Bruno Liljefors

"Steglitsor" from 1889 is an excellent example of how, in the last decades of the 19th century, Bruno Liljefors became influenced by Japanese painting. In 1854 Japan had opened its borders to the world, which resulted in the spread of Japanese objects, such as wood cuttings and ceramics, to the West. The passionate interest in Japan and Japanese art that then emerged became known as ‘Japonisme’. During the 1880s Japanese influences began to find their way into Swedish art. Many Swedish artists had first encountered Japanese art and objets d’art in Paris and had been highly struck by them. The Scandinavian artists in the artist colony in Grez-sur-Loing began exploring new ways of composing images. In 1919 Carl Larsson wrote how "as an artist Japan is my country of birth". They would paint narrow images in portrait size, go close up to their subject and use surprising crops.

It was in this spirit of Japonisme that Liljefors painted "Steglitsor". The way Liljefors cropped the image into a long and narrow surface, and placed the subject in the foreground with the landscape or sky as a clearly separated background, was a common stylistic technique that emerged from this trend. The manner in which the artist painted the sky in a decorative, almost surface-like way could also be associated with the same movement.