“Spring” by Helmer Osslund
A primordial force has awoken and set nature in motion. Buds burst forth, meltwater trickles away and animals venture out from their burrows.
The scene before us appears battered by the wind. Gnarled pine trees bow their green and jagged crowns. Their trunks are short yet enduring, formed by many
rings along the exposed High Coast. Above the lively sea and its frothy whitecaps, a dark cloud has just unleashed a downpour. The air is clear and the colours bright. The shrill cry of the seagulls rises and falls in the wind, a playful and exhilarating salute. Below them float sailboats with their taut white sails, they too seem to be welcoming the advent of a new season. Behind all this life looms a dark blue ridge, bearing witness to the beautiful yet alas so ephemeral shift taking place around it.
Norrland painter Helmer Osslund was born in 1866 in Tuna Socken, close to Sundsvall in Medelpad, northern Sweden. After finishing school, he set off for America before returning to Europe after just one year. He worked as a decorative painter at the Gustavsberg Porcelain Factory and it was there he found his vocation – painting. Before the landscapes of his native Norrland came to dominate his work, he was an artist who sought inspiration with great enthusiasm and curiosity from many corners of the world. The term cosmopolitan can be used to describe him without any hint of exaggeration. In 1894, he set off on a long voyage including stops in France, Denmark, Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands and England. In Paris, he spent several months under the tutelage of the great Paul Gauguin and this became a significant impetus for his continued artistic development. In his book entitled Helmer Osslund (1937), Swedish art historian Nils Palmgren described the impression that Gauguin’s work made on Osslund:
“Therein lay a refined and wholly personal, bold use of colours, therein lay whole surfaces and yet a sublime manoeuvring of the parts into an almost bejewelled whole, and therein lay finally a rare sense of empathy, and an adoration of the beautiful woven together the mystic, all qualities that appealed to Osslund at the highest level”.
Osslund returned to Norrland once more in 1898 and it was then that his life’s work began. He set out in search of perfect viewpoints and striking scenes, with greaseproof paper and a colour palette in his bag. He contemplated the verdant High Coast in Ångermanland, followed the landscape’s wide and dark rivers inland and explored the brighter highlands in Jämtland and Medelpad. While adept at depiction, Osslund also succeeded in capturing the mysticism of nature, which in part was innate within him, but also very much a part of the romantic currents that were in vogue at the turn of the century when he was working. This can be seen in his depictions of twilight, dramatic colour contrasts and through his decorative flourishes. These included deciduous trees in bloom, stone formations or beautifully twisted pines, as in the present work.
In 1906, inspired by his first trip to Lappland, Osslund held an exhibition in the banquet room of Gävle City Hall. Leather magnate and consul Emil A Matton – an influential person in the city – happened to be there and purchased three paintings. After yet another trip to northern Norrland, Osslund exhibited his works in Gävle once more, and on this occasion Matton gave him a large commission for a suite of four paintings that would depict the seasons of the year. The idea was surely born in the contemplation of Osslund’s oeuvre which features the shifting seasons as a primary motif.
Matton rented a studio in Gävle for Osslund especially for this task. In his studio, Osslund called on his memories and sketches from his travels to paint those landscapes which represented each season at its most beautiful. In Spring, inspiration is drawn primarily from the High Coast in Ångermanland. His strong sense for this beautiful environment can be felt in the work, with its spectacular green and rugged coastline, rich birdlife, blue waters and strong winds.
Once the suite was finished and Matton’s request for sailboats in both Spring and Summer had been accommodated, the four magnificent paintings were hung in the Mattson home, the Blewegården Estate in Gävle Villastad. The house had been built in 1903 by railway director Carl Fredrik Asker. Matton purchased the manor house the very next year, and named it Blewegården after the first initials of his five children. The interiors were replete with wooden features in the Jugendstil tradition which was typical of the day. The gentle arching at the top of the paintings reflects this. The four paintings were placed in the hall above a wooden panel. Autumn took its place above the hat rack on one of the long walls, while Winter had to accommodate the door at the back, and this explains why the painting did not have the same form as the other three. Summer and Spring hung along the other opposite wall, directly across from Autumn.
Emil Matton became a close friend of Osslund’s and took care of the artists’ incomes both from Gävle and elsewhere over the course of several years. Blewegården was sadly torn down in 1979, but the suite was saved. Autumn was incorporated into the collections of Sweden’s National Museum as a gift in 1971 (NM 6371), while Winter, because of its more irregular shape, was divided, and both Summer and Spring fell into private ownership. Spring has never before been offered for sale at auction.
The painting style on display in the four seasons attests to a new-found sense of confidence in Osslund. He has grown bolder in both his colours and brush strokes. “Blues, greens and blacks were what he loved about spring,” says his good friend the doctor Helge Dahlstedt about his sense for the seasons in Helmer Osslund: Norrland Painter, Sweden’s National Museum, 1971. It is from precisely this symphony of colours that spring now bursts forth before our very eyes.
The coarse bark of the pine is at arm’s length and we can almost hear the screech of the gulls, who will not find the peace to fall silent during this short, bright moment of the day. We feel the fresh wind with its aroma of a newly awoken sea. Nature is in motion, a new season prepares to emerge. Welcome, Spring!
