In On the Rocks, Fiskebäckskil (1905–1906), Wilhelmson revisited the childhood trauma of his father’s death at sea. Some older sailors and fishermen have climbed onto Kvarnberget, the hill behind Fiskebäckskil on the Bohuslän coast, where, silent and taken by the beauty of the sunset, they gaze out over Gullmarsfjorden. The evening is still. The water between the skerries ripples gently. The men are all facing left, looking into rays of the setting sun. The men, with their grizzled beards and sunburnt faces, are marked by the elements and their barren, inhospitable surroundings.
The scene might be thought just one of Wilhelmson’s genre paintings from Fiskebäckskil, but this time it had a painful personal background. These were the granite rocks where as a child the artist learned in 1875 that his father had died at sea. Some older fishermen and sailors had gathered to have their fears confirmed by the sight of the empty fjord. The boy happened to overhear what they were saying to one another. There is something reconciliatory about this large painting.
The motif was taken from sketches for a series of murals for Östra Realläroverket, a senior school in Gothenburg, that were never done. Some of the sketches were used in his work on the county council’s chamber in Gothenburg in 1927. The composition provides an example of Wilhelmson’s aptitude for monumental art, as it is both rhythmic and restful with its grouped forms and strong horizontal lines.
Kristoffer Arvidsson from The Collection Gothenburg Museum of Art, Gothenburg 2014
