After hearing Helmer Osslund describe Lapland in 1907, Leander Engström visited Abisko and the lake Torneträsk and continued to return there each summer. His passion for the area came from an intense longing for the exhilarating beauty of the landscape away from the heat of Paris.
“No, this won’t do. I must have fresh air in my lungs and feel the mountain twigs under my feet, or else there is a risk that I will wilt away,” said Leander in the spring of 1910.
A rhythmic and highly-decorative style
The following summer changed Engström's style of painting; he met his partner, Maria, and in the autumn he painted his famous “Höstvegetationsbild från Torneträsk” (Picture of Autumn Vegetation from Torneträsk” (exhibited at Prins Eugens Waldemarsudde). Just before late summer turned into autumn, while the trees were still green, he captured the atmosphere of the Lapland landscape at dusk, when the evening sun coloured the sky yellow and pink and the land was resplendent in all the colours of the rainbow.
In “Late Summer Evening at Torneträsk”, he found his own rhythmic and highly-decorative personal style.
Art historian Åke Fant continues:
"Despite the harsh criticism and without having sold a single painting, Leander Engström and his colleagues continued on their path. As summer approached, life in and around Paris started to get on Engström’s nerves and he suddenly headed to Abisko in Norrland, the North of Sweden. There he met Maria Edlund, a woman few years older than him. They fell in love and his range of subjects expanded to also include nudes of his beloved.”
The work will be sold at the Modern Art + Design auction on May 17th – 18th.
Viewing May 12th – 16th, Berzelii Park 1, Stockholm.
Auction Live May 17th – 18th, Arsenalsgatan 2, Stockholm.
