Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - A short survey of the development of Swedish painting
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Holland and Italy previously to settling down in Sweden,
where great men showered their favours upon him, and he
became a favourite and a most indefatigable portrait painter
at the Caroline Court. Before long he had gathered a large
number of pupils around him. By the side of Ehrenstrahl, the
Dutchman Martin Meytens the Elder was Sweden’s foremost
representative of the Baroque style of portraiture.
The inheritor of Ehrenstrahl^ artistic genius was his pupil
David von Krafft, renowned chiefly for his portraits of Carl
XII. Krafft’s art was a distinct reaction against the grandiose
style of portraiture then prevalent. He introduced an austerity
and harshness which bespoke the trials of the long,
war-ridden years in Sweden during the early eighteenth century.
Another of Ehrenstrahl^ pupils, the highly talented
Swedish-born Mikael Dahl, emigrated to England, where he gained
high repute and esteem as a portrait painter. Similarly, the
foremost artists in Meytens’ circle, his own son, Martin von
Meytens the Younger, and his nephew, Georg Desmarées,
transferred their activities to foreign countries, the former
working in Vienna, the latter in Munich; and they never
returned to their native land.
Among David von Krafft’s pupils is to be noted Georg
Engelhard Schröder, who excelled in decorative ceiling
paintings representing a transition style from Baroque to the
Rococo.
The Rococo makes its mark in Swedish painting with the
generation of artists born about 1700, and is represented chiefly
by such masters as Lorens Pasch the Elder, Olof Arenius and
Gustaf Lundberg. It was due to Lundberg, the first Swedish
artist to study in Paris, that the connections so profitable for
Swedish art were brought about between Sweden and France.
After a stay of some thirty years in Paris, where he met
with an excellent patron in Carl Gustaf Tessin, the Swedish
ambassador and art collector, and became a fashionable portrait
painter greatly in demand in aristocratic circles, Lundberg
worked in his native land to a ripe old age. He was the chief
exponent of the light and airy Rococo pastel art, and he
became the foremost painter to the Court of Lovisa Ulrika. His
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