Hilding Linnqvist
Covered by droit de suite
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Staffan the Stable Boy
Signed HL. Canvas 88 x 115 cm.
Provenance
Bukowski Auctions, Modern Auction no. 487, cat. no. 140.
Swedish private collection.
Exhibitions
Liljevalchs, Stockholm, 1957.
Literature
Folke Holmér, "Hilding Linnqvist", SAK, pp. 154-156.
More information
In the late 1940s, Linnqvist worked on a commission for Hjälta kraftverk in Ångermanland. He spent a full two years on the preliminary studies, and he himself describes his thoughts for this part of the painting, which in its entirety depicts summer and winter side by side, as follows: ‘Staffan's song and Staffan himself, who, as if in a vision, is seen with his five colts, which he waters from the farm's watering hole. Together with the old stone church, they want to bring an atmosphere of Christian tradition back to the world of legend.’
Artist
Hilding Linnqvist is one of Sweden's most important naïve painters and became established and known early on for his colourful compositions. Linnqvist was a key figure in lyrical naivism in Sweden, with a style of painting that departed from the technical perfection he had been trained in. Several Swedish artists joined this innovative direction for the time. After studying at the Technical School and the Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts, he was inspired by Edward Munch and Ernst Josephson's malaise art, which led him towards a freer and more uninhibited style of painting. During the 1920s, Linnqvist travelled abroad several times and his colours became brighter and his subjects more detailed.
He later painted coastal scenes and portraits, among other things. By the early 1940s, Hilding Linnqvist was an established and well-travelled artist, as well as a professor at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in 1939-1941 and the subject of a major exhibition there in 1940.