CARL JOHAN FORSBERG
1867 Stockholm – 1938 Sønderho
RÓDA ROSENGÅRTEN
mixed media on paper 532 x 742 mm
signed and inscribed lower right: Carl Forsberg Roda Rosengarten
date: circa 1907
provenance:
the artist’s estate, Fanø;
Hans Forsberg, son of the artist, 1938;
Kerstin Ann-Marie Forsberg, the wife of the above;
Stefan Hannor, 1961, a gift from the above, Sweden;
private collection, Sweden;
with Antoine Feix, Paris, 2025.
Róda Rosengårten is a highlight within Carl Johan Forsberg’s oeuvre. The striking beauty of the Rosengartengruppe—a mountain range in the Dolomites of northern Italy—served as an important source of inspiration for the Symbolist artist. In this region, the rock formations contain natural red pigments that produce distinctive chromatic effects. When viewed from the west, the Rosengartengruppe can appear unreal and mysteriously red at sunset. Forsberg traveled to the area in 1905 and again in 1907, experiences that directly informed his engagement with this motif.
Forsberg depicted this imposing landscape from an elevated vantage point. The view into the mountain valley is partially obscured by a blue-toned mountainside in the foreground. A shimmering river occupies a central position within the composition, which is structured through pronounced horizontal divisions. The river guides the viewer’s gaze through the valley toward the distant mountain peaks from which the meltwater originates, ultimately drawing the eye upward to the golden sky.
Watercolor was Forsberg’s preferred medium throughout his career, and Róda Rosengårten demonstrates his exceptional mastery of the technique. The artist employed high-quality pigments to achieve distinctive visual effects. The water cascading down the mountainside, as well as parts of the glacier in the background, are partially rendered with silver pigments, producing an effect reminiscent of sunlight glinting on water. Forsberg also applied gold pigments to articulate sections of the clouds in the sky.
Color was a primary means for Forsberg to express emotion in his soul landscapes. Róda Rosengårten is organized into three distinct horizontal zones, each defined by a specific chromatic range: blue, reddish tones, and brown and gold. The construction of spatial depth through foreground, middle ground, and sky follows a long-standing pictorial tradition that can be traced back to the Flemish Primitives. Striking in this work is the partially gold-colored sky. In religious art, gold signifies the heavenly realm and the presence of the divine. Unlike ordinary color, gold reflects light rather than absorbs it, evoking the idea of God’s uncreated, eternal light. Its resistance to decay made it a symbol of eternity, while its flat, non-naturalistic surface removes the image from earthly space and time. Gold thus functions not as a depiction of heaven, but as a visual expression of the sacred and the transcendent—it does not represent heaven; it makes the divine perceptible.
The beauty of the mountain landscape constituted for Forsberg a profound source of artistic inspiration, while simultaneously carrying deeper symbolic meaning. He associated the grandeur and isolation of mountainous terrain with the vulnerability and transience of human life. This conviction was significantly shaped by a near-fatal accident involving a horse-drawn carriage during a stormy descent in the Swiss Alps. Forsberg recounts this experience at length in his book Opera, in connection with the creation of Pax (fig. 1).
Fig. 1 Carl Johan Forsberg, Pax, mixed media on paper, 524 x 724 mm, formerly with Perspective, now part of the collection Musee D’Orsay Paris, inv.no. RF MO AG 2022 8.
Fig. 2 Carl Johan Forsberg, Self-Portrait, mixed media on paper, size unknown.
Born into a wealthy Swedish family, Forsberg grew up in Stockholm and initially trained as an architect at the Royal Institute of Technology (1889–1893) before continuing his studies at the Royal Swedish Academy of Arts. Between 1895 and 1896, he attended etching courses under Axel Tallberg. In the following years, Forsberg traveled extensively throughout Europe and visited Morocco, experiences that profoundly shaped his artistic outlook. After marrying a Danish woman in France, he settled on the island of Fanø in 1913, where he remained for the rest of his life.
Financially independent, Forsberg pursued a highly individual artistic path, largely detached from prevailing artistic trends. Working primarily in watercolor, he developed a distinctive Symbolist visual language in which landscape functioned as a Seelenlandschaft, or projection of inner emotional and spiritual states. Mountains, water, and sky recur as central motifs, imbued with existential and metaphysical significance.
During his lifetime, Forsberg’s work was exhibited at Kunstnärhuset in Stockholm (1904, 1913, 1925) and in Gothenburg, Lund, Copenhagen, and repeatedly on Fanø. In 1913, he published a book devoted to his own work. Despite these presentations, he sold relatively few works and remained dissatisfied with the lack of recognition he received. A significant portion of his estate remained within the family, a part was donated to the Fanø Kunst Museum. The selection of his drawing Pax as the poster image for the Musée d’Orsay’s 2026 exhibition on Scandinavian drawings marks an important posthumous acknowledgment of his oeuvre.