Carl Larsson

Sweden·1853-1919

Carl Larsson painted the domestic life he had built with his wife Karin and their eight children at their house Lilla Hyttnäs in Dalarna, creating watercolours of such intimate warmth that they defined Swedish taste for generations. Born into poverty in Stockholm in 1853, he trained at the Royal Academy and worked as an illustrator before moving to Paris, where he found little success until settling among Swedish artists at Grez-sur-Loing. There he met Karin Bergöö, whom he married in 1883, and shifted to watercolour. Back in Sweden from 1885, he taught at the Valand School in Gothenburg and decorated public buildings with frescoes. His family scenes, published in colour books from the 1890s onward, became bestsellers across Europe. Though he considered his monumental Midvinterblot his greatest work, he acknowledged that his pictures of home and family were "the most genuine expression of my personality." He died in 1919 after suffering a stroke.