted in their aged patina.”
With his characteristic virtuosity of brushwork and an extraordinary sensitivity to light and movement, Zorn transforms this simple action into a poetic moment, charged with presence and intimacy.
The painting’s first owner, Consul Erik Brodin, was a close friend of the artist, and his extensive art collection included some of Zorn’s greatest works in private ownership, such as “Kaikroddare”, “Väninnor”, “Reflexer”, and “Söndagsmorgon”, to mention but a few, alongside the auction’s exquisite “Hämta vatten”.
August Strindberg at Important Spring Sale
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