Swedish Pygmalion - a portrait of Mauritz Stiller by Arvid Fougstedt, circa 1923

 

Gouache on paper, 54 x 42 centimeters / 21.26 x 16.5 inches. From the collection of Greta Garbo, this hung in her New York apartment until her death in 1990.

The little dog has a sort of ruff attached to his collar. Stiller's leg is only hanging over the arm of the chair, but the dog still looks rather worried he might be kicked.

The reverse of the painting.

A preparatory study in the collection of the Moderna Museet in Sweden. (The likeness is clearly much better than in the finished work.)

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Mauritz Stiller (né Moshe Stiller; 7 July 1883, Helsinki - 18 November 1928, Stockholm), Swedish film director, a pioneer of the Swedish film industry, he is now most remembered for discovering Greta Garbo and bringing her to America. Born in Finland to Jewish parents, his father died when he was four years old, at which point his mother committed suicide. He was raised by family friends and showed an interest in acting from an early age. On reaching adulthood, he was drafted into the Russian imperial army - Finland was at the time a grand duchy of Russia - but rather than serve, he fled the country and settled in Sweden. By 1912, he had become involved with Sweden's rapidly developing silent film industry, writing screenplays, acting, and directing in short films. But after a few years he gave up acting to devote his time to writing and directing, and was soon directing feature-length productions; by 1920 he had directed more than thirty-five films. He met an eighteen-year-old actress named Greta Gustafsson at the Royal Dramatic Theatre in Stockholm and subsequently cast her in his 1924 Gösta Berlings saga. (He may or may not have also been romantically involved with the young actress at some point but, otherwise, he seems to have been fairly openly gay.) Two years later the actress, now dubbed Greta Garbo, traveled with him to the United States at the behest of MGM. It's now disputed as to whether the film studio was primarily interested in the director or in his protégée, and only accepted the other since they came as a "package deal." Stiller was assigned to direct Garbo's second film at MGM but, after continually arguing with the studio executives, he was fired from the film and his contract was terminated. He was hired by Paramount and made three successful films there before being fired while making a fourth, again as a result of his continuous disagreements with the studio. He then returned to Sweden and died of pleurisy the following year at the age of only forty-five.

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Arvid Lorentz Fougstedt (17 June 1888, Stockholm - 4 October 1949, Stockholm), Swedish painter and draftsman. Training first in Stockholm, later, in Paris, he studied at the Académie Colarossi and with Henri Matisse. He worked in Spain and later studied in Italy. Having returned to Sweden in 1917, he had developed a personal style that was a synthesis of painting of the French Empire, French Cubism, and of the German and Dutch Renaissance. By the 1920s he'd established himself as a respected portrait artist. He was the brother of the sculptor Nils Fougstedt, and he was also the father of the artist Erik Wessel-Fougstedt.