Einar Jolin

The painting in the auction was previously owned by Märta and Gunnar Hedin, both entrepreneurs in Borås.
When Märta was 17-18 years old (1948), she studied in Stockholm and was a lodger at the home of opera singer Tatjana Angelini's father, Michail Scheremetiew, who was a singing teacher. He had moved to Sweden from Russia in his youth during the Russian Revolution and married a Swedish woman. Here, Märta met the artist Einar Jolin, who married Tatjana Angelini in 1952.
For many years, Märta maintained a close relationship with both Einar Jolin and Tatjana Angelini and purchased both lithographs and oil paintings from Einar Jolin, including the painting "View of the Royal Palace of Stockholm" in the auction.
In connection with his retrospective exhibition at Liljevalchs in 1957, Einar Jolin himself described his view on his artistry and the distinctive expressionism that he developed and held onto with the words:
"What I want to express in my art is what I have experienced in existence when I have concentrated and deepened myself. There is an everyday view - people have given names to everything that surrounds them in life, and then they find everything obvious and do not see the wonder. Art, as I understand it, is to give form to the wonderful in existence, to create beauty and harmony, to be able to lift the sensitive viewer from the trivial everyday life into the beautiful and incomprehensible world we live in. If I have succeeded in this, I may not have lived in vain."
Jolin became the painter of Stockholm above all, and its exteriors remained his own Arcadia throughout his life. Whether the city is bathed in spring sun or winter mist, its beauty is untouched. A motif that he constantly returned to was the view from the studio at Katarinaberget, always a city in Sunday stillness. In the current depiction of Stockholm, we follow the artist's gaze toward Gamla Stan and Stockholm Castle. Against large flat areas in cool blue and pink shades, he places dark, simplified details in the form of passing cars to create contrast and a sense of quiet movement. In Einar Jolin's oeuvre, there is a conscious and sometimes distancing perspective from the artist's side. The motifs can often be described as direct tableaus that are depicted, and this simplification and beauty are themes that we see in Jolin's artistry since his studies in Paris with Matisse.