Eugène Jansson
Eugène Fredrik Jansson (born March 18, 1862 in Stockholm ; died June 15, 1915 in Nacka , Stockholm County ) was a Swedish painter. His work in the style of late impressionism and symbolism initially included Stockholm cityscapes in night blue light, before he devoted himself to male nudes in his later creative phase.
life and work
Eugène Jansson was born in Stockholm in 1862 to the postman Fredrik Ferdinand Jansson (1834–1891) and his wife Eugenia Augusta Amalia, née Hedman (1842–1924). His brother Adrian Jansson, born in 1871, later also became an artist. The family lived in a post office apartment at Lilla Nygatan in the Gamla Stan district . The parents attached great importance to the upbringing of the children, especially the mother, who was interested in music and art, encouraged the two sons. Eugène Jansson first attended the German School Stockholm and received piano lessons from the age of seven. At the age of 14, he developed scarlet fever , which permanently impaired his hearing and kidney function. As a result, Jansson had to finish piano lessons and since then he has regularly attended sports clubs to strengthen his health.
After finishing school, Jansson temporarily worked in a haberdashery shop before studying art at Slöjdskolan (later Tekniska skolan , now Konstfack ) from 1878 to 1881 . At the same time he became a student in the class of the painter Edvard Perséus . With the visit of the Kungliga Konsthögskolan Stockholm 1881-1882 he finished his studies. Unlike some of his fellow students, Jansson could not afford a subsequent stay abroad - for example in France - for financial reasons. Instead, he initially worked as Perséus' assistant and took on supporting work in the creation of his paintings. Jansson's first own works show portraits and landscapes, including some cityscapes. He achieved his first financial success with still lifes, which he also sent to the exhibition of the artists' association Opponenterna in 1885.
Although Jansson lived a rather secluded life - possibly due to his hearing impairment - he was in lively exchange with other artists. These included the Swedish Prince Eugen , Bruno Liljefors , Carl Larsson and Richard Bergh . In 1886 he joined the Konstnärsförbundet group , which opposed the rigid rules of the Royal Academy of Art . The painter Karl Nordström had a great influence on Jansson . Nordström returned to Stockholm from Paris in 1888 and brought new painterly impulses with him. Jansson did not know works of contemporary French painting from his own experience and was inspired to create his own works by the ideas he brought with him for atmospheric landscape painting. From 1889 he devoted himself intensively to the subject of the cityscapes of Stockholm, which was to determine his work for more than a decade.
After his father's death in 1891, Jansson moved with his mother and brother Adrian to the Mariaberget district on Södermalm , initially in an apartment at Timmermansgatan 2. Two years later, for financial reasons, they moved to Hornsgatan 7, and shortly afterwards the family settled finally settled in Bastugatan 40. Jansson lived here with his mother and brother until the end of his life. When looking out of the windows of the apartments in Mariaberget, Jansson found his motifs with views of Söder Mälarstrand and over Riddarfjärden . At first he experimented with pastel chalk, but finally returned to oil painting in 1893. 1895-1896 he took lessons in etching with Axel Tallberg .
In addition to the motifs that he painted from the elevated view of his apartment, Jansson created views from the street perspective and workers' settlements on the edge of the beach. These cityscapes are usually deserted and painted with strong brushstrokes in the dark blue light at night. The paintings, created in the style of late Impressionism and Symbolism , show a spiritual and dreamlike urban landscape, which was less about the exact reproduction of topographical conditions, but rather the description of moods through simplifications and the intensive use of color. The success with these pictures was initially lacking, as the unusual painting style and the mostly large format of these paintings did not meet the taste of the public and the critics.
Jansson saw works by the Norwegian painter Edvard Munch for the first time in an exhibition in Stockholm in 1894 . His pictures influenced both Jansson's landscape painting and his later work. In addition, the painter Richard Bergh had an influence on Jansson's work. His artistic breakthrough came with the view of Riddarfjärden i Stockholm from 1898. The following year the painting came into the possession of the Swedish National Museum as a gift from art lovers . At this time he met the wealthy banker and art collector Ernest Thiel , who became his most important patron. He mainly collected works by Scandinavian artists, including works by Munch, Anders Zorn , Vilhelm Hammershøi and August Strindberg . Thiel acquired a number of Jansson's paintings and commissioned a portrait from him in 1902. It is one of the few portraits from Jansson's hand , alongside the depiction of his friend Tor Hedberg , created in 1910, and a few self-portraits. The better financial situation enabled Jansson to study in France in 1900 and in 1901 to travel to Germany, Austria and Italy. However, these trips abroad had no noticeable impact on his work.
In 1904 Jansson created his last Stockholm cityscape. The motive was exhausted for him and he was looking for new topics. He now turned to depicting male nudes. Here he stood in the tradition of ancient nudes and was part of a new enthusiasm for the athletic, which reached a climax in his hometown with the Olympic Games in 1912 . He was fascinated by the beauty of male bodies, the performance of athletes, and "paid homage to their powerful, ecstatic movements," as author Charles Sprawson noted.
