The stories about Olof Thunman are numerous. It is said that he would tip his hat and courteously greet the trees he liked as he passed by. Under the chlorophyll-green canopies, he would bow reverently before continuing his walks. And when he had a good amount of money, he reportedly bought an entire wheelbarrow full of flowers for his wife on more than one occasion. The auction world knows him as an artist, but he was also a poet and a skald, and he is the poet behind the poem "Vi gå över daggstänkta berg" (We Walk Over Dewy Mountains).
He was born in 1879 in Uppsala and spent his early years in a house his parents named "Imperfektum." From 1902 to 1906, he studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts. He participated in the collective exhibition of the Artist's Guild in 1905, but it wasn't until 1942, two years before his death, that he had a solo exhibition. Throughout his life, he created a significant number of drawings and published five poetry collections. In recent years, interest in his artistic career has been revived, and several of his works have been sold well above their estimates. At Stockholms Auktionsverk Globen, we encounter him as a draftsman and, notably, a depictor of animals and nature. His subject matter is surprisingly exotic, featuring rhinoceroses, bison, lions, and camels. However, the undeniable highlight of the collection is a polar bear gazing over the ice floes under a starry polar sky.
