John Bauer
"BO ANNO 1903" (Portrait of Bo Hertzman-Ericson on the lap of his mother Gurli)
Signed John Bauer. Watercolour, heightening white and pencil on paper 79.5 x 42 cm. Including original picture frame 104.5 x 55 cm.
Provenance
Mrs Gurli Hertzman-Ericson (mother of the boy in the portrait on whose lap he is depicted); subsequently by descent.
Literature
Harald Schiller, "John Bauer. Sagotecknaren", SAK, 1935, mentioned p. 49 and illustrated, full page, p. 48.
More information
The portrait was executed when John Bauer was staying with the family whilst studying at the Royal Academy of Art in Stockholm.
The depicted Bo (future grandfather of actress Pernilla August) grew up to become an engineer but also wrote (together with his mother Gurli) the childrens book "Tvillingarna Li och Lo: skildrade i bild och rim" (about his twins...), published in 1939.
Bo's mother, the original owner of the painting, was a writer and translator who dedicated much of her time to the promotion of peace and women's suffrage.
She wrote around thirty books -short stories, novels and fairytales for children- and translated from English as well as Danish, Dutch, Norwegian and German.
Artist
John Bauer was born in 1882 and was a Swedish artist, primarily renowned for his paintings and illustrations in the early editions of the fairy tale collection "Bland tomtar och troll”. Thanks to his magical illustrations of princesses, trolls, and giants, Bauer has significantly influenced our perception of creatures and mythical figures in traditional Swedish stories and Nordic folklore.
Bauer grew up in Jönköping, and a large part of his artistry was inspired by the mystical forests of Småland, where trolls and other beings seemed to emerge from the rocky outcrops. During his years of study, he was fascinated by early German and Italian painting but soon returned to the Swedish fairytale forest. At the Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts, he met his future wife, Esther Ellqvist, who often posed as a model and served as inspiration for the princess Tuvstarr in Bauer's works.
Most of Bauer's paintings are created using watercolors, although he has also produced some using oil. By the 1910s, thanks to his fairy tale paintings, Bauer was already an established and beloved artist when he chose to conclude his role as a fairy tale illustrator. In his final years, he explored other imaginative expressions that would shape Bauer's last works, such as "The Dancing Nymphs" and "Blue Eva". John Bauer's final significant painting was created for the auditorium at Karlskrona Girls' School in 1917, an oil painting depicting the goddess Freja, with his wife Esther as a model.
The entire Bauer-Ellqvist family died in a boat accident when the steamer Per Brahe sank during an autumn storm on Vättern on November 20, 1918.