Carl Larsson (1853 - 1919) was a Swedish painter and interior designer, representative of the Arts and Crafts Movement. His many paintings include oils, watercolors, and frescoes.
Was at the art museum earlier and i have a new favourite painting
Is this not the cutest??? Its called ”Me and Brita” and this guy in 1895 was like ”i love this kid so much imma do a painting of us having fun so the world will always know how much i loved her and what a good time we had”
the painting in the background is looking at them like “my word what a cool pair”
More specifically that is Carl Larsson with one of his 8 children.
He came from a extremely poor and abusive background but worked his way into fine society, where he fell in love with fellow artist Karin Bergöö, and his works shifted to painting his home life.
Painting titled “My Loved Ones”
[in reference to his career] “the most immediate and lasting part of my life’s work. these pictures are of course a very genuine expression of my personality, of my deepest feelings, of all my limitless love for my wife and children.”
OMFG I used to work at Carl’s house which in now a museum in Falun, Sweden, and now his art is on my dash!
I could tell so many stories about this family, but to sum it up they lived the definition of what we would call a cottagecore life where both Carl and Karin worked as artists in their dream house that they designed and built together. It really was an artist’s home built with pure love, and also a big contrast to what a typical Swedish home looked like at the time. The late 1800s trend was to have a dark home with gothic vibes and brown and dark red colours. The Larsson’s home though is bright and colourful with big windows and homemade textiles sewn by Karin.
I also wanted to tell a bit about Brita, the cute little girl on her father’s shoulders in the original post. Here she is portraited in Brita, Cat and a Sandwich.
She was the fifth child of seven and felt like she didn’t get enough attention from her dad as a middle child in a big family. To get more time with her dad she would ask him to paint only her as often as possible since then she could talk to him without any of her siblings annoying them. This is how she became the most painted of all the children with hundreds of portraits made with her as the model. She was 89 years old when she died in 1982 and loved to talk about her childhood and those many, many painting sessions with dad.
This is one of my favourite paintings by Carl Larsson, A Viking Raid in Dalarna. Here we have all the children in a boat during a cool summer’s eve (from left, Pontus, Brita, Lisbeth, Ulf, Kersti, Esbjörn, Suzanne).
