Important Winter Sale: Carl Fredrik Hill, ”Familjen - variation I (The Family - variation I)”
Carl Fredrik Hill
”Familjen – variation I”
Towards the end of 1877 and after an extended period of stress, Carl Fredrik Hill’s mental health collapsed. In the first days of 1878, his concerned neighbours called for Hill’s friend Willhelm von Gegerfelt to come. Gegerfelt, who quickly realised the seriousness of the situation, took care of Hill as best as he could. It was also Gegerfelt who, on the 18th of January 1878, arranged for Hill’s transportation to Doctor Blanche’s clinic in Passy, outside of Paris, where he was sectioned against his will. This sectioning can generally be seen as a watershed moment in Hill’s artistic production. He was a traditional landscape painter but withdrew for a time only to return as a visionary interpreter of highly personal inner landscapes.
Hill’s later production of drawings has often been called his ‘period of illness’. In the 1999 catalogue for the National Museum’s major exhibition Carl Fredrik Hill, one of Sweden’s foremost experts on Hill and his art, Sten Åke Nilsson, gave the following insight into this later work: “After he was sectioned it is possible to discern a certain decline in Hill’s production. […] But the notes from the hospital in Lund already attest to a new and different flow of images, and the return to Skomakargatan appears to set unexpected powers free. The contact with his own early work, with texts and image material from his father’s library, has a stimulating effect. […] After the long break he works again, at times with the same intensity as before his sectioning”.
› Signed Hill. Silver, gold bronze and oil over traced pencil on paper-panel mounted on canvas 55 x 75 cm. Estimate 8 000 000 – 10 000 000 SEK
In all likelihood the return to his well-ordered, bourgeois childhood home seems to have had a calming influence on Hill. His mother and his beloved sisters were also there. Even if family life constituted a sanctuary for the artist’s tormented soul, this did not mean that Hill’s flow of inspiration was in any way interrupted. As the head of the family, irrespective of his health, Hill still had the use of the library that his deceased father had left behind, which, together with the rest of the family’s collection of books, was all the inspiration he needed. Although the family had sold off some non-fiction books after his father’s passing, several volumes still remained in the home on Skomakargatan. It was above all the xylographic illustrations that aroused Hill’s interest. The family’s trips to Copenhagen and its museums are also said to have stimulated Hill’s imagination. Besides straightforward repetitions of his own earlier landscape motifs, in the following years, Hill focused his attention on sourcing material as diverse as antique sculptures, 17th-century painting, and images reporting from ‘deepest’ Africa. We also know that Hill would often return to a particular volume, that of Ernst Wallis’s Illustrated World History.
To be sold at Important Winter Sale December 8–10.
Viewing December 2 – 7, Berzelii Park 1, Stockholm.
Open Mon–Fri 11 am–6 pm, Sat–Sun 11 am–5 pm.
Auction Live December 8 – 10, Arsenalsgatan 2, Stockholm.
* Due to new recommendations, Bukowskis kindly asks you to show proof of Covid-19 vaccination from December 1st onwards at indoor events with more than 100 guests. Please take note of this before viewing the Important Winter Sale.
To the artwork