Bruno Liljefors, Fox in Winter Landscape.
Oil on canvas, 34 × 50 cm, signed ”Bruno Liljefors.”.

Shimmering Winter
Liljefors & Zorn wit others
13 December – 17 January

Opening hours Mon – Fri 10–18 Sat 12–16

Far away in the world a road is drawn,
through a wintry wilderness.
Between billowing charcoal stacks and fallen timber it winds,
amid mighty trunks with frozen bark.
There rustles the capercaillie’s heavy flight,
there a muffled whisper stirs in weighty branches.
In the glistening crust of snow around knotted junipers
the forest’s creatures have pressed their tracks.
– Erik Axel Karlfeldt

The poet Erik Axel Karlfeldt, a close friend of Emma and Anders Zorn, celebrates the Swedish forest landscape in its evocative winter attire in his poem “Långt bort i världen” (“Far Away in the World”), from the collection Vildmarks- och kärleksvisor (Songs of Wilderness and Love) published in 1895. Like the Zorns, he held the solemnity of winter dear, and it had become a tradition for the poet to spend the Epiphany holiday at Zorngården in Mora. These winter gatherings became cherished memories, and Karlfeldt sent his collections of poetry as tokens of gratitude to Emma Zorn. Winter, as memory, image, longing, and tale, resonates throughout Åmells’ exhibition Shimmering Winter – Liljefors & Zorn with others.

The exhibition presents some thirty artworks that in various ways embrace our Nordic winter: animals and birds in their natural habitats, scenes from snow-covered landscapes, and ice-clad waters. Like Karlfeldt’s poem, Bruno Liljefors’ paintings pay tribute to the Swedish forest and winter, populated by its native wildlife, yet also making room for the hunter. From forest we move to archipelago in the work of Roland Svensson, whose paintings depict our island world with frozen jetties, icy straits, and summer houses chilled by winter winds.

Zorn’s rosy-cheeked Dala girl in her warm kasung, snow glittering in daylight, slushy streets in old Stockholm, and cottages glowing red beneath snow-laden roofs. Winter activities in full swing: fishing on a frozen lake and children sledding in the city. In these motifs we encounter everything from early winter landscapes to scenes where the spring winds begin to stir and the snow lingers only in patches across hills and rocks.

No Christmas without John Bauer, we say at Åmells, echoing the years when the artist illustrated the fairytale anthology Bland Tomtar och Troll each Christmas between 1907 and 1915. Bauer’s images helped shape the Swedish idea of Christmas, and the covers of the 1910s holiday journals Jul and Julbocken were often adorned with his imaginative motifs.

We bid you welcome into the warmth at Åmells to experience winter light in all its subtle shifts from dawn to dusk, captured on canvas and paper. We wish you all a joyful Christmas!

Click to read the catalogue

READ THE CATALOGUE HERE (IN SWEDISH)

Selected Works

Anders Zorn,Gods-Kari,
Olja on relined canvas, 92 × 60 cm, signed and dated Zorn ”1916”.

Anders Zorn

Gods-Kari

Anders Zorn’s depictions of the people of Dalarna in traditional dress can in no way be equated with conventional folk painting. He did not portray his native region out of a desire for narrative detail or the picturesque. Gods-Kari was in fact named Ester Jansson, born in 1897. The present portrait of her is an excellent example of how the mature Zorn had brought his personal mode of expression to full perfection. It is a close study of the young kulla, who here meets the viewer’s gaze with an open smile and a frank, confident expression. Zorn has depicted her seated upright in an indeterminate setting against a completely neutral background, thereby directing all attention to her figure and her fresh, rosy face. Her clothing suggests that the portrait was executed in winter, as she wears a thick, fur-lined kasung (winter jacket) over her dress. Her hair is modestly covered by a white kerchief, yet beneath it one glimpses the red ribbon that indicates she is still unmarried.

