256. VICTOR FORSSELL (1846-1931). “Motif from Ingemarshof”.

Oil on panel, 19 x 20 cm. Signed Vi: Forssell. Performed in the 1880s.

PROVENANCE
Curator Sven Strindberg (1874-1957), director of Liljevalchs Konsthall 1916-1939
Accountant Georg af Donner (born 1886)

EXHIBITED
“Victor Forssell — The Art Academy Memorial Exhibition” Art Academy, Stockholm 1932
“Memorial exhibition of Victor Forssell” Dutch Konst Aktiebolag, Arsenalsgatan 10 A, Stockholm 1941
“Memorial exhibition of Victor Forssell” Swedish General Art Association, Konstnärshuset, Stockholm 1950
Exhibition labels on verso

LITERATURE
Viggo Loos “Victor Forssell” Sveriges Allmänna Konstförening, Stockholm 1951, listed in the catalogue of works during the 1880s page 231, illustrated and described under the chapter “Intimist and Impressionist” page 135:
“'Motif from Ingemarshof' can be seen in connection with the previously mentioned 'Oxspan on the Isen'. The same submissive, melancholic oxen have been used as models. Once again, one can see how much finer and more harmonious the color looks in the small, intimate studies, which directly restrained the impression of nature. In this material it happens that some or some figures are left unfinished; examples are cited from the Gotland studies. Here, the driving friend afterwards is hinted at by a few dashes at the side of the road's snow patches and ruts. The artist experiments with his trappings, materializing the figures only as a hint when he finds it best so. He is unconcerned about all considerations for the 'regular' audience. The study is his laboratory. It is intended primarily for himself and his own artistic search. That is why contact with his innermost intentions becomes so intimate. In 'Motif from Ingemarshof', for example, one can observe how he restrained with discreet means the impression of space and the gray light under the overcast sky.”
(Viggo Loos “Victor Forssell” SAK 1951)

Like another famous artist from Sala, Ivan Aguéli, Victor Forssell was the master of the small formats. In his monograph on Victor Forssell, Viggo Loos highlights precisely the artist's “etypes” of a more independent character as a special group of special interest. He then intended the artist's studies which did not constitute sketches for larger paintings but were themselves complete works, characterized by “the intimacy of the perception of the seen and an impressionistic study”. One of these perfect “etypes” that particularly captures the author's interest is precisely the auction painting “Motif from Ingemarshof”.

In the painting “Motif från Ingemarshof”, Victor Forssell has depicted a part of the former outskirts of Stockholm, whose barren environments constituted a special attraction for the artist. Ingemarshof was originally an ore farm in the present Ingemar block at Roslagsgatan/Ingemarsgatan in Vasastan, where the wine merchant and cellar master Ingemar Frodbom ran inns in the early 18th century. When Victor Forssell performs his painting in the 1880s, it was still a rural setting. Viggo Loos points out how Victor Forssell at this time immersed himself in depicting “the break between winter and spring, with the landscape of snowmelt and its contradictions between chilly and warm tones”. One of the main examples of this is precisely the painting of the auction. The motif with his animal trap is central to Forssell's art. He will later, for a few years at the beginning of the 20th century, collect an artist's fee from the Academy of Fine Arts, associated with an obligation to teach precisely in the special subject of “animal traps in landscape”. He taught at Skansen and around Stockholm.

Viggo Loo's great appreciation of Victor Forssell's small “etypes” — and not least “Motifs from Ingemarshof” — is obvious. He points out “the fineness of Forssell's denominational depiction and colorism, the intimacy of his studies in the small format” and “the great humility of his interaction with nature” and continues: “Nothing in the life of nature seemed to him too insignificant, too inconspicuous. One wonders if the outwardly inconspicuous subject did not exert a special allure on him. It made demands, as he understood, demands for tenderness, care, love. Some of that receptivity we sense behind his 'etyder'. In the painting of the time, this study material constitutes a distinctive, too overlooked element.” In conclusion, Viggo Loos notes: “For posterity, it is clear that some of the most peculiar and best in Forssell's painting is reflected in these small paintings. They are the response of the 'Intimist' and the Impressionist to the world he has discovered and loved... On these small, carefully groomed pans his brush has brought out a peculiar painterly beauty, which lives its own life independently of the changes of time.”

However, the subtle low-key nature of Victor Forssell's art, together with the reclusive and reserved personality of the artist, meant that his distinctive artistry came to be forgotten and for a long time overlooked in public art life. The one who rediscovered Victor Forssell and ensured that he received his rightful recognition with critics and audiences was the former owner of the auction's painting “Motif från Ingemarshof”, the art dealer and curator Sven Strindberg (1874-1957). He was the brother of sculptor Tore Strindberg and polar explorer Nils Strindberg and the father, Oscar Strindberg, was a cousin of August Strindberg.

Sven Strindberg had opened a frame workshop in Helsinki in the 1890s, and in the spring of 1913 he changed his focus to a more exclusive exhibition activity under the name Salon Strindberg - the first art gallery of its kind in Finland - where he showed pioneering modern art by Wassily Kandinsky and the German Expressionists, among others. A couple of years later he sold the gallery and moved back to Sweden to take up the post of director of the newly opened Liljevalchs Konsthall on behalf of Prins Eugen. Sven Strindberg remained as director of Liljevalchs until 1939 and he came to have a great importance for art life in Sweden. The inaugural exhibition in 1916 with Anders Zorn, Carl Larsson and Bruno Liljefors is today legendary, as is the Home Exhibition in 1917. In the same year as the Home Exhibition, the Swedish Artists Association also had an exhibition in Liljevalchs konsthall, where Victor Forssell was represented with a single small painting. Sven Strindberg has told of how he was captivated by the painting, the author of which was completely unknown to him. He found out Victor Forssell's address and sought out the artist's combined studio and residence at Stora Sickla farm. Once on the spot, he acquired numerous works from the old artist and at the same time got himself into life stories from Forssell's long career. At Sven Strindberg, the idea was to eventually make a solo exhibition with Victor Forssell in order to get more people to discover his exquisite art.

