Eugène Jansson
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

Eugène Fredrik Jansson (18 March 1862,
Stockholm Stockholm (; ) is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in Sweden by population, most populous city of Sweden, as well as the List of urban areas in the Nordic countries, largest urban area in the Nordic countries. Approximately ...
– 15 June 1915,
Nacka Nacka () is the municipal seat of Nacka Municipality and part of Stockholm urban area in Sweden. The municipality's name harks back to a 16th-century industrial operation established by the Crown at Nacka farmstead where conditions for water mi ...
) was a Swedish painter known for his night-time
land Land, also known as dry land, ground, or earth, is the solid terrestrial surface of Earth not submerged by the ocean or another body of water. It makes up 29.2% of Earth's surface and includes all continents and islands. Earth's land sur ...
- and
cityscape In the visual arts, a cityscape (urban landscape) is an artistic representation, such as a painting, drawing, print or photograph, of the physical aspects of a city or urban area. It is the urban equivalent of a landscape. ''Townscape'' is ...
s dominated by shades of blue. Towards the end of his life, from about 1904, he mainly painted male nudes. The earlier of these phases has caused him to sometimes be referred to as ''blåmålaren'', "the blue-painter".


Life

Jansson's parents belonged to a social stratum straddling the working and the lower middle class, 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 Scarlet fever, also known as scarlatina, is an infectious disease caused by ''Streptococcus pyogenes'', a Group A streptococcus (GAS). It most commonly affects children between five and 15 years of age. The signs and symptoms include a sore ...
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. Jansson enrolled in the Tekniska skolan (now
Konstfack Konstfack University of Arts, Crafts and Design, is a university college for higher education in the area of art, crafts and design in Stockholm, Sweden. History Konstfack has had several different names since it was founded in 1844 by the eth ...
) and studied with Edvard Perséus, a painter who ran a private art school in Stockholm. He was accepted into the Antique school of the
Royal Swedish Academy of Arts The Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts (), commonly called the Royal Academy, is located in Stockholm, Sweden. An independent organization that promotes the development of painting, sculpture, architecture, and other fine arts, it is one of seve ...
in 1881, but did not have the means to follow most of his contemporaries to Paris for further studies. Remaining in Stockholm, which supplied him most of his motifs, his first trip outside the Nordic countries would come in 1900, when he had already become well-established as a painter and his economic situation had started to improve. In his youth, he assisted Perséus in his portrait production and painted some
still life A still life (: still lifes) is a work of art depicting mostly wikt:inanimate, inanimate subject matter, typically commonplace objects which are either natural (food, flowers, dead animals, plants, rocks, shells, etc.) or artificiality, human-m ...
s, but he eventually found his favourite motifs in the city surrounding him. He lived his whole life together with his mother and brother at
Södermalm Södermalm, often shortened to just Söder, is the southern district of Stockholm City Centre. Overview The Södermalm district covers the island of the same name (formerly called ''Åsön''), which, however, is not fully separated from th ...
, the southern part of Stockholm. They eventually settled in a flat at No. 40 Bastugatan, on a height with a view over most of central Stockholm including the
Riddarfjärden Riddarfjärden (, "The Knight Firth") is the easternmost bay of Lake Mälaren in central Stockholm. Stockholm was founded in 1252 on an island in the stream where Lake Mälaren (from the west) drains into the Baltic Sea (to the east); today the i ...
bay and the
Old town In a city or town, the old town is its historic or original core. Although the city is usually larger in its present form, many cities have redesignated this part of the city to commemorate its origins. In some cases, newer developments on t ...
. Most of his paintings from the 1890s up to 1904 are night views over Riddarfjärden, as he would have seen it from his home, or street views from various parts of Södermalm. They are dominated by shades of blue and very visible brush strokes, often crossing one another. Over the years his paintings moved towards increasing simplification and abstraction, and at the end of his "blue" period, little more than the street lights and their reflections in the waters can be discerned from the mass of blue of the canvas. After 1904, when he had already achieved success with his Stockholm views, Jansson confessed to a friend that he felt absolutely exhausted and had no more wish to continue with what he had done until then. He stopped participating in exhibitions for several years and went over to
figure painting A figure painting is a work of fine art in any of the Painting#Painting media, painting media with the primary subject being the human figure, whether clothed or Nude (art), nude. Figure painting may also refer to the activity of creating such ...
. To combat the health issues he had suffered from since childhood, he became a diligent swimmer and winter bather, often visiting the navy bathhouse, where he found the new subjects for his paintings. He painted groups of sunbathing sailors, and young muscular nude men lifting weights or doing other physical exercises. Art historians and critics have long avoided the issue of any possible homoerotic tendencies in this later phase of his art, but later studies (see Brummer 1999) have established that Jansson was in all probability homosexual and appears to have had a relationship with at least one of his models. His brother, Adrian Jansson, who was himself homosexual and survived Eugène by many years, burnt all his letters and many other papers, possibly to avoid scandal (homosexuality was illegal in Sweden until 1944).Brummer, Hans Henrik: "Blå skymning och atleter. Kring Eugène Janssons måleri", Konsthistorisk tidskrift, 68 (1999), pp. 65–79.


Gallery

File:Eugène Jansson Nocturne Thielska 136.tif, ''Nocturne'' (1901) File:Jansson,_Eugène_Frederik_-_Flottans_Badhus,_1907.jpg, ''Naval Bathhouse'' (1907) File:Selfportrait (Eugène Jansson) - Nationalmuseum - 19161.tif, ''
Self Portrait Self-portraits are Portrait painting, portraits artists make of themselves. Although self-portraits have been made since the earliest times, the practice of self-portraiture only gaining momentum in the Early Renaissance in the mid-15th century ...
'' (1910) File:Eugène Jansson Sailor's Ball Thielska 144.tif, ''Le Bal des marins '' (1912) File:Jansson, Eugène Fredrik (1862-1915) - Boys on the beach.jpg, ''Boys on the beach'' (1884) File:Eugène Jansson Acrobats Thielska 145.tif, ''Acrobats'' (1912) File:Eugène Jansson Hornsgatan Thielska 141.tif, '' Hornsgatan'' (1902) File:Eugène_Jansson_the_glorious_day.jpg, ''Athletes'' (1907) File:Jansson, Eugène Frederik - Badtavla 1908.jpg, ''Bathing scene'' (1908) File:Jansson Naken yngling.jpg, ''Nude youth'' (1907) File:Jansson_Anneau_1912.jpg, ''Les Anneaux '' (1912) File:Jansson,_Eugène_Fredrik_(1862-1915)_-_Lifting_Weights_with_One_Arm,_-_2_-1914-.jpg, ''Lifting Weights with One Arm '' (1914)


Notes


References

*Brummer, Hans Henrik: "Blå skymning och atleter. Kring Eugène Janssons måleri", ''
Konsthistorisk tidskrift ''Konsthistorisk tidskrift'' is a quarterly peer-reviewed Swedish academic journal on art history that was established in 1932 by ''Konsthistoriska sällskapet'' (the Society of Art Historians) in Stockholm. The journal was published until 1967 u ...
'', 68 (1999), pp. 65–79. *Zachau, Inga, ''Eugène Jansson: den blå stadens målare'', Lund: Signum, 1997.


External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Jansson, Eugene 19th-century Swedish painters Swedish male painters 20th-century Swedish painters 1862 births 1915 deaths Painters from Stockholm Gay painters Swedish gay artists Swedish LGBTQ painters 19th-century Swedish male artists 20th-century Swedish male artists