Bruno Liljefors,Goshawk with prey,
Oil on canvas, 80 × 100 cm, signed and dated ”Bruno Liljefors. 1893”.

Bruno Liljefors

Goshawk with prey

The confrontation between predator and prey was one of Bruno Liljefors’ favored themes, and this painting depicts the moment immediately after a goshawk has struck down a jay. Majestically, the goshawk rises over its prey, which it grips firmly in its talons. It is a frozen moment following a dramatic event, staged by Liljefors with characteristic precision. The goshawk has landed on a snow-covered rock and has not yet set its course toward its nest. The entire scene unfolds on nature’s own stage, with snow-laden trees silhouetted against a sky shimmering in shades of pink. The silence after the struggle has settled, and the mood conveyed is one of tranquility.

The bird of prey in swift and decisive attack belongs to the motifs that captivated Liljefors early in his career. The dramatic occurrences of the natural world seem to have seized him as forcefully as he rendered them. Liljefors held a deep reverence for the fiery power of the predator, yet also an understanding of the vulnerability that shaped the existence of prey animals in the perilous world of the fauna.

Carl Printzensköld, Ice Fishing on the Lake
Oil on canvas, 133 × 99 cm. Signed and dated ”C. Printzensköld. 1891.”.

Carl Printzensköld,

Ice Fishing on the Lake

The present painting, Ice Fishing on the Lake, depicts a scene from a Swedish winter landscape in which a boy stands watching an older man pull a fishing net from a hole drilled in the ice. Beside them lie two sizable whitefish as the day’s catch, and judging from the surrounding nature and buildings, the fishing takes place on a lake—most likely in the Stockholm area, given where Printzensköld resided during the 1890s. On the shore stretches a farmstead with its characteristic red buildings, and at the water’s edge stands a turquoise-blue boathouse.

The two winter fishermen in the foreground have brought a sled onto the ice to transport their net. A short distance behind them, along the trampled path across the frozen lake, stands another figure who is hook-fishing with a rope in hand.

The painting is primarily a genre scene, in which the everyday life of rural people is granted presence on the canvas. The boy keeps his hands in his pockets to keep warm as he watches his elder companion skillfully draw the net from the icy water. Printzensköld’s realism is striking, and the motif may also be read as a subtle representation of knowledge being passed from an older to a younger generation.

Nils Kreuger,Winter Berths.
Oil on canvas, 68 × 49 cm, signed and dated N. Kreuger 1926.

Nils Kreuger

Winter Berths

In the painting Vinterliggare (“Winter Berths”), Nils Kreuger depicts a small fragment of the view from the steep rocky outcrops surrounding his home and studio in northwestern Södermalm. The work is executed in an almost impressionistic manner and is characteristic of Kreuger’s approach during this period, when both his brushwork and handling of light were influenced by Neo-Impressionism. The composition is divided into three pictorial planes—or, if one prefers, into a cool and a warm half.

In the foreground we see Söder Mälarstrand, rendered from a slightly elevated perspective. The quay is cluttered with piles of bricks and firewood and lined with a row of sailboats beautifully dusted with snow. In the middle ground, Riddarfjärden appears covered with rough, cold blue-white ice, and in the distance the façades on Kungsholmen shimmer in warm yellow-pink tones.

During the winter of 1926–27, Nils Kreuger produced several additional hazy, shimmering oil paintings on similar themes, offering views from Söder Mälarstrand across Riddarfjärden and the snow-covered, smoke-filled cityscape surrounding it. Kreuger harbored an ambivalent attitude toward the modernization of the city. He preferred to linger in the quarters that had changed the least during Stockholm’s rapid industrial development in the early twentieth century. In Vinterliggare, he succeeds in capturing the transitional moment between the old city and the new one emerging—a rendering of remarkable subtlety. One can almost sense the artist’s nostalgia as he contemplates the changing times.

See the artworks in our online gallery

Shimmering Winter Liljefors & Zorn wit others 13 December – 17 January