No 400, Isaac Grünewald ”Parkkonsert” (detail).

Berns salonger in Berzelii park

Modern Art + Design. Viewing: 17–21 May. Open: Mon–Fri 11–18, Sat–Sun kl 11–17. Sale: 22 May start 12.00 CEST.
Address: Bukowskis, Berzelii Park 1 in Stockholm. Read more about the auction here >

Parks are a recurring subject in Grünewald’s work in the early 1910s. On completing his studies with Matisse in Paris in 1911, he returned home, strongly influenced by the powerful Fauvist palette and worked in a new, uninhibited style. The painting in the auction was completed in 1914 and in the same spirit but a slightly subtler colour scheme than, for example, “From Berzelii Park” from 1913 or the iconic painting “The singing tree” from 1915 which also draws on Berzelii Park for its subject.

The art metropolis of Paris had offered a wealth of culture and on his return to Stockholm in 1914, 25-year-old Grünewald was highly likely to have been a frequent patron of Berns salonger in Berzelii Park, a fairly recent newcomer on the Stockholm entertainment scene.

On the left of the painting we see the terrace at Berns with the conductor in front of the orchestra waving his baton. In the park in the foreground the audience sit, with the enthroned sculpture of Jöns Jacob Berzelius by Carl Gustaf Qvarnström on the right-hand side. The painting is produced with sometimes powerful fields of colour and sometimes with a thin layer of paint in which parts of the canvas are left unpainted.

The painting was previously in the collection of Hans Brecke Blehr (1875–1945) but has been in the same collection from 1929 to the present day

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