/The Canon: Perspectives on Swedish Art Historiography/
The couple Pontus and Göthilda Fürstenberg were influential patrons and collectors of art in Gothenburg at the end of the 19th century. Through their strong support of the so-called Opponents, they had a major impact on the canon of Swedish art history. The Opponents was a group of young Swedish artists who were influenced new French art of the 1880s. Less well known is their contribution to strengthening Gothenburg’s position in the art world.
In this watercolour, Carl Larsson depicts the Fürstenbergs in their art gallery in the Fürstenberg Palace, occupied by seemingly everyday activities: Pontus Fürstenberg studies a work of art on paper, while Göthilda Fürstenberg is painted during a sitting for a portrait by her second cousin Ernst Josephson.
/The Canon: Perspectives on Swedish Art Historiography/
Carl Larsson gives us the chance to look more closely at the original Fürstenberg Gallery. To the right stands Ernst Josephson, stooping, wholly focused on painting Göthilda Fürstenberg’s portrait (which was never completed). Seated with his back to them, her husband Pontus is studying what is probably a print. The decor is typical of the day: a heavy baroque table in the foreground, the sideboard on the left, the armchairs, the red walls, the parquet, the carpet. The background is filled by Raphaël Collin’s vast painting, Summer (1884). In the middle of the room stands Per Hasselberg’s sculpture The Snowdrop (1885). Larsson’s watercolour also gives us glimpses of works by Auguste Pointelin, Alfred Wahlberg, and Hans Heyerdahl. The sculptures decorating the cornice were done by Per Hasselberg as allegories of inventions such as dynamite, electricity, photography, magnetism, the telephone, and steam. Several of the Opponents had contributed tondos. The corner ornamentation, however, was the work of the French sculptor Louis Étienne Albert-Lefeuvre.
Kristoffer Arvidsson from The Collection Gothenburg Museum of Art, Gothenburg 2014
