NILS EDVARD KREUGER
(Kalmar 1858 – 1930 Stockholm)
Evening Sky at Båstad, 1907
Mixed media on paper, 499 x 627 mm
signed and dated lower left: NKreuger 1907
inscribed on the reverse: Evening Sky at Båstad
(SOLD)
In Sweden around 1900 nature was considered a major part of the people’s national identity. It was understood to be the constant factor in the history of a region where borders and land owners changed frequently. Therefore, many Swedish artists had a strong interest in landscape painting. Nils Kreuger’s Evening Sky at Båstad is a so-called Seelenlandschaft and goes beyond the depiction of typical Swedish passages of nature to express a sense of national belonging. It is Kreuger’s symbolist synthesis of form and feeling, of reality and the artist’s inner subjectivity.
An eye-catching sky above Båstad inspired Nils Kreuger for the present drawing in 1907. Scandinavian skies are best known for their colorful Northern Lights. Evening Sky at Båstad displays a different natural phenomenal typical of the area, nameley cirrus fibratus and cirrus uncinus clouds lit by a sunset. Cirrus is a genus of high cloud made of ice crystals. They are normally formed between 4,000 and 20,000 meters above sea level, but due to the low temperatures in Scandinavia they can appear much lower.
Nils Edvard Kreuger was born in Kalmar in Sweden in 1858. His professional career started with drawing lessons at Principskola from 1874-76 in preparation for the Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm. Due to health issues he never went to the Academy but worked instead in the studio of Edvard Perseus from 1876-80. The following year he moved to France to study under Jean-Paul Laurens at the Academie Colarossi in 1881. In France he became acquainted with the latest developments in the art world and was inspired by Impressionism. Together with fellow Scandinavian artists Christian Krogh, Carl Larsson, Karl Nordström and Richard Bergh he worked in an artist colony at Grez-sur-Loing, where they painted nature en plein air. Kreuger returned to Sweden in 1887. Here, the artist settled in Varberg. He founded the Varberg School together with Nordström and Bergh in 1892. They moved away from Impressionism towards Swedish Symbolism. The work by Paul Gauguin and especially Vincent van Gogh inspired them. Van Gogh’s paintings where shown at the Den Frie Udstilling (The Free Exhibition) in Copenhagen in 1893 where the founders of the Varberg School would have seen them. In 1896 Kreuger moved to Stockholm where he lived and worked until his death in 1930.