MARTIN ARONSON-LILJEGRAL (1869-1954). Pierre Louis Alexandre - "Petterson", signerad och daterad M.Aronson 1900, olja på duk.

ca 140x69 cm

Konstnären Aronson som tog sig efternamnet Liljegral 1902 föddes i Blekinge. Han var inskriven på Akademien mellan 1895-1901 och studerade också på Tallbergs etsarskola.
Konstnären anordnade ett konstlotteri där denna målning var vinst nr 6, ett icke ovanligt försäljningssätt för dåtidens unga och fattiga konstnärer. Aronson inriktade sig i övrigt på religiösa motiv samt kyrkomåleri.

HISTORIK:
Pierre Louis Alexandre är främst känd som modell vid Konstakademien under senare delen av 1800-talet. Konstnärer som avbildat honom är bland annat Anders Zorn, Karin Bergöö (Larsson), Johan Krouthén och Oscar Björck..
Pierre Louis Alexandre (1844-1905) var född i Franska Guyana och kom 1863 till Stockholm, troligen som fripassagerare på ett amerikanskt fartyg med fläskkött i frakten. Här försörjde han sig som stuveriarbetare, men har främst blivit känd som modell vid Konstakademien. I arkivkällorna förekommer han med de försvenskade efternamnen Pettersson respektive Alexandersson. (Källa: NM)

Provenance
MATS WERNER COLLECTION – A LEGEND UNCOVERED

Some characters steal your attention right away. Like the man in the oil painting that hung in Mats Werner's childhood home in Stockholm. The portrait made a strong impression on everyone who came to visit. It was painted in Stockholm in 1879 by Karin Bergöö, later Larsson after her marriage to the famous artist Carl Larsson, and depicts a man of color sitting reclining with his hands clasped over one knee in a mild, warm light. The man radiates both a peaceful calm and a dormant strength. The gaze is fixed on the distance. The image has an enigmatic atmosphere.

Mats Werner eventually inherited the painting from his parents. When he later cleaned out a basement storage room he found a folder with drawings. One of them depicted the same man as in the oil painting. Werner got curious: Who was this man? What was his story? Were there more portraits? Mats Werner began a dedicated detective work that led him to a large number of authorities, consulates, archives, libraries and so on in different countries. The dead ends were many. But the man must have made an impression in 19th century Stockholm? Very true. Werner came across various stories about the man's background and theories about how he ended up here. Eventually, the picture began to clear. The enigmatic man was Pierre Louis Alexandre, born in 1844 in Cayenne, French Guiana. He probably arrived in Stockholm in the mid 1870´s with an American ship. He escaped from the ship and earned his living as a dock worker. As the harbor closed in the wintertime due to heavy ice, he was lucky enough to find a new income as a model at the Academy of Fine Arts between 1878 and 1903. He acknowledged his first model fees "Louis Pettersson”. Alexandre was married twice and lived at several addresses on Södermalm in Stockholm. He died of tuberculosis in April 1905.

There are 43 known portraits of Alexandre by artists such as Karin Bergöö, Anders Zorn, Oskar Björk and Emil Österman.

Mats Werner has over time become an expert on the man who looked out from an oil painting over the interior of his childhood home. This has resulted in a book - and a significant collection of portraits.

For Crafoord Stockholm, it is now a great pleasure to be able to offer 11 collected portraits depicting the legendary Pierre Louis Alexandre.