JULIUS KRONBERG. SCHOOL PLAN- The Merciful Samaritan 1903, rollable.

Width with holder: 76cm
Length: 90cm

Johan Julius Ferdinand Kronberg was a Swedish artist and decorative painter.

At the age of thirteen, he was admitted to the Royal Academy of Arts. In 1870 he was awarded a gold medal for his depiction of Gustav Vasa receiving a new translation of the Bible (used on a postage stamp in 1941). He studied with Johan Christoffer Boklund, a history painter who had a great influence on his style, and for a short time for Johan Fredrik Höckert. A travel scholarship in 1873 enabled him to visit Copenhagen, Düsseldorf and Paris.

After a short stay in Venice, he spent considerable time in Munich. It was there that he became interested in decorative painting and came into contact with the works of Hans Makart, which made a strong impression on him. In 1876, his painting “Nymph and faun” was acclaimed by August Strindberg and led to his becoming an “agré” (a type of membership candidate) at the Royal Academy.

He settled in Rome in 1877 and lightened up his colour palette, somewhat in the style of Giovanni Battista Tiepolo. Upon his return to Stockholm in 1889, he established a studio at Norra Djurgården and specialized in architectural painting. His motifs were most often drawn from mythology or the Bible, as well as the works of Shakespeare.

Among his most famous works are three ceiling paintings in the western stairwell of Stockholm Castle, a depiction of the life of Jesus in the dome of Adolf Fredrik's Church, and a proscenium depicting Eros at Dramaten.

He made a final study trip in 1894, to Würzburg, Madrid and Venice, where he focused on Tiepolo's ceiling paintings. The following year he accepted a professorship at the Royal Academy but resigned, to the great disappointment of his students, in 1898.

In 1885 he refused to sign a petition criticising the teaching methods at the Royal Academy and his relationship with the Union of Artists cooled considerably. By 1900, their conflicting views had reached the point where he began to withdraw from public life. He was isolated and his works became repetitive. Later he developed an interest in theology. In his final years, he suffered from cancer.

After his death, his studio was bequeathed to the Nordic Museum and relocated, at the expense of Wilhelmina von Hallwyl, and re-erected at Skansen, an open-air museum and zoo. It served as the filming location for the cover photo for pop group ABA's latest album, The Visitors (1981).

His work can be seen at the Gothenburg Museum of Art, Skansen and Hallwylska museet.