Prins Eugen
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"Moln i aftonljus" / "Nattmoln ll"
Signed Eugen and signed and dated 1907-1909 verso. Oil on canvas 70 x 70 cm.
Provenance
Previously in the collections at Torup Castle, Bara Parish, Skåne
Exhibitions
Liljevalchs konsthall, Stockholm, "Prins Eugen. Målningar, akvareller, teckningar", 10 January - 8 February 1925, cat. no. 71
Literature
Inga Zachau, "Det öppna landskapets skildrare", 1991, illustrated full-page p. 241.
Prins Eugens Waldemarsudde, "Konstnärskolonin på Tyresö", 2013, illustrated full-page p. 53, compare with the painting "Nattmolnet" illustrated on p. 35.
More information
Prince Eugen's depictions of clouds have inspired both his contemporaries and later artists and writers. In conjunction with the prince's 75th birthday celebration in 1940, the author Pär Lagerqvist wrote the following tribute poem:
The clouds have no fates
Everything is freedom for them
Touched by death as they hover
They find their home in Nothingness.
A heavenly history they write
with a script that fades
Out of every breeze that drives.
Everything is merely something at play.
The Thielska Galleriet collections in Stockholm, there is a painting "Nattmolnet" by Prince Eugen. The quietly evocative motif depicts Kalvfjärden outside Tyresö. The painting was executed in 1901, and Prince Eugen donated it to the art collector and banker Ernest Thiel the following year. The work exists in several versions and was preceded by a number of sketches and studies. Ulf Linde has described "Nattmolnet" as a central work from the National Romantic era with a characteristic poetic expressiveness of the time.
The auction's painting "Moln i aftonljus, Nattmoln II" is a captivating expression of the artist's inherent 'nature poetry'. At the same time, the many preliminary studies testify to the prince's interest in meteorology and his fascination with weather phenomena and cloud formations.