Opening a book of Carl Larsson paintings is like swishing back the curtains on a sunny Scandinavian morning in early Spring: they radiate warmth and freshness, happiness and light. Larsson was a Swedish painter who died in 1919 at the age of 65. His subject matter was himself, his wife, Karin, their seven children and their rural home in Sundborn, north of Stockholm. His work was published in a series of albums which enjoyed some success in Sweden – but the print-runs were low and the books were consequently very expensive. It was the publication of The House in the Sun in Germany in 1909 that really made his name and fortune: it sold a whopping 40,000 copies, and there have been 40 reprints to date.
Of course, the first question one finds oneself asking about Larsson is – are you sure he’s Swedish? What have blissful glimpses of family life got to do with the land that brought us August Strindberg, Ingmar Bergman and Henning Mankell? I mean, did they have Prozac in those days?
One’s amazement is compounded by learning that this chronicler of bustling contentment was born into hellish poverty in Stockholm. His father was a drunken, abusive wastrel who literally threw Carl and his hard-working laundress mother out of their squalid room onto the street. He earned his son’s life-long hatred by shouting, “I curse the day you were born”.
Gee, thanks, Dad.
Larson described his childhood milieu thus: “It was Hell on Earth! Hunger was the least of our problems… in time, you get accustomed to existing on little… we regularly had nothing… Consumption raged, bloody fights seethed around us, you lived in the midst of prostitution, pointed to murderers and thieves.”
A strict teacher at the School for the Poor Carl attended recognized his potential and got the 13-year old into the foundation class at the Art Academy in Stockholm. At 16, he entered a class for nude drawing, at which he excelled. After that, he began making money as a caricaturist and graphic artist for various publications. He spent time in Paris, but didn’t much like Impressionism, so settled for a while in Grez, some 40 miles from the capital. It was here he discovered the watercolour technique that would remain the hallmark of his style for the rest of his career.
He returned to Sweden and married the artist, Karin Bergöö, who was of huge importance to his creative life. Her father gave them the house north of Stockholm which Larsson would immortalize in his work. Once they had moved into Little Hytnäs, he began producing the airy, poetic but nevertheless utterly convincing depictions of family life that have assured his longevity: he thought his monumental public paintings and frescoes constituted his finest work – but his genius lay entirely elsewhere.
As he grew older, Larsson increasingly cut himself off from the artistic mainstream (his long-time friend, Strindberg, openly attacked his work in 1909), became deeply religious, and grew increasingly conservative in his views – but modern Greens would no doubt approve of the fact that the family lived a deliberately self-sufficient life, and that all the children were taught all the practical skills associated with farming and a rural existence (apart from filling in forms for CAP subsidies, of course).
In the hands of a lesser artist, Larsson’s subject matter might have proved sickly, cloying, chocolate-boxy, sentimental and kitsch. But, fortunately, he was a true genius, and there isn’t a false note – or brush-stroke – in any of these truly beautiful paintings, which stand as a testament to human goodness and the gentle, sustaining joys of family life at its best.
It’s hard for me to pick a favourite: I never fail to mist up whenever I look at The Yard and the Washhouse (Brita with the Sleigh) – after all, I was once that little kid pushing my sleigh across the snow; I can’t help smiling at The Breakfast of the Sleepy-head (don’t you just know exactly how she feels?); and I invariably yearn to sit down in the spare seat in Breakfast under the Great Birch and reach for the gjetost – the sweet brown cheese of my childhood breakfasts.
The Larsson house is now owned by their descendants and is open to the public – one day, I’ll visit it, and hope to find that it retains some of the life, bustle, and love that this wonderful man has bequeathed to us in his glorious paintings.
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