|
The Leicester Galleries Ltd
|
|
|
|
|
NILS KREUGER (1859-1930)
Northern Light, Sweden (founded c.1893)
En droskstation vid Kungliga Operan, Stockholm (Horsedrawn carriages, outside the Opera House, Stockholm)
( Sweden
1903
)
|
Medium
Oil on canvas
|
Signed/Inscribed/Dated
Signed: N.Kreuger and dated 1903 lower left
|
Dimensions
100.00cm wide
78.00cm high
(39.37 inches wide 30.71 inches high)
|
Literature:
Kjell Boström, Nils Kreuger, Stockholm, 1948, catalogue number 363
Hans Henrik Brummer, Nils Kreuger, exhibition catalogue, Stockholm, 2004, catalogue number 59, illustrated page 62
|
Exhibition History:
Uppsala, Society of Painters, 1906, number 66
Stockholm, Liljevalsch’s Konsthall, Christian Eriksson and Nils Kreuger, March 1938, number 214
Stockholm, Prins Eugens Waldemarsudde, Nils Kreuger, 17 September 2004 - 9 January 2005, catalogue number 59
|
Description / Expertise
During the 1880's, a shift from realism to national romanticism and symbolism was taking place in Scandinavian art. A new imagery and pictorial language was emerging with a focus on the distinctive nordic light and based on emotional experience. During the 1890's, a number of artists established themselves in communities in several places in Sweden. In Varberg on the West Coast, Richard Bergh, Karl Nordstöm and Nils Kreuger started a "colony" in 1893, where symbolism and strong synthetism came to develop further.
In the middle of the 1890's Kreuger returned to Stockholm where he painted a number of lyrical motifs expressing what was at that time known the fin de siècle mélancolie. Influenced by the Belgian Brugge romanticism, he sought to entice the emotion of medieval convents through screening off irrelevant modern architecture and capture a twilight impressionism, which was threatening to disapper for ever. The city and it’s inhabitatnts in dusky and mystical streets was pictured during the end of the 1890's.
After 1900 the same motifs remain in Kreuger’s painting, but with a new light and a new technique. He changes his Stockholm motif, the surface of the canvas is broken up and he marks the outlines more sharply. His application of paint is thinner and more transparent, he uses his charcoal more frequently in order to deepen and accentuate the lines and the blue, his favourite colour, increases in depth and develops into an extreme dark navy. The paintings by Nils Kreuger at the turn of the century is a study in cultural history.
|
|
|
Email a friend
Add to favourites
Search again
del.icio.us
