Lot Essay
The process of industrialisation in Sweden at the turn of the century started a Summer retreat into the healthy and harmonious life of the countryside. Artists' colonies sprang up throughout the archipelago and 'a country that only a few years before had been described as "a land with nothing to paint" was suddenly discovered by artists and the pictorial mapping of the Swedish landscape began on a scale hitherto unknown.' (T. Gunnarsson, Nordic Landscape Painting in the Nineteenth Century, New Haven and London 1998, p. 229).
In a letter dated 22 June 1887, Richard Bergh entreated Pauli; 'We must become Swedes, we have been Frenchmen long enough. We must take our French gloves off and get back into our "peau de Suède" - only then will we really conquer the Swedish public; we must pluck at their finest heartstrings - then victory will be ours forever!' On the pier is a quintessentially Swedish image; depicting a family awaiting the arrival of a steamboat.
The present work depicts Carl G. Laurin and members of both his and Asch's families. Laurin himself describes the work in his Memories of 1931; 'It is a very particular feeling of Swedish summer on a steamboat pier. Georg Pauli painted the pier where I often sat myself or rather took a walk when I lived at Rudboda. It was the Hustagaholm pier on Lidingö island at Kyrkviken. Pauli has in a beautiful way reproduced the quiet waiting and family gathering which characterises such places' (op. cit).
In a letter dated 22 June 1887, Richard Bergh entreated Pauli; 'We must become Swedes, we have been Frenchmen long enough. We must take our French gloves off and get back into our "peau de Suède" - only then will we really conquer the Swedish public; we must pluck at their finest heartstrings - then victory will be ours forever!' On the pier is a quintessentially Swedish image; depicting a family awaiting the arrival of a steamboat.
The present work depicts Carl G. Laurin and members of both his and Asch's families. Laurin himself describes the work in his Memories of 1931; 'It is a very particular feeling of Swedish summer on a steamboat pier. Georg Pauli painted the pier where I often sat myself or rather took a walk when I lived at Rudboda. It was the Hustagaholm pier on Lidingö island at Kyrkviken. Pauli has in a beautiful way reproduced the quiet waiting and family gathering which characterises such places' (op. cit).