PER EKSTRÖM. Sunrise in Brittany.

Oil on canvas, 78 x 145 cm, including frame 110 x 180 cm.

PROVENANCE
Swedish Club, Paris.
Purchased directly by the artist April 12, 1892, original receipt issued by the artist included.

Per Ekström was born in 1844 in Övre Segerstad on Öland, where his father worked as both a building painter and tailor. He began his career as a painter's apprentice in Kalmar, but in 1865 he was admitted to the Art Academy in Stockholm. Here he studied for seven years and attracted attention even at the highest level — King Charles XV paid for his first study trip to Norway, a country in which the king himself liked to paint.

In 1872, Ekström met the writer August Strindberg in Stockholm, a friendship that resulted in an unforgettable portrait of Ekström in the novel The Red Room under the name Sellén. With a Royal Medal in his luggage and financial support from Oscar II, he travelled in 1876 to France. There he spent his most formative years, with a base in Paris and regular stays in Barbizon, Marly-le-Roi and Saint-Germain-en-Laye.

Per Ekström quickly became a central figure in the Swedish artists' colony in Paris in the 1880s. With his distinctive sense of humour and originality, he united friends, but stood outside the art-political battles that led to the formation of the Artists' Union. He did not paint according to schooled theories, but with a spontaneously driven, intuitive brushwork. His path was often lined with financial difficulties — on several occasions he sold furniture, curtains and even a pastel to the artists' club in which he was active — but his artistry remained uncompromising.

He made his debut at the Paris Salon in 1878 and was rewarded at the 1889 World's Fair with a gold medal. In doing so, he gained, for the first time, a breakthrough outside the immediate circles. Ekström later returned to Sweden, where in 1891 he held his first solo exhibition in Stockholm. After some time in Gothenburg, invited by the benefactor Pontus Fürstenberg, he eventually settled down permanently on his beloved childhood island Öland, where he died in 1935 — aged ninety.

Per Ekström was one of the first Swedish artists to consistently apply outdoor painting, already during the 1870s. He was inspired by the Barbizon school and by Alfred Wahlberg, and occasionally approached Impressionism. His landscapes are often desolate, barren and lonely — be they from the Normandy coast, the French forests or Alvaret on Öland. Over the years, his artistic focus came to revolve entirely around the play of light and air — sunsets, moonlight, fog, and sun reflections on foliage and water surfaces. He came to be called 'the sun painter' by an increasing audience, and his work can be found today in most major Swedish museums and collections.

The current catalogue number is a typical example of Ekström's atmospheric spring landscape. The artist himself said he loved to paint “the season when one saw the trees begin to green in an abandoned and desolate garden room between winter and summer” — a feeling that clearly permeates this work, executed in his characteristic grassy green denominations and soft play of light.

The history of the painting is unique: it was rediscovered by chance after a pastel fell from its hook. Behind it was found this oil painting, which was previously thought by the artist himself to be lost. When Ekström returned to the Club a little later and saw the painting, he allowed it to remain — a decision that in retrospect gave us an invaluable insight into his quiet, contemplative painting.

All lots in this themed auction sold without reserve.