An avid gymnast himself, Jansson had been in contact with other athletes for years, for example in gymnastics clubs and bathing establishments. He was one of the followers of the nudist culture practiced there , which as part of the life reform movement corresponded to the zeitgeist. To prepare his paintings, he photographed the athletes on site, some of them were models for him in the studio. In the paintings he repeatedly shows naked sailors in the swimming pool of the Swedish Navy in Skeppsholmen , describes their artificial jump into the pool and portrays them standing at the edge of the pool. In other pictures he portrayed gymnasts on the rings or weightlifters. However, the relationship with these athletes was not limited to joint sporting activities and his artistic interest, but also had a homoerotic component, with Jansson not publicly acknowledging his homosexuality. Typical of this is his painting Self-Portrait with the Swimmers, in which he portrayed himself in a summer suit in front of naked swimmers and thus underlined his distance to the naked swimmers. However, this detachment did not correspond to the real circumstances. The long-term relationship with his friend Knut Nyman also remains a secret. Jansson had met the carpenter, who was ten years his junior, in the marine swimming pool and portrayed him in several pictures, including the large-format Naken yngling ( naked young man ).
When Jansson exhibited his new paintings in public in 1907, such as Flottans badhus ( swimming pool of the navy ), they caused a sensation, but in some cases met with rejection. Jansson also presented his pictures to a wider audience during the 1912 Olympic Games in Stockholm. The reactions were mixed again, despite the obviously extraordinary art.
In 1913 Jansson's health deteriorated. He died of a stroke in 1915 in the Skuru sjukhem nursing home. His grave is in the cemetery in the Stockholm suburb of Narra.
Adrian Jansson, who was homosexual himself, destroyed his brother Eugène's correspondence and other written records after the death of his brother. Homosexuality was illegal in Sweden until 1944 and he may have feared that house searches could find harmful material that, according to the opinion of the time, could have damaged the artist's reputation. The background to this action could have been the sensational trial of the sculptor Nils Santesson , who was a friend of Eugène Jansson and who was sentenced to prison in 1907.
Works by Eugène Jansson can be found in a number of public collections. These include the Thielska galleriet , Villa Waldemarsudde and the National Museum in Stockholm, the Gothenburg Art Museum , the Cleveland Museum of Art , the Detroit Institute of Arts , the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne and the Musée d'Orsay in Paris .
literature
- Lollo Fogelström, Erika Holm, Folke Lalander: Eugène Jansson: 1862–1915 . Exhibition catalog Liljevalchs konsthall, Stockholm 1998, ISBN 91-86828-76-2 .
- Göran Söderlund: Eugène Jansson: blå skymning och nakna atleter . Exhibition catalog Prins Eugens Waldemarsudde, Carlsson Bokförlag, Stockholm 2012, ISBN 978-91-7331-497-8 .
- Charles Sprawson: I'll take you on my back, wed you to the ocean: the cultural history of swimming . Mareverlag, Hamburg 2002, ISBN 3-936384-73-8 .
- Nils G. Wollin: Eugène Janssons måleri . Norstedt, Stockholm 1920.
- Inga Zachau, Hans Henrik Brummer, Ulf Linde: Eugène Jansson (1862–1915), nocturnes suédois . Exhibition catalog Musée d'Orsay, Réunion des musées nationaux, Paris 1999, ISBN 2-7118-3919-2 .
Web links
- Literature by and about Eugène Jansson in the catalog of the German National Library
- Short biography on the website of the Museum Waldemarsudde (Swedish / English)
- Works by Eugène Jansson in the Europeana
Individual evidence
- ↑ There are partly different information about the place of death. Occasionally, Stockholm is mentioned as the place of death, whereby either the province of Stockholm County can be meant, or different suburban municipalities are assigned to Stockholm. The indication Skara in particular leads to confusion . In the Swedish Imperial Archives for the place of death of Janssons there is the indication “Skara stad (Maria Magdalena församling, Stockholms län)” see [1] . This place name Skara should not be confused with the town of Skara in Västra Götalands län , to which Jansson had no biographical reference. According to the Reichsarchiv, the place of death Skara refers to an older name for the area of the parish Maria Magdalena församling , a district also known as Maria in the Stockholm district of Södermalm . The actual place of death, however, is the district of Skuru in the Stockholm suburb of Nacka. Jansson died in the care facility Skuru sjukhem (Skuru nursing home), which was housed in a building complex that was still called Skuru gård (Skuru Hof) in 1915 and is now called Solsunda . A care facility has been located there to this day. The first biography of Eugène Jansson mentions the “Skuru sjukhem” as the place of death, see Nils G. Wollin: Eugène Janssons måleri , p. 146.
- ↑ Charles Sprawson: I Take You on My Back, I Marry You to the Ocean: The Cultural History of Swimming , p. 207.
- ^ "On June 15, 1915, Eugène Jansson i Skuru sjukhem, dit han förts från Stockholm, där han kort förut träffats av slaganfall." Nils Gustaf Wollin: Eugène Janssons måleri , p. 146.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Jansson, Eugène |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Jansson, Eugène Fredrik (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Swedish painter |
| DATE OF BIRTH | March 18, 1862 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Stockholm |
| DATE OF DEATH | June 15, 1915 |
| Place of death | Nacka (municipality) |