Five Sublime Scandinavian Artists You’ve Probably Never Heard Of
Light, colour and atmosphere through five masterful painters
Scandinavian countries like Sweden, Denmark and Norway have created some of the most appealing, thoughtful and sublime works of art in the Western canon. Many of these artists remain unknown. Here I’ve chosen five artists to share — artists who each offer a unique view of the world.
Amalia Lindegren
Amalia Lindegren was a painter of portraits and so-called “genre” scenes — which may suggest she was conventional in her style. Yet as this Study of a female model demonstrates, her abilities with paint, her handling of form and her capacity to render naturalistic colours were all exceptional.
Born in 1814, Lindegren was Swedish by birth. As the first Swedish woman to be awarded a scholarship to study art abroad, she travelled to Paris and there developed a technical brilliance that won her many admirers.
She also spent time in Germany and mixed with artists whose interests in painting folk customs and costumes influenced her choice of subject matter. She painted peasants from everyday life and often sad little girls with a marked sentimental edge.
Vilhelm Hammershøi
Vilhelm Hammershøi was a Danish painter born in Copenhagen in 1864. His paintings of interiors are some of the most thoughtful and brooding of all of Scandinavian.
Hammershøi’s works look upon the world as if through the filter of a melancholy consciousness, where the most meaningful encounters occur in the most closed-off quarters.
In this painting, a young man stands in the corner of a room, reading from a notebook. Rays of sun penetrate the rooms through the window frame, gently lighting the interior. Outside is light; inside is real-life amid the simple, spartan atmosphere of domestic architecture.
With a muted colour palette, Hammershøi’s use of colour was remarkably astute. Exploring shades of mauve, pale yellow and grey, he created beautiful and sophisticated vibrations of colour harmony that reward the eye the more it lingers.
L. A. Ring
Laurits Andersen Ring, otherwise known as L. A. Ring, was a leading symbolist and social realist painter in Denmark. With an assured painterly technique and a perfect eye for composition, he painted landscape and domestic scenes that ripple with underlying symbolism.
In this painting, made in 1897, the scene is bathed in light. Depicted is the artist’s wife Sigrid Kähler, whom he married just a year before.
It’s possible to interpret this image as a simple declaration of love, with the promise of spring alongside a possible pregnancy.
Through a masterful choice of colours — compare the blue of the door frame with the peach and yellow of Sigrid’s dress — the artist has endowed the image with both romantic celebrations of motherhood and a pensive sense of introspection.
Christen Købke
Christen Købke was born in Copenhagen, Denmark in 1810. He is identified today as one of the most talented artists of the Danish Golden Age — a period of exceptional creative production in the country’s arts.
For this captivating painting, Købke climbed the rooftop of Frederiksborg Castle in Hillerød, Denmark, to paint the view of a lake, town and nearby forest.
And yet it was the sky that really hooked his imagination. Købke filled three-quarters of the painting with the subtle yet expansive elements of light and colour. As Købke proves, an artist can benefit from keeping his eyes tilted upwards, to look beyond the rooftop and over the trees.
Købke was a talented landscape and portrait painter. Yet despite his innovative compositions and harmonic use of light, he was not widely fêted in his lifetime and he died early, at the age of just 37.
Bruno Liljefors
Swedish painter Bruno Andreas Liljefors was born in 1860. He is best known for his wildlife paintings: expertly observed scenes often showing predator and prey action, such as the hunt of a hare by a fox or a goshawk attacking black grouse.
This painting, of two foxes resting in undergrowth with autumn leaves spread across the ground, shows a more benign side of nature — yet with none of the naturalism spared.
Influenced by the Impressionists, as evident in his dappled lighting and blend of colours, Liljefors was a very fine painter of texture and atmosphere. His works are devoid of sentimentality, capturing wildlife in its simplest and sometimes rawest beauty.
These five artists are really just the tip of the iceberg. Scandinavian countries have produced an entire canon of absorbing and alluring works of art. Many of the artists are little known beyond their native countries — but they await to be discovered.
