Art is divine
White Paradise
By Micha Christos
PETIT PALAIS
Paris
From October 1, 2024 to February 16, 2025
BRUNO LILJEFORS
WILD SWEDEN
Bruno Liljefors,
Mountain hare, 1905. Oil on canvas, 86×115 cm. The Thiel Gallery, Stockholm.
© Courtesy Thielska Galleriet, Stockholm / Photo Tord Lund
Anders Zorn,
The painter Bruno Liljefors, 1906. Oil on canvas, 125×96 cm. Nationalmuseum, Stockholm.
© Stockholm, Nationalmuseum / Photo Viktor Fordell.
Bruno Liljefors,
Winter landscape with bullfinches peony, 1891. Oil on canvas, 40×50 cm. Private collection
Bruno Liljefors, Five animal studies in a frame: Redstarts and butterflies, 1885. Oil on panel, 26.5×16.5 cm. Nationalmuseum, Stockholm. © Stockholm, Nationalmuseum / Photo Cecilia Heisser.r
Bruno Liljefors, a key figure in the Scandinavian art scene at the end of the 19th century, is presented for the first time in France at the Petit Palais.
This unique exhibition presents a collection of around a hundred works, paintings, drawings and photographs from the collections of the greatest Swedish museums such as the National museum in Stockholm, partner of the exhibition, the Thiel Gallery, the Gothenburg Museum, and also from many private collections. Liljefors grew up in Uppsala, a city north of Stockholm, in the heart of vast wil dernesses.
From a young age, he trained to draw and showed a great talent for caricatures and illustration. In 1879, he enrolled at the Royal Academy of Painting and met Anders Zorn who would remain his friend all his life.
To perfect his apprenticeship, he traveled to Germany and Italy before settling in Paris in a colony of Nordic artists. Liljefors did not stay long in France and returned permanently to Sweden in 1884 to devote himself exclusively to the representation of animals in Swedish nature.
His gymnastic skills allowed him to skillfully camouflage himself to capture the animal world in its natural environment.
He used hunters’ camouflage techniques to make himself invisible to his models in their daily lives. A virtuoso of light, he knew how to arrange his canvases in the manner of Japanese prints to create decorative elements allowing spectators to construct their own stories.
His creative process included the use of photography to think of his compositions at the heart of nature. In Liljefors’ world, animals, plants, insects and birds are part of a greater whole where each has a role to play.
Liljefors reveals the beauty of nature and its vital energy with patience and respect, delicacy and power.
This exhibition offers a bath of nature in its most exquisite purity. A journey of peace and harmony to savor...
Bruno Liljefors Five animal studies in a frame: Cat and finch, 1885. Oil on panel, 35×26.5 cm. Nationalmuseum, Stockholm. © Stockholm, Nationalmuseum / Photo Cecilia Heisser.
Bruno Liljefors,
Eagle Owl in the Snowy Pines, 1907. Oil on canvas, 206×296.8 cm. Rijksmuseum Twenthe, Enschede.
© Collection Rijksmuseum Twenthe, Enschede.