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Naken Yngling, 1907. A portrait of Knut Nyman, with whom the artist had an intimate relationship.
(One of Jansson's blue landscapes can be seen in the background.) |
Eugène Fredrik Jansson (18 March 1862, Stockholm - 15 June 1915, Skara), Swedish painter known for his nocturnal landscapes and cityscapes dominated by shades of blue; he has often been referred to as blåmålaren, "the blue-painter". His parents' societal position was somewhere between the working and lower middle classes, but they were interested in art and music and ambitious for their two sons, Eugène and his younger brother Adrian. Eugène went to the German School in Stockholm and took piano lessons. An attack of scarlet fever at the age of fourteen caused him health issues from which he suffered for the rest of his life, including bad eyesight and hearing and chronic kidney problems. He lived his whole life in Södermalm, the southern district of Stockholm. Most of his paintings from the 1890s up until 1904 are night views over Riddarfjärden, as he would have seen it from his home, or street views from various parts of the Södermalm district.
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| The Glorious Day, 1907. Knut Nyman modeled the seated figure. |
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| Acrobats, 1912. |
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| Standing nude, circa 1906. |
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| Seated nude, circa 1906. |
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| Cold Bath, 1911. |
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| Ring Gymnast II, 1912. |
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| Ring Gymnast I, 1912. |
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| Study for the previous image. |
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| Study. |
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| Study. |
Around 1904, after having previously achieved much success with his Stockholm views, he confessed to a friend his exhaustion with the sort of work he had done up until then. He stopped exhibiting for several years while he took up figure painting, specifically male nudes. At the same time, at the age of forty-two, to combat the health issues he had suffered from since childhood, he became a committed swimmer and winter bather, often visiting the navy bathhouse. The models he found in his new surroundings - sunbathing sailors and young nude men lifting weights or doing other physical exercises - became the subjects for his later paintings. He worked on this new subject matter in secret; his first public exhibition of a few pieces in 1907, brought both praise and condemnation. When he exhibited a larger group of these paintings, in conjunction with the 1912 Stockholm Olympic Games, the reaction was no less divided.
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| Pushing Weights with Two Arms I, 1911. |
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| Pushing Weights with Two Arms III, 1914. |
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| Pushing Weights with Two Arms II, 1913. |
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Standing nude, resting nude, 1908. Signed, dated, and inscribed with the names of the models
Julle Dahlgren and Otto Skånberg; Jansson often added the models' names to his work. |
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| Standing nude, circa 1906. |
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| Study. |
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| Carl Gyllins, 1906. |
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| Seated nude, circa 1907. |
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| Study. |
Though the topic was long avoided by art historians, his homosexuality is no longer questioned. He had a serious relationship with at least one of his models, Knut Nyman, who figures in several important works. He and Nyman began their relationship in 1906, and lived together between 1907 and 1913, apparently making little effort to disguise the fact that they were indeed a couple.
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| Young Man Standing in a Doorway - À la porte, 1907. Another portrait of Knut Nyman. |
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| Weightlifter, 1912. |
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| Weightlifter, 1911. |
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| Bathhouse scene, 1908. |
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| Study. |
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| Athletes, 1912. |
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| Lifting Weights With One Arm II, 1914. |
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| Study. |
At the beginning of 1915, the artist suffered a cerebral hemorrhage, which left him paralyzed on one side. For the last five months of his life, he was cared for by Rudolf Rydström, who had been trained as both a wrestler and a nurse. He had been an artist's model as well, and was the sort of young athletic man that most appealed to Jansson. A visitor described a visit to the artist's home during this time, and wrote of how moved he had been by the great tenderness shown Jansson by Rydström, and noted the contentment the artist appeared to feel in his nurse's company. Jansson died a month later at the age of fifty-three after suffering another cerebral hemorrhage.
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| Self-portrait at the navy bathhouse, 1910. |
Homosexuality was illegal in Sweden until 1944, and his younger brother Adrian, gay himself, and who survived Jansson by many years, burnt all the artist's letters and many other papers, with the intent of avoiding any potential scandal.
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And, lastly, Jansson's best known work from this later period, Flottans badhus - Naval Bathhouse, 1907.
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