Swedish Artists Illustrating Boys' Fashions



Fifure 1.--We have few details about this Karl Larson portrait. Apparently it was painted in 1918.

We do not know much about Swedish art history and artists yet. We have found three wonderful atists. Karl Larson painted many beautiful images of children during the late-19th and early-20th centuries that provide great detail about period clothing. Hugo Frédérick Salmson created wonderful realistic genre pieces depicting Swedish life in which children are featured. Johan August Malmström include wonderful, simwhat more idealized gentre pieces, among his varied boy of work. This provides us an excellent range of images with which to augment the photograpic record. We do not know, however, nuch about the early-19th century.

Karl Larsson (1853-1919)

Carl Larsson, although not as sell known as many other important artists, may be one of the greatest artists who have painted children. There is an especially appealing intimacy in his work. Many artists realisticallypainted clothing, but few artists have been able to capture the essential qualities of children as effectively as Larsson. Bergman films seem to capture the magical ambience that Larsson painted. We know little about his artistic career at this time, but we do note several beautiful portraits of children along with detailed illustrations of period clothing. His paintings provide wondeful glimpses as to how children were dressed in Sweden in the 19th and early 20th centuries, a superb record of how Swedish children were dressed at the time.

Johan August Malmström (1829-1901)

Johan August Malmström was born in Bastra Ny, Östergötland (1829). He was a Swedish artist and his engraver known best for his genre work. He also did landcapes, portraits, and historical themes. Malmström served as a professor at the Royal Swedish Academy of Arts and later manager of the Academy. Based on his genre Malmström be seen as a kind of Swedish Norman Rockwell. He commonly featured rural children in his genre work. Thus he provides wonderful images of country life and the clothes that the country children wore. He created ome of the best know images of l9th century Sweden. The piece that he is best known for is 'Grindslanten'. It depicts a group of children after school. The boys have gotten into a fight, although we are not sure what set them off. A girl has spilled her berries. One art critic says that Malmström was influenced by the national romanticism of Gothicismus. Malmström was also interested in Norse mythology and drew a number of illustrations. He did illustrations for several newspapers and book publishing houses. He had many interets besides painting and drawing. He designed furniture, worked as a pattern drawer, and was a designer for Gustavsberg, an important Swedish porcelain company.

Hugo Frédérick Salmson (1843-1904)

Hugo Frédérick Salmson worked in Stockholm. He is one of the greates Swedish artists, both for his skill and for his detailed depictions of Swedish like. He did not specialize with children like Larson, but cgildren are feature in his depictions of Swedish life. One of his greates works is " Fête of Saint John in Dalecarlia, Sweden". It provides is fairly suggestive of the robust joy of the Scandinavian merrymakers, which depicts a Swedish celebration and costumes in great detail. We note another wonderful worj, "Gateway to Dalby at Skane". He painted it in 1884. It is a wonderful depiction of how rural children dressed.







HBC






Navigate the Boys' Historical Clothing artistic pages:
[Return to the Main artistic page]
[Chronologies] [Individuals] [National] [Styles]



Navigate the Boys' Historical Clothing Web Site:
[Return to the Main Swedish page]
[Introduction] [Activities] [Biographies] [Chronology] [Clothing styles] [Countries]
[Bibliographies] [Contributions] [FAQs] [Glossaries] [Images] [Links] [Registration] [Tools]
[Boys' Clothing Home]




Created: July 25, 2003
Last updated: 12:03 AM 2/23/2016