Carl Larsson

"For this ramshackle building, so terrible during the cold season, is an idyll during warmer times. Picture the garden with its apricot trees, vines, lilacs, all sorts of flowers and edible leaves, as well as a little elegant drinking corner where Scandinavian Gentlemen enjoy the most wonderful views across Paris whilst, unbothered, daring to spit on passers-by."

This is how Carl Larsson described his studio garden in Montmartre, Paris, in a letter to August Strindberg dated 17th February 1881. The artist had been residing in the French capital for a few months and now winter was beginning to pass into spring. With "I lövsprickningen" he captured this longed-for moment of spring’s return to his studio garden. In the foreground we notice a chair, seemingly just abandoned. On the chair a book is left opened and next to it is a basket in which we glimpse a sunhat and freshly picked flowers. The impression is that of the imminent return of the person that has sat there, to pick up the open parasol resting against the chair.

When looking at "I lövsprickningen" it is clear to see that Larsson mastered the new French realism very early on in his career. From the 1870s young artists had increasingly begun to locate their studies abroad to France, in contrast to their older colleagues whose training had mostly taken place in Germany. At the heart of the new style was painting in ‘plein air’, with the artists abandoning their workshops and beginning to paint outdoors. New products such as ready-mixed paint in tubes made it possible for the artists to leave their studios and move freely around the city and in nature with their tools. In "I lövsprickningen" Larsson employed a desaturated and cool colour palette in shades of brown, blue and green. This tonality distinguished a great part of the new French style that he was exploring. It can be found in the work of artists such as Jules Bastien-Lepage and Jean Charles Cazin, for example. At the same time Larsson contrasted this desaturated colour tone with details in stronger colours, such as the green shade of the trees and the small red flowers on the ground:

Larsson had arrived in France on the 25th of November 1880, and six days later he wrote the following words to his parents:

"Dear parents! I have arrived! My soul is rejoicing, we shall see for how long – at least until the money finishes. It is ghastly difficult to come by studios here, but I have succeeded in finding one for 800 francs a year. It is really just a glazed veranda with three rooms and a garden. I suspect it shall be terribly cold but I shall get myself a good stove."

Carl Larsson's harsh and cold winter in the Parisian studio adds to the atmosphere surrounding "I lövsprickningen" as it becomes charged with personal meaning for the artist. Winter was finally behind him, and now he would enjoy the spring sun in the garden.