GOTTFRID KALLSTENIUS. Moonlight Night.

Oil on canvas, 131.2 x 116.3 cm. Signed and dated G Kallstenius 1917.
On the back of the frame label inscribed “Blekingeg. 38".
Original frame

PROVENANCE
Artist Evald Kallstenius (1898-1947), Skurusundet, Nacka, Stockholm, son of the artist, married to Afhild, née Klinte (b. 1899);
at an unknown time moved to their residence at Blekingegatan 38, Stockholm

EXHIBITIONS
Linköping, Husholdningsällskapet, Storgatan and Stockholm, Östgöta Konstföreningen's Exhibition in Linköping and Stockholm, opened 28 November 1922 [their 1st exhibition] (on loan from the artist)
Västervik, Memorial Exhibition of Gottfrid Kallstenius, Västerviks Konstförening, 3 June-13 August 1961, no. 85 as “Månbacken in moonlight, Källvik, utst. 1922"

LITERATURE
B. Sylvan & S. Hammenbeck, On Art. Östgöta Konstförening 90 år, in Message from Östergötlands Museum 2011, 2011, p. 143, 162, image from the exhibition in the main hall of the Danish Household Society, Storgatan, Linköping where Kallstenius's painting is seen hanging in the middle of a long side, surrounded by two of his landscape paintings
Photograph from Evald Kallstenius (1898-1957) home at Skurusundet.

The house depicted in the painting is “Månbacken”, the artist's summer home outside Källvik with associated studio which he built in 1904. The porch of the house faces Djupsundet and Tä.

Kallstenius has stated the title of the painting as “Moonshine Night” and the title does not mention that the house in the picture is his summer home in Källvik. This suggests that he wished to depict the atmosphere of a residential building on a moonlit night more generally, as evidenced by the location of the house adjacent to the right side of the painting and the fact that it is cropped.

Afhild Kallstenius-Åhman who inherited the painting from his father, the composer Edvin Kallstenius, Gottfrid Kallstenius's cousin, published in 1966 The Tragedy in Smith's Strait, a story about the zoologist and research traveller Evald Kallstenius (1868-1892/93), Gottfrid Kallstenius' younger brother, and botanist Johan Björling's (1871-1892/93) polar expedition to Greenland 1892, which ended in a disaster and both died.

Photograph taken by Kallstenius of the same pine and spruce visible in the painting.