The Role of the Artist

The bohemian artist is a Western ideal rooted in the Romantic role of the artist that emerged in the late 18th century. It built on the myth of the freely creating male “genius”, who used his originality to break with the social conventions and official art institutions. Women artists, on the other hand, have usually been presented in art history as unique exceptions.

In Sweden women artists and writers managed in the 1870s and 1880s to carve out considerable space for themselves on the public art scene, shaking the male norm of the artist to its foundation. The 1890s brought a counter reaction, a backlash.

Jeanna Bauck meets the viewer’s gaze, in a portrait that conveys a strong sense of her presence. She is shown as a professional woman, of value in her own right. Bertha Wegmann combines the free, independent female ideal of the period with elegant middle-class femininity. The artist Bauck has her professional attributes by her side: brushes, palette and painting rags. She holds a book, symbolising her position as an intellectual. Behind her, through the window, we can make out the rooftops of Paris.

Bodies in Motion

Edgar Degas was fascinated by body language, of the panorama and the predecessors to film, capturing movement in a series of sequences. He studied ballet dancers and made several series of sketches.

The impressionists’ images of modern life in Paris are seen as idyllic by many people today. But they often deal with so-called grenouilles (frogs), girl prostitutes.

The male artists were flaneurs, depicting the city as a scene with an objectifying gaze. On the other hand, the freedom of movement of the female impressionists was limited, they were reduced to depicting the city from the balconies.

Degas had the young dancer Marie van Goethem pose while standing on a moving modelling stand, both naked and in a ballet suit. The process can be followed through a whole series of drawings and wax studies (see the slide show on the screen). When the finished sculpture was exhibited in 1881 it caused a scandal. The figure carried a real and deliberately soiled ballet suit. It gave the viewers associations to double standards and child prostitution.

Consumption, Fashion and Body

While the bourgeois home in the 1850s had served as an exhibition space for the class and occupational status of men, the interiors at the turn of the century evolved into a separate sphere of female aesthetic self-esteem and creation of identity.

When the Arts and crafts reformers were looking to preserve older traditions and aesthetic ideals in a time of mass production, capitalists wanted to increase consumption by elevating it from a household routine to an artistic and personal ritual. The only way for “the chic housewife” to fulfil herself was through shopping.

This image is of Joanna Heffernan, who was Courbet’s model and mistress. Female models had low status, being viewed as little more than a commodity and the property of the male artists. When “Jo” examined herself in the mirror, it was a vital act, as she was entirely dependent on her appearance to make a living. In the consumer culture of today, women are defined by their appearance, as objects, not allowed to age and controlled by their weight.

New Thinking in International Glass Art

It’s a mystery how 19th century glass designers could create the exciting and colourful expression of the new art glass. The established technique was to melt and blow the glass mass and then, when the glass cooled, add a cut, etched, engraved or painted decor. Other materials can also be decorated in the same way, but only glass can be melted and blown. Artists began to explore the unique properties of glass and how it could be used to renew the tradition.

Swedish Art Glass

The innovative art glass movement also established itself in the Swedish glass industry. Gunnar G:son Wennerberg studied in Paris and when he returned home he renewed the production at Kosta glassworks. Others also contributed to the development and laid the foundations for Swedish art glass of the 20th century. One of them was Betzy Ählström, Sweden’s first female glass artist. The success was also possible thanks to glassblowers, grinders and etchers, both from Sweden and from abroad.

Japan and Japonism

Swedish, French and British design in the Japanese style along with Japanese objects appealed to 19th-century western collectors and artists. Many Japanese objects were part of Nationalmuseum’s collection until 1963, when the national art collection was split up and the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities was established.

Japan’s sacred mountain, Fuji, adorns the vase from Gustavsberg. A comic scene with men climbing a pine tree can be seen in the foreground. The Swedish artist Helmer Osslund has probably used a Japanese woodcut as a model and let the design cover the entire surface of the urn. For decades, Gustavsberg made Japanese-style items and porcelain sets.

Art Nouveau

The term, which means new art, was an international style at the turn of the 20th century. Nature is traditionally a theme in art, both in realistic landscape paintings and in façade ornaments and fabric patterns. Subjects are based on simplified images of flowers and leaves. The new approach was winding plants, which swept over surfaces and embraced objects, furniture and buildings.

They broke with previous design rules and followed principles found in Japanese art. The name was coined by the owner of the Galerie d’Art Nouveau shop in Paris, where this cabinet was purchased.

On their honeymoon to Paris in 1898, the musician Knut and the physical education instructor Signe Andersson discovered the Maison de l’Art Nouveau shop. They ordered a dining table, twelve chairs and this buffet cabinet. Before being transported to Sweden, the furniture was shown at the World’s Fair in Paris in 1900 and photographs of them were published in international design magazines.

The Modern City

The impressionists depicted light with colour, influenced by the new optical findings and colour theories of the time. They belonged, like many of the Nordic artists, to the realist tradition with its descriptive perspective.

There was an emphasis on contemporaneity and everyday life, in which the artists tried to capture the individual in their own environment. They sought to create intimacy, in which the viewer and the image are in the same room.

Impressionists used strong complementary colours that contrasted with each other while the Nordic artists mainly devoted themselves to tone painting.

Auguste Renoir’s paintings of modern life, in this case the bohemian artists of Marlotte in the forest of Fontainebleau, show that the impressionists were skilled in branding and promoting themselves. They created large group portraits, filled with young men, gathered around one of their (male) teachers and role models. In the pictures, the female members are always conspicuous by their absence.

The Salon

Since the 18th century, the annual Paris salon was the best way to establish your brand in the European world of art. Many different types of styles were represented at the salon, not just academic art.

In the 1880s, Jules Bastien-Lepage was the main model for the Nordic artists, becoming a link between the traditional and the new art. Ernst Josephson was more influenced by the avant-garde, which can be seen in the portrait of the journalist and critic Godfrey Renholm. Who visited the artists’ studios and reported from the salon to the Swedish newspapers.

The half-naked woman sits in front of a mirror and hesitantly tries on a pearl necklace. The three-dimensioned figure and the meticulous painting of fabrics, were typical of the classic academic traditions of the day. Chaplin was famous for his erotic and objectifying female portraits, bought by the aristocracy and the financial elite of the time. Like many salon artists, he was influenced by the late 18th century portraits and genre painting.

Industrialism

During this period, European history was characterized by major socio-economic changes. Several famines forced more than a quarter of Sweden’s population to emigrate.

The technical development and industrialization as well as urban expansion also affected the methods and motifs of the visual arts and the art industry.

In France, where industrialization started relatively late, realist painters were given official assignments from the state to launch themes from the new and progressive metal industry. In this painting, Buland used photographs as a basis for painting all the details of the combined smithy and mechanical workshop. The master mechanic is using a drill while working on a cogwheel – an important component that made all the modern machinery turn.

Open-air Painting

Artists have long devoted themselves to drawing and painting outdoors, but during the 19th century, the genre was renewed by the realist tradition. By open-air painters who wanted to capture the light in all its aspects by standing directly in front of the subject with their canvases.

The modern and practical paint tubes made it possible to work outdoors in a completely different way than before. But the finishing touches were always carried out in the studio, regardless of whether the artist was a more traditional painter or belonged to the avant-garde.