53. LARS HOFVENSTEDT (DÖD 1773). Portrait depicting the Salvation Inspector Nils Ekström at the Hulterstad seat and the royal court Biskops Motala, painted in 1768.

oil on canvas, 67 x 53 cm
Inscription on the back: “Frälse Inspectoren wid Zeiteriet Hulterstad och Biskops Motala, Nils Ekström; born year 1732, on 18 October Painted by L: Hovensted 1768"

Lars Hofvenstedt was a painter in Jönköping. In 1769 he received a fellowship in Jönköping for “portrait and perspective painting and other painting work”. He was also a wallpaper printer and after his death in 1773 his widow continued the business.

PROVENANCE: Christopher O'Regan Collection

Christopher tells us:
A portrait of a man unknown to me, but who nevertheless came to move on the periphery of great historical events. Nils Ekström served at the seat Hulterstad and Biskops Motala royal estate in Mjölby parish in Östergötland, and which at the time of the portrait's creation was owned by the lord of the chamber and court marshal Carl Gustaf Ehrenkrona, a convinced anti-royalist politician, who partly through this, and partly through his blunt and stern manner, aroused the young Gustaf III Disapproval of. And upon the seizure of power by the Mösparti shortly before Gustav III's accession to the state in 1772, Ehrenkrona was appointed to the Privy Council. One author of the memoirs states that the King did not fail to see his move from daily contact at court to a more remote place in the Privy Council from a personal point of view. But with the coup d'état, his role was played out. He was dismissed from the council and retired from the great world to the royal court of Bishop Motala.