Carl Larsson

"Hide-and-seek" is a veritable tour de force within Carl Larsson’s impressive oeuvre. The artist's granddaughter Ulwa Neergaard has written the following about the boldly cropped composition with the diagonally emphasized perspective:
”The little girl hiding under the table while playing hide-and-seek is Carl Larsson's daughter Lisbeth. The setting is the artist’s atelier at Lilla Hyttnäs in Sundborn. This adorable composition was painted in 1898 when the artist was recovering from a very heavy workload during the previous years. In 1897 Larsson had just completed the prestigious frescoes in the entrance of the Nationalmuseum, as well as carried out the extensive decorations in the ceiling and the lunettes in the Royal Opera in Stockholm. On top of these gargantuan commissions he had also finished twenty-four watercolours depicting the Larsson family at home in Sundborn. These watercolours were intendended for publication in the, nowadays iconic and legendary, book ”Ett hem” (A Home) which came out, to great acclaim, in 1899. The twenty-four illustrations were technically very demanding to carry out since they were made to be reproduced/printed. When painting ”Hide-and-seek” Carl Larsson was, for the first time in a long time, unburdened by any patron's wishes or indeed technical demands related to printing processes and could therefor let his imagination run wild. From a technical painterly point of view he was also liberatingly free in how he delievered the brushstrokes in a composition where he never had to worry too much about either motif or the perspective”.