The water sprite is sitting by a stream, his arms raised to play his violin. His body turns in a spiral, creating a zigzag motion in the composition. Waving reeds grow around his legs and thigh and form a green crown on his head. His naked body is silhouetted against a dark cliff. On both sides, torrents of water fall precipitously from a river or lake at the top of the picture. Beyond the water there is a glimpse of distant landscape and a partly overcast sky. In the foreground, lily pads and two white water lilies float on calmer water.
Quickly, deftly, the water sprite wields his violin. The instrument’s shape is only implied and the bow has been painted over. Playing, the water sprite throws his head back, eyes closed, mouth half open in ecstasy. When he plays, he is at one with the music.
The image is strikingly fluid and expressively painted, and the artist has worked alternately with dark surfaces, balanced volumes, and contour lines around the arms and legs. The painting has been done in rough tones, reminiscent of the colour scale of a Velázquez or a Rembrandt.
The water sprite is an elemental being, a spirit in Scandinavian folklore who plays the fiddle or harp to attract young women whom he drags down to the depths. The motif has an erotic quality that is underscored by Josephson’s choice to paint the water sprite as young. The water sprite can also be seen as the essence of the obsessive and melancholy artist, forced to sacrifice companionship to create his works. The motif’s strong meaning for Josephson—he kept returning to it throughout his life—stems from his identification with the water sprite. The creature’s ecstasy and obsession are his own.
The image first originated from the Trollhättan Falls, which Josephson visited. The idea took shape during Josephson’s visit to Eggedal in Norway with his Norwegian friend from the Academy of Arts, Wilhelm Peters, in 1872. They also visited Numedalen, with its majestic waterfalls, and Sætesdalen. Yet it was only once he was in Rome in the late 1870s that Josephson tried his hand at sketching the subject. In Paris in 1881 he began work on the design in earnest, and went on to rework it over a period of several years.
In the so-called Lindeberg Sketch (Thiel Gallery), the sprite has turned to the right and throws back his head as he plays. The Nationalmuseum has the better-finished Van Gogh Sketch (the painting was owned by Theo Van Gogh). The Nationalmuseum also possesses a more elaborate version of the subject in tempera, the water sprite wreathed in a Romantic haze, and in the sky a yellow crescent moon.
In comparison, the version in the Fürstenberg Gallery has stronger contrasts and more expressive brushwork. The crescent moon is gone. An X-ray photograph taken in the 1950s showed an underlying sketch of a reclining nude woman. The Gothenburg version seems to have been completed after the painting in the Nationalmuseum, however.
In the summer of 1884, Josephson returned to Eggedal in Norway to paint the final version, The Nixie. The finished painting was a synthesis of the previous versions, with the subject now seen in naturalism’s clear light of day.
Josephson’s ambitious undertaking ended in a humiliating defeat. The Nixie was rejected by the Salon jury of 1885, and when the painting was put into the Opponents’ exhibition in Stockholm in the autumn of the same year, it was deliberately shown to disadvantage, hung unfavourably high, just below the ceiling. The Nixie met with derision from the public and critics alike. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, given that the painting was about the artist’s agonizing alienation, which for Josephson’s part would soon enough develop into self-imposed isolation. Vindication came in 1893, when Richard Bergh and other artist friends from his Opponent years organized his first solo exhibition in Stockholm. At the exhibition, Prince Eugen bought The Nixie. After unsuccessfully offering the painting as a gift to the Nationalmuseum, it remained in his possession, and to this day is still to be seen at Prince Eugen’s Waldemarsudde. The Gothenburg version was a present from Wilhelm von Gegerfelt to Pontus Fürstenberg.
Kristoffer Arvidsson from The Collection Gothenburg Museum of Art, Gothenburg 2014
