Dimensions
109.50cm wide
86.00cm high
(43.11 inches wide 33.86 inches high)
External Dimensions
126.00cm framed width
101.00cm framed height
(49.61 inches framed width 39.76 inches framed height)
Description
Oil on canvas
Provenance
Acquired circa 1917 by Mr & Mrs Borin
Thence by decent in the family (Private European Collection)
Literature
On returning to Sweden from New York in 1916 Anselm Schultzberg was in great need of contact with his beloved countryside. Having spent the best part of the previous three years in charge of the Swedish Artist’s Pavilion at the 1915 Panama Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco and the reinstallation of the exhibition in Brooklyn in 1916, Anselm longed for impressions of nature.
Late in 1916 the artist acquires some land in “in a wonderful little spot nestled in the deep hillsides and practically within the deepest forrest”. Here he would have a house built - in which Christmas could be celebrated in 1917. He thus returned to the region of Philipstad (Värmland) which he had first visited and fallen in love with as a young artist on his way to France in the 1880s.
‘Splendid Winter in Svealand’ of 1917 encapsulates Schultzberg´s painterly style. Painting en plein-air, under a temporary wind-shelter Anselm had let build on the ‘little spot’, he vividly captured the juxtaposition of the calm but warm tones of the Nordic winter and the dramatic hillsides clad in a deep mystical forest. Schultzberg’s romantic notion of the Swedish winter landscape emerges out of a painterly idiom first explored in 1889.
Having first stayed in the artist’s colony of Grèz-sur-Loing the young painter continued on to Paris. Here he awarded a Bronze medal at the Salon of 1891. But most importantly here he studied the works of Manet, Monet, Sisley, Renoir and Pissarro. Throughout the 1890s and the first decennia of the 1900s Schultzberg uses his palette-knife more and more freely. Unfortunately, The First World War and obligations to the Swedish Academy hinders the artist’s creativity.
Nonetheless, in 1916-17 Anselm find the space and inspiration to capture the intermingling of sun, blue sky and snow – painting a splendid impression of this concert of light and nature.
Current Condition
This work is on its original canvas. The paint surface is in excellent original condition.
The painting has been lightly cleaned and varnished to conserve the painting in its original condition.
Status
Sold
