Karin Larsson,

née The birth name is the name of the person given upon their birth. The term may be applied to the surname, the given name or to the entire name. Where births are required to be officially registered, the entire name entered onto a births registe ...

Bergöö, (3 October 1859 – 18 February 1928) was a Swedish artist and designer who collaborated with her husband, Carl Larsson, as well as being often depicted in his paintings.

Early life and education

Karin Bergöö was born in

Örebro Örebro ( ; ) is the seventh-largest city in Sweden, the seat of Örebro Municipality, and capital of Örebro County. It is situated by the Närke Plain, near the lake Hjälmaren, a few kilometers inland along the small river Svartån, and ...

and grew up in

Hallsberg Hallsberg () is a bimunicipal locality and the seat of Hallsberg Municipality, Örebro County, Sweden with 7,122 inhabitants in 2010. It is also partly located in Kumla Municipality. Overview This settlement grew up around a railway junction, ...

, where her father, Adolf Bergöö, was a successful businessman. Her younger sister, Stina, married the English geologist

Francis Arthur Bather Francis Arthur Bather FRS (17 February 1863, in Richmond upon Thames – 20 March 1934) was a British palaeontologist, geologist and malacologist. His mother, Lucy Elizabeth Blomfield, was a daughter of Charles Blomfield, Bishop of London. His ...

. Karin showed early artistic talent, and after attending the Franska Skolan in Stockholm, studied at the ''Slöjdskolan'' (Handicrafts School; 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 from 1877 to 1882 at 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 ...

. After completing her studies there, she went to

Grez-sur-Loing Grez-sur-Loing (, literally ''Grez on Loing''; formerly Grès-en-Gâtinais, literally ''Grès in Gâtinais'') is a Communes of France, commune in the Seine-et-Marne Departments of France, department in north-central France. It is 6 km north o ...

, outside Paris, where there was a colony of Scandinavian artists, to continue painting."Karin Larsson – A Trendsetting Designer Long Before her Time"
, Carl Larsson Gården, Sundborn.

Life with Carl Larsson

In Grez-sur-Loing she met Carl Larsson; they fell in love and in 1883 returned to Stockholm and were married, returning together to Grez-sur-Loing, where their first child, Suzanne, was born in 1884. The following year, they returned to Sweden. In 1888 the Larssons went to Paris, on the suggestion of Pontus Fürstenberg of Gothenburg, who wanted a large painting by Carl to add to his art collection. They left their two children with Karin's parents in Hallsberg, and upon their return a year later, decorated the Bergöös' new house. They then moved into ''Lilla Hyttnäs'', a ''stuga'' (

cottage A cottage, during Feudalism in England, England's feudal period, was the holding by a cottager (known as a cotter or ''bordar'') of a small house with enough garden to feed a family and in return for the cottage, the cottager had to provide ...

) in Sundborn near

Falun Falun () is a city and the seat of Falun Municipality in Dalarna County, Sweden, with 37,291 inhabitants in 2010. It is also the capital of Dalarna County. Falun forms, together with Borlänge, a metropolitan area with just over 100,000 inhabit ...

where her father had been born. They enlarged it to accommodate their growing family and it became known as the Carl Larsson cottage. After her death, the cottage became a biographical museum. Karin larsson schommelstoel

Karin acted as a sounding-board and critic for Carl's work, in addition to being his primary model. With children and a large house to manage, she channelled her own artistic impulses into design. She designed and wove a large amount of the textiles used in the house, embroidered, and designed clothes for herself and the children and furniture which was created by a local carpenter. For example, the pinafores worn by her and other women who worked at Sundborn, known as ''karinförkläde'' in Swedish, were a practical design by her. The style in which the house was decorated and furnished to Karin's designs, depicted in Carl's paintings, created a new, recognisably Swedish style:Marge Thorell
"Karin Bergöö Larsson: Mother, muse and artist"
''

The Local ''The Local'' is a multi-regional, European digital news publisher targeting expats, labour migrants and second home owners. It has nine local editions: The Local Austria, The Local Denmark, The Local France, The Local Germany, The Local Italy, ...

'', 9 December 2008. "In total contrast to the prevailing style of dark heavy furnishings, its bright interiors incorporated an innovative blend of Swedish folk design and fin-de-siècle influences, including

Japonisme ''Japonisme'' is a French term that refers to the popularity and influence of Japanese art and design among a number of Western European artists in the nineteenth century following the Bakumatsu, forced reopening of foreign trade with Japan in 1 ...

and

Arts and Crafts The Arts and Crafts movement was an international trend in the Decorative arts, decorative and fine arts that developed earliest and most fully in the British Isles and subsequently spread across the British Empire and to the rest of Europe and ...

ideas from Britain."Tina Manoli and Nicola Costaras
"Preparations for 'Carl and Karin Larsson: Creators of the Swedish Style'"
''Conservation Journal'',

Victoria and Albert Museum The Victoria and Albert Museum (abbreviated V&A) in London is the world's largest museum of applied arts, decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 2.8 million objects. It was founded in 1852 and named after Queen ...

, 25, October 1997. In the "Swedish room" with which she replaced the little used

drawing room A drawing room is a room in a house where visitors may be entertained, and an alternative name for a living room. The name is derived from the 16th-century terms withdrawing room and withdrawing chamber, which remained in use through the 17th ce ...

, she removed curtains and placed furniture along the walls around a raised dais, creating a room within a room that was much used by the family, as shown in Carl's paintings, with a sofa in a corner for naps, shown in ''Lathörnet'' (Lazy Nook). Her textile designs and colours were also new: "Pre-modern in character they introduced a new abstract style in tapestry. Her bold compositions were executed in vibrant colours; her embroidery frequently used stylised plants. In black and white linen she reinterpreted Japanese motifs." She is buried in Sundborn cemetery. 1997,

in London showed her interior design at the Carl Larsson exhibition. 2009 she was featured in an exhibition in Sundborn. 2018, the exhibition ''Carl Larsson and His Home: Art of the Swedish Lifestyle'' at Seiji Togo Memorial Sompo Japan Nipponkoa Museum of Art, showed textiles made by Karin, and paintings of their home, made by Carl. In 2024, the

National Gallery of Art The National Gallery of Art is an art museum in Washington, D.C., United States, located on the National Mall, between 3rd and 9th Streets, at Constitution Avenue NW. Open to the public and free of charge, the museum was privately established in ...

in Washington acquired her oil portrait of Pierre Louis Alexandre, painted in 1879–1880.

In popular culture

Larsson was the inspiration for Katherine Ashenburg's 2018 novel '' Sofie & Cecilia'' which is a fictionalized retelling of her life.

Paintings

References

External links