A Young Poet (1894), also in the Fürstenberg Gallery, is a Symbolist portrait of a Parisian bohemian sitting idly in the dark. In his left hand, which is resting on his leg, he is holding a shut book in a brown leather binding. The man, who is seated on a slate blue sofa, is depicted from a slight angle, and gazes thoughtfully past the viewer as if wrapped up in himself. The dark cloak encircles his slender body. The picture is dominated by dark colours—burgundy, purple, and bluish-green. But the man’s hatchet face shines olive-green and yellow. His head, with its sharply chiselled features and lowered chin, seems large, and leans forward slightly. A sliver of saffron-yellow gleams at his throat. From this point, a line arcs through the cloak and along the angled arm to the knee. In the top-right corner there is a flash of cloth with sinuous floral pattern—a curtain, perhaps, or a tapestry.
The impression is of a man who lives more in the world of poetry than in harsh reality; that he prefers the night’s protective darkness to daylight. This poet is a dreamer who flees bigotry, duty, and expectation. He dresses extravagantly as a challenge to bourgeois taste. As the poet seems turned in on himself, so the artist appears to want to turn his eyes inwards to the life of the soul, away from external reality. The theosophist and poet Charles Grolleau posed for this portrait.
At the time it was painted, Grolleau was an unknown poet and antiquarian bookseller, who earned his living as a post-office clerk. In the evenings he wrote Symbolist poetry or discussed Swedenborg’s theosophy and the supernatural in the Caveau du Soleil d’or. Grolleau was described as a sensitive and nervous personality, interested in occultism and mysticism. It was these traits that Sager-Nelson focused on in his soulful portrait.
Kristoffer Arvidsson from The Collection Gothenburg Museum of Art, Gothenburg 2014
