293. GUNNAR STRÖM. “Pater Noster”, mirror painting, from the interior of M/S Kungsholm, 1927-28, Swedish Grace.

Partially defoliated mirror glass with polychrome painting. Frame with Chinese decor against red background with stylized flowers, geometric patterns, and classicizing figures. The painting with motifs of Bohusend fishermen with fishing boats and the Pater Noster lighthouse in the fund. Dimensions 64 x 58,5 cm.

PROVENANCE
M/S Kungsholm, 1927/28 - 1942, the mirror painting was part of a suite of paintings depicting Swedish lighthouses, which adorned the walls of the second-class smoking lounge.

Gösta Sjögren (1905-2002), third mate at M/S Kungsholm, then inherited within the family.

HISTORIAN
There was anticipation in the air on 3 December 1928, when the newly built ship M/S Kungsholm entered New York Harbor. After eight days of travel from Gothenburg, the travelers had finally reached their destination. But for the inaugurated Americans who now saw the yellow chimneys adorned with three crowns, the anticipation was likely at least as great. The news had spread that behind the usual black hull of the line with a white top was hidden behind the usual black hull of the Swedish America Line, a floating palace filled with the finest furnishings that the small country on the other side of the sea could produce. A party castle would soon be moored at the wharf.

In the years leading up to the dismissal, the Swedish Arts and Crafts had reaped international success and gained a growing number of admirers beyond the borders of the kingdom, not least in the United States. Already the Great Jubilee Exhibition in Gothenburg in 1923 had attracted a significant number of American tourists, and the Swedish successes in Paris in 1925 further helped deepen Americans' interest in Swedish arts and crafts. This interest led in 1927 to the Exhibition of Swedish Contemporary Decorative Arts, arranged by H.K.H. The Crown Prince of Sweden at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Later that year, the exhibit wandered on to Chicago and Minneapolis.

One can rightly see M/S Kungsholm as a continuation of the same ambition, to expose Swedish arts and crafts on an international stage. Largely the same artists and designers who participated in the exhibitions in Gothenburg and Paris also participated in the work on the ship's interiors. The main responsibility for the artistic creations was entrusted to Carl G. Bergsten, who a few years earlier had been given the prestigious assignment to design the Swedish Pavilion in Paris. To his aid he had several of the country's foremost designers, including Rolf Engströmer, Oscar Nilsson, Jerk Werkmäster, Ossian Elgström, Arthur C:son Percy, Anna Petrus, Märta Måås-Fjetterström, Elsa Gullberg, Carl Malmsten, Ivar Johnsson, Edward Hald, Simon Gate and Erik Tidstrand. Among the manufacturers, Gustavsberg, Näfveqvarns Bruk, Rörstrand, Nordiska Kompaniet and A.B. Swedish Furniture Factories Bodafors.

This group of participants also included the Vetlanda-born artist Gunnar Erik Ström. Between 1912 and 1917, Strömm studied art for Olle Hjortsberg at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, where he was awarded the Royal Medal and also successfully attended Axel Tallberg's etching class. He subsequently undertook study trips to France, Italy, England and Spain. Once back in Sweden, he settled in Gothenburg, where he mainly devoted himself to decorative tasks and, among other things, participated in the decoration of several churches. Strøm also participated in the 1923 Gothenburg Exhibition, where he was commissioned to decorate the main restaurant.

Ström was hired to M/S Kungsholm to perform a suite of mirror paintings for the second-class smoking lounge. The almost obligatory smoking lounge at the time was elegantly executed, and equipped with a refreshment bar, a high vaulted glass ceiling that spread light over the patterned floor and islands of upholstered seating with strategically placed smoking tables, where passengers could settle down and enjoy their tobacco. The roof was clad in grey-stained oak, while the walls were veneered in Javanese teak with pairwise placed windows. It was between these windows that Ström's mirror paintings were set, framed in kinesizing frames in red, and each with motifs depicting Swedish lighthouses.

The heyday of M/S Kungsholm lasted just over a decade, but the outbreak of World War II in 1939 dealt a death blow to transatlantic passenger traffic. Even before the outbreak of war, Kungsholm conducted winter cruises in the Caribbean, and this activity was able to continue in the opening years of the war. But when the United States was drawn into the world war by Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, conditions changed rapidly. The country needed to equip with more ships for war service, and most passenger ships were seized, including the M/S Kungsholm.

The entire Swedish crew was decommissioned, with the exception of third mate Gösta Sjögren, who received an offer from the U.S. State Department to remain at Kungsholm, as they needed someone with in-depth knowledge of the ship as it was to be rebuilt for troop transport. The ship was taken to the Brooklyn Navy Yard where she was repainted and emptied of fixtures. Thus the curtain came down for Sweden's floating art industry pavilion, at least in terms of the magnificent interiors. Depictions tell of how nails were transformed into the precious wooden panels and golden leather wallpaper, and how all objects unusable for the war powers were thrown ashore. Only a few objects appear to have escaped destruction, which has undoubtedly contributed to the ship's near-mythical status within Swedish design historiography.

Stockholms Auktionsverk now has the great honor of presenting one of the objects that escaped this fate: one of Ström's mirror paintings with motifs of the lighthouse Pater Noster. The work was saved by Gösta Sjögren in connection with the seizure, and that the choice fell on this particular painting is due to the equally simple as touching reason that Sjögren himself was fertile from Bohuslän. The mirror painting then made one last transatlantic journey, during which Sjögren made sure it was returned to Sweden - packed down in a suitcase.

LITERATURE
Anne-Marie Ericsson, M/S Kungsholm's interior design: masterpieces in Swedish art deco, Signum, Lund, 2005, the mirror depicted in the interior in watercolour and photograph, p. 94-95, Ström and his paintings are mentioned p. 32, 93, 131-132.

Gustaf Munthe Swedish arts and crafts on M/s Kungsholm, Swedish American Line, Gothenburg, 1934, compares two other mirrors from the suite, pictured p. 24.