Benjamin perronnet V5 - Flipbook - Page 80
Si l’on en croit les inscriptions au dos des deux
gouaches, celles-ci furent données comme
cadeau de Noël par Greta Strömbom
à l’éditeur Tor Bonnier dont elle avait divorcé
un an auparavant. Elle s’était entretemps
remariée avec l’historien d’art Sixten Strömbom
(1888-1983), conservateur au Nationalmuseum
dont il dirigea le département des peintures de
1944 à 1949.
Pure landscapes are rare in the varied oeuvre of Törneman,
one of the most important artists of his generation and
generally regarded as the father of Swedish modernism.
These two gouaches probably represent landscapes of
Värmland, a region on the border with Norway from
which Törneman originated. At the turn of the twentieth
century, Värmland was home to a colony of painters and
sculptors known as the Rackstad artists, a name derived
from Lake Racken. Gustav Fjaestad (1868-1948), Björn
Ahlgrensson (1872-1918), Fritz Lindström (1874-1962) and
Bror Lindh (1877-1941) are some of the most distinguished
representatives. Törneman never belonged to the group,
but certainly visited the colony.
On his return from Paris in 1905, Törneman settled in
Stockholm in a studio adjoining that of Isaac Grünewald
(1889-1946), another important 昀椀gure in the Swedish
modernist movement. Another of Törneman’s studios was
located in a building belonging to the sculptor Christian
Eriksson (1858-1935), himself a昀케liated with the Rackland
group.
The pointillist technique of the two gouaches can be
compared with that of one of Törneman’s most famous
paintings, Nattcafe I (Night Café I), executed in Paris in
1905. They were probably produced, along with another
depicting a Lake exhibited by us in 2019, of similar size and
style, shortly after his return to Sweden.
If the inscriptions on the back of the two gouaches are to
be believed, they were given as a Christmas present by
Greta Strömbom to the publisher Tor Bonnier, from whom
she had divorced a year earlier. In the meantime, she had
remarried art historian Sixten Strömbom (1888-1983),
curator at the Nationalmuseum, where he headed the
paintings department from 1944 to 1949.
1
. Cat. exp. Dessins suédois 1900, n°11.
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