572. JONAS CARL LINNERHIELM (1758-1829). Apollo and Daphne.

Pencil laid on cardboard 18.4 x 14.2 cm, image area 16.8 x 13.2 cm. Signed and dated J. C. L. 1807.

PROVENANCE The author Fritjof Hazelius (1882-1963). From 1916 Hazelius was, together with Ewert Wrangel, editor of Tidskrift för Konstvetenskap. Hazelius was one of the leaders in the Swedish homeland movement. From 1920 he was editor of Tidskrift för hembygdsvård. Among other things, he published Skånska gårdar och hus (7 volumes 1916-26, together with Karl Berlin), as well as Drawings for Skånska prestgårdar (1919); then by inheritance until 2022 Stylistically influenced by the work of the Swiss artist Salomon Gessner (1730-1788). In 1795, Linnerhielm published a selection of her husband's poems under the title "Witterhet's attempts". The beautiful little poetry booklet was decorated with Linnerhielm's illustrations in Gessner's style.

Jonas Carl Linnerhielm (1758–1829) captured Sweden at the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century in his pictures and travel writings, with its countryside, lakes, iron works, manors and gardens – nothing escaped his eye. He has been called the first Swedish tourist and from 1787 he spent his summers touring the country, from Skåne in the south up to Dalarna in central Sweden. On his travels, he carried pens, brushes and sketchbooks, which described rural Sweden in hundreds of letters, drawings and watercolours. Following in the footsteps of his predecessor Johan Fischerström, Linnerhielm was one of the first in Sweden to make a pittoresque journey – a journey in search of views and landscapes that moved his emotions and pleased his eyes.

Linnerhielm was a landed gentleman with estates in southern Sweden, but he also held a position as an official in Stockholm during the reign of King Gustav III. Here he became closely associated with the leading cultural personalities of the Gustavian era and was deeply influenced by the Swedish artist brothers Elias and Johan Fredrik Martin - both of whom had experienced Britain and the London art scene in the 1770s. Alongside them, Linnerhielm developed an early form of plein air painting, which recorded Sweden's natural landscape and its changing moods in watercolours. Through the Martin brothers, Linnerhielm's pictorial world had a clear connection to the contemporary landscape and topographical art of Georgian Britain. His watercolors were also the basis for the engraved illustrations in his printed travel journals, which he published in three volumes: "Bref und resor i Sverige, 1797; 'Bref fra nya resor i Sverige', 1806; and "Bref und later resor i Sweden", 1816. (Michael Ahlund, Museum Director Gustavianum, Uppsala University Museum).