At the Piano, also called the Piano Lesson (Vid pianot, även kalled pianolektionen)

This is an important painting by Josephson who stayed for some years at the 'Thielska gallerist'. This work was painted between 1874 and 1876 and underwent various retouches from the hand of the artist himself.Bloomberg mentioned that the model at the left hand side, listening to the girl playing, is the young sister of the artist, Hilma. She is 17 years old. There are a pencil drawing and a letter to Severin Nilsson describing the initial painting (September 1874). Josephson says that he started with a 'smaller picture' inspired by the folk song 'I think she was 14'. 'I imagined, he adds, that the younger girl is singing that song with the innocence of a child while the older one is listening to her. I placed a plaster Cupid above the latter's left shoulder to indicate the one that has been defeated by love. This idea came suddenly to me and I immediately sat down to undertake the whole painting'.The model for the youngest girl is Gurli Roselind, a summer friend of the family. The first version is identical to the drawing showing her right hand above the keyboard. In the present painting the hand is set on the keys.Josephson added the sleeves to the dress so that the skin of the girl is still visible under them. He gave more room to the piano as well as made various retouches.The seventeen-year-old girl seems to have been definitively shaped after the extension of the piano, now leaning on it. Several weeks took place between the two phases of creation. According to one of her sisters who accompanied Gurli Rosenlind (born in 1863) at the Josephsons', she was 12 or 13 years old then. They were always alone with the artist. There was no piano teacher. The correct title must rather be 'At the piano', according to Gelly Marcus. When Josephson started the painting (painted under) in September 1874, Gurli was eleven or at least did not look older. She still had the childhood innocence that Josephson mentioned. In the finished version she had grown up and looks closer to fourteen. This suggests that the painting was achieved in winter 1875-76. At that time Josephson made the portrait of fifteen-year-old Eugenie Salmson. In the meantime, the artist's ideas had matured and became more refined. He made a lot of progress after the 'Storyteller' andgetting closely involved with the model. This evolution took place just after his return, during the period he had assimilated what he learned abroad and had matured to become a first class portrait painter.