Carl and Karin Larsson: Creators of the Swedish Style

Abstract

Published to coincide with a major exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum, this is a comprehensive survey of the work of the Swedish artist Carl Larsson and his wife Karin, whose creative interiors, recorded by her husband in a series of watercolours, were the forerunners of the modern Scandinavian style. Carl Larsson (1853-1919) is now Sweden's best loved artist. While painting in France in the 1880s, he met his future wife, Karin, also an artist. In 1889, they acquired their famous house at Sundborn in Northern Sweden. Carl and Karin immediately set about enlarging the house and creating a series of revolutionary interiors which combined a mix of old furniture and objects with modern concepts of colour and design. Soon after 1890, Carl began recording everyday life at Sundborn in a series of intimate watercolours, painted in a new fresh style. They were published in 1899 under the title Ett Hem (A Home), accompanied by a design-reforming text. Over 200,000 copies were sold in Germany alone. These images of a busy family life were immediately recognized as having captured a Swedish ideal. The Larsson's ideas on domestic decoration, with their revolutionary approach to light and colour, became a vital element in the creation of 20th-century Scandinanvian style. But the Larsson's inspration was not only Swedish. In fact, the Sundborn style was a synthesis of Swedish folk elements and ideas taken from the English Arts and Crafts Movement, as well as Art Nouveau and Japonisme.

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