During his early years as director of Liljevalchs, Sven Strindberg also ran an art shop in his residence — a sort of branch of the gallery he had established in Helsinki — and before ending this side business in Stockholm he organised a solo exhibition with Victor Forssell in 1920. The exhibition received great attention in the press and there was talk of a “rediscovery”. In Dagens Nyheter, Karl Asplund wrote that one could fall in love with some of Victor Forssells with a tender and light hand painted landscapes, especially his sketches and Asplund labelled some of the exhibited paintings as “masterpieces of intimate landscape painting”. Gotthard Johansson, too, expressed in the Aftonbladet newspaper his admiration for the small sketches, speaking of “a painter who showed his mastery in limitation” and he was surprised that an artist of this dignity could have been overlooked for so long.

In connection with the exhibition, a longer article about Victor Forssell was also published in Dagens Nyheter, in which the writer, among other things, highlighted the artist's depiction from Ingemarshof. In the article, Victor Forssell himself tells about his time with Carl Larsson in the artist colony in Sickla: “Over there by Lugnet, there I lived with Carl Larsson in an old nice gazebo. We ate dinner at a small simple locus nearby and for the rest we took care of ourselves and had a good time. Larsson had hardly started painting yet. But he was already quite famous as an illustrator in Kasper, and was doing business with his men for that magazine and for books at Bonnier's. In the meantime, I painted landscapes, as I have always done and hope to do until my death.”

In the autumn of 1921, Sven Strindberg organized a collection exhibition at Liljevalchs konsthall, where Victor Forssell had his own hall. This became the artist's final breakthrough with the general public. As at the exhibition the previous year, Victor Forssell's small paintings were also met this time with praise from art critics. With the 1920 and 1921 exhibitions, Victor Forssell had now established himself as a significant name in Swedish art life. His art came to be regarded as the true art of the Connoisseur and he was represented in many significant collections. One of the largest collectors of Victor Forssell's art was accountant Georg af Donner, who also eventually managed to acquire “Motif från Ingemarshof” from Sven Strindberg's collection.

Although Victor Forssell's unique artistry can hardly be called innovative, it came to have significance for some of the young artists who broke new ground in the more finely tuned furrows of the early 20th century. It had the greatest influence on the intimists Torsten Palm, Victor Axelson and Alf Munthe, who counted Victor Forssell as their soul mate.

When Victor Forssell had his late public breakthrough, with the exhibitions arranged by Sven Strindberg, he was an old man. It had been a long journey from the time he was born out of wedlock in the small mining town of Sala in 1846 to him now experiencing national fame and appreciation for his unique artistic deed. After his schooling at home in Sala, Victor Forssell had started at the Academy of Fine Arts in 1865. During his years at the Academy he obtained commendations and minor fellowships. Victor Forssell became part of the group of artists out at Lill-Jans along with names such as Per Ekström and August Strindberg. For a few years in the early 1870s he also belonged to the central estates of the painters' colony at Sickla, together with Carl Larsson, Per Ekström and Carl Skånberg, among others.

One who really appreciated Victor Forssell, both as a person and as an artist, was Carl Fredrik Hill, who was otherwise known for his critical attitude towards most of his fellow artists. That financial circumstances were scarce for Victor Forssell in these early years is evidenced by a letter written by Hill, in which he recounts how Victor fell ill during a visit to the Opera Cellar on Christmas Eve, because he was not “used to eating”.

In 1877, Victor Forssell made a study trip to the art metropolises of Düsseldorf and Paris. In the 1880s he often spent his summers on Gotland, where he carried out fine-tuned studies of the sea and shore. At the turn of the century Victor Forssell also became interested in Norrland and Lapland nature subsequently formed a significant part of his production. However, it was Stockholm and the city's immediate surroundings that became his main motive circle during his career.

Victor Forssell has been described as a brooder and something of a recluse, who, far from the outside world, pursued his artistic endeavours. He saw the great in the small and marginal landscapes, from which, like no other, he managed to extract great art in small formats, can be seen as symbols of his own low-key and fine-tuned personality. Victor Forssell's great interest in Theosophy was a support for the long time that he had to wait for his great breakthrough. At the same time, it is clear that Pantheism's view of nature as innate was also reflected in his ability to extract the beautiful from the simple in his art, not least visible in the now current “Motif from Ingemarshof”.

Although the belated attention from art reviewers and audiences was of course pleasing to Victor Forssell, the artist's last years were largely marked by the fact that, after an accident in the early 1920s, he could stand and walk only with the aid of crutches. Through the care of the Academy of Fine Arts, he moved to Solsunda Rest Home in Nacka in 1929, where he died in late summer 1931 at the age of 85.

After Victor Forssell's passing, three memorial exhibitions were organized in the period 1932-1950, which further cemented his position within Swedish landscape art. At all of these commemorative exhibitions, the auction's painting “Motif från Ingemarshof” was displayed, as evidenced by the exhibition labels on the back of the painting.