Few eighteenth-century Swedish artists devoted themselves as exclusively to portrait painting as Alexander Roslin. Within his genre, he became a master, celebrated in his own time both in Sweden and abroad. Having abandoned his initial plans to become a ship draughtsman, Roslin moved to Stockholm at the age of eighteen to apprentice under Georg Engelhard Schröder, court painter to King Frederick I. Schröder later recommended him for a position as court painter in Bayreuth to the Margrave of Brandenburg-Culmbach, marking the beginning of Roslin’s international career.

Between 1747 and 1751, Roslin undertook a study tour in Italy, visiting, among other places, Venice, Florence, Naples and Parma, where he was frequently commissioned to work at court. The encounter with the luminous colour palette and playful brushwork of Italian art, particularly that of Titian and Veronese, left a lasting impression on him. Armed with a letter of recommendation from the Duchess of Parma, Roslin settled in Paris in 1752. The following year he was elected to the prestigious French Academy, which enabled him to exhibit at the Paris Salon. In time, Roslin became the most sought-after and highly paid portrait painter in Paris, with an official residence in the Louvre Palace.

During the 1910s, Hilding Linnqvist emerged as one of the leading artists within the movement that came to be known as Swedish Naïvism. Together with several colleagues he had met during his years at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, such as Eric Hallström and Axel Nilsson, he broke away from the more traditional painting still taught there, seeking instead to depict the world in a freer manner. This work is one of several views of Södermalm and Slussen included in Linnqvist’s oeuvre. With rich colours and rapid brushstrokes, the artist captured the modern world of public transport and the increasing use of motorised vehicles. The modern character of the painting must also be understood in light of the fact that horse-drawn carriages were still a common means of transport in Sweden during the 1930s. Linnqvist completed this painting in 1933, the same year that the trams serving Slussen, Enskedebanan and Örbybanan began operating. The tunnel for the underground tramway ran from Slussen via Södra Bantorget (today Medborgarplatsen) and Ringvägen (today Skanstull), continuing above ground further south.

When Isaac Grünewald was at the height of his career, he acquired Villa Lugnet in Saltsjöbaden, or “Saltsjöklack” as he himself named it, now known as the Grünewald Villa. Here, Isaac Grünewald lived and worked between 1936 and 1946 together with his second wife, Märta Grundell-Grünewald. Several paintings from this period depict the view from the studio he had built there, as well as its surrounding motifs. The subject of this painting is likely drawn from the rocky terrain adjacent to the villa, where a wall had been constructed to bring order to the shrubs and thickets of the semi-wild garden.

By the Garden Wall stands a female figure dressed in a blue coat, seemingly leaning against the wall, whose pattern of mortar lines has been sketched in brown crayon. The trees take their shape through strongly defined black lines, as does what appears to be a rocky outcrop. On the wall rests a basket, and perhaps the figure is engaged in picking or clearing something in the garden. The path between the trees is illuminated by a light pink tone that reveals it to be daytime, and the figure casts short shadows indicating that the sun is high in the sky. The vegetation of the garden is rendered in green and blue hues with touches of orange, showing that Grünewald, regardless of technique or subject, remained throughout the years a true Expressionist.