Five Sublime Scandinavian Artists You’ve Probably Never Heard Of
Masters of light, colour and atmosphere
Dear Reader,
Scandinavian countries like Sweden, Denmark and Norway have created some of the most appealing, thoughtful and sublime works of art in the Western canon.
Yet many of these artists remain relatively unknown beyond their native shores. Here I’ve chosen five Scandinavian artists to share, each of whom offers a unique view of the world.
L. A. Ring
Laurits Andersen Ring, otherwise known as L. A. Ring, was born in 1854 and became a leading symbolist and social realist painter in Denmark. With an assured painterly technique and a perfect eye for composition, he painted landscape and domestic scenes that ripple with hushed underlying allusions and social commentary.
In this painting, made in 1897, the scene is bathed in light. Depicted is the artist’s wife, Sigrid Kähler, whom he married just a year before. It’s possible to interpret this image as a simple declaration of love, with the promise of spring alongside a possible pregnancy. But there’s also something extra: a philosophical appreciation for light and clarity of form, the tools of the artist’s imagination.
Through a masterful choice of colours — compare the blue of the door frame with the peach and yellow of Sigrid’s dress — the artist has endowed the image with both romantic celebrations of motherhood and a pensive sense of introspection.
Amalia Lindegren
Amalia Lindegren was a painter of portraits and so-called “genre” scenes, which may suggest she was conventional in her style. Yet as this Study of a female model demonstrates, her abilities with paint, her handling of light and shadow, and her capacity to render naturalistic colours were all exceptional.
Born in 1814, Lindegren was Swedish by birth. As the first Swedish woman to be awarded a scholarship to study art abroad, she travelled to Paris and there developed a technical brilliance that won her many admirers.
She also spent time in Germany and mixed with artists whose interests in painting folk customs and costumes influenced her choice of subject matter. Putting her technical skills to use, she painted peasants from everyday life, atmospheric household interiors, and melancholy little girls with a marked sentimental edge, all with a depth of feeling that lifts them above the ordinary.
Vilhelm Hammershøi
Probably the most well-known artist of the five featured here, Vilhelm Hammershøi was a Danish painter born in Copenhagen in 1864. His paintings of interiors combine some of the most thoughtful and brooding effects in all of Scandinavian art.
Hammershøi’s works look upon the world as if through the filter of a meditative consciousness, where the most expressive and eloquent encounters occur in the most closed-off quarters. These moments are full of silences and unexpressed thoughts — the muteness of the images pertaining to a form of expression in itself.
In this painting, a young man stands in the corner of a room, reading from a notebook. Soft daylight penetrates the room through the window, gently lighting the interior amid the simple, spartan atmosphere of domestic architecture.
With a subtle tonal range, Hammershøi’s use of colour is remarkably astute. Exploring shades of mauve, pale yellow and grey, he created beautiful and sophisticated vibrations of colour harmony that reward the eye the more it lingers.
Christen Købke
Christen Købke was born in Copenhagen in 1810. He is identified today as one of the most talented artists of the Danish Golden Age. Many of his works feature wide-open landscapes, painted with a lucid eye for elemental forms and understated colour harmonies.
For this captivating image, Købke climbed the rooftop of Frederiksborg Castle in Hillerød, Denmark, to capture the view of a lake, town and nearby forest.
And yet it was the sky that really hooked his imagination. Købke filled three-quarters of the painting with subtle yet expansive elements of light and colour. As Købke proves, an artist can benefit from keeping his eyes tilted upwards to look beyond the rooftop and over the trees.
Købke was a talented landscape and portrait painter. Yet despite his innovative compositions and harmonic use of light, he was not widely fêted in his lifetime and he died at the age of just 37.
Bruno Liljefors
Swedish painter Bruno Andreas Liljefors was born in 1860. He is best known for his wildlife paintings: expertly observed scenes often showing predator and prey action, such as the hunt of a hare by a fox or a goshawk attacking a black grouse.
Influenced by the Impressionists, as evident in his dappled lighting and blend of colours, Liljefors was a very fine painter of texture and atmosphere. His works are devoid of sentimentality, capturing wildlife in its simplest and sometimes rawest beauty.
In this painting of two foxes resting in the undergrowth, their forms surrounded by autumn leaves, Liljefors captured the gentler side of nature without sacrificing any naturalistic detail.
Perhaps it goes without saying that these five artists are really just the tip of the iceberg. Scandinavian countries have produced an entire catalogue of absorbing and alluring works of art. Many of the artists are little known beyond their native countries — but they remain to be discovered.
I wish you well,
Chris
P.S. Would you like to support this newsletter and get even more stories like this? Upgrade your subscription…
I’m Christopher P Jones — art writer and author of the Looking at Art series of books. You can find out more at chrisjoneswrites.co.uk and my regular blog on Medium.
Another lovely write up Christopher! I've always thought it's a great shame that so much of our common knowledge of fine art is limited to mainland Northern and Western Europe and a few renegades in the USA. This selection of artists is beautiful and I love how you can feel the Nordic energy that we love in their design come through the painting too.
wow! Thank you for showing us these fantastic artists and their masterpieces. I am searching the web now and I find how great they are... (especially Bruno Liljefors)