Gottfrid Kallstenius - A view of Stockholm from an imaginary terrace
Regular price 280 325 krGottfrid Kallstenius (Västervik 1861–1943 Storängen, Stockholm)
A view of Stockholm from an imaginary terrace, 1906
Signed and dated “G. Kallstenius -06”
Arched top
Oil on canvas
unframed 92.5 x 92.5 cm (36 ⅜ x 36 ⅜ in.)
framed 100 x 102 cm (39 ⅜ x 40 ⅛ in.)
Original gilt mount in wood
Provenance:
Sale, Stockholm, Bukowskis, 19 August 2019, lot 1128850
Literature:
(1.) A. Frosterud Jägerhorn, Gottfrid Kallstenius - I tusen tallars skugga, 2010, pp. 135-7, Sunset with pine trees illustrated in colour on the cover.
Condition:
The painting has undergone careful cleaning by a professional art conservator in Stockholm. The colors remain vivid and luminous, and the work is regarded to be in overall excellent condition.
Essay:
A study for the monumental painting Sunset with pine trees (4.5 x 4 m), executed in 1907 for the foyer of the Royal Dramatic Theatre, Stockholm, inaugurated in 1908.(1) The composition depicts a view from Kallstenius’s summerhouse outside Källvik in the Tjust archipelago, looking towards Djupsundet and Tättö peninsula, where he spent his summers from 1902.
Kallstenius had originally envisioned the subject as an amphitheatre in a northern forest at dusk, as can be seen in a small study for the composition, also painted in 1906. This concept was later replaced with a view of Stockholm from the east, seen from the entrance to the city by sea at sunset. In the final painting, he retained the imagined Italian terrace visible in the present work, based on studies made during his stay in Italy in 1893–94.
More than 25 artists participated in the decoration of the Royal Dramatic Theatre, among them Carl Larsson, Robert Thegerström, Alfred Bergström, Oskar Björck, Gustaf Cederström, Prince Eugen, and Georg Pauli, as well as sculptors such as Carl Milles, Christian Eriksson, and Stig Blomberg.
Kallstenius’s work in the Royal Dramatic Theatre was the starting point for subjects in which pine trees play a rudimentary role, serving as a symbol of the North. He soon became renowned for his coastal views from the archipelago, incorporating gnarled pine trees, both nationally and internationally. This is reflected in the celebrated introduction to Hjalmar Söderberg’s novel Den allvarsamma leken (The Serious Game, 1912), in which Kallstenius is the model for the artist Stille.
"Lydia [Stille] used to bathe alone. She liked it best that way, and this summer she had no one to swim with. And she didn't have to be afraid: her father was sitting up there on the rock a little way away and painting his "motif from the sea band" and making sure that no unauthorized person got too close."/ "Since time immemorial, the artist Stille rented the same red painted fisherman's cottage far out in the archipelago. He painted pine trees. In his time, it had been said of him that he discovered the gnarled pine trees characteristic of the archipelago, just as Edvard Bergh [the painter] had discovered the Swedish birch grove."
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