Lisbeth och Brita

In 1902 Carl Larsson was awarded a commission for a painting for the assembly hall of the Latinläroverket school in Göteborg (now Hvitfeldtska Gymnasiet, Göteborg). His intention was to produce a picture based on the story of St. George and the Dragon, but, when one day in the summer of 1902 he saw a number of children with flowers in their hands on the way to decorate the school for a school graduation, he was completely taken aback by the subject. (U. Neergaard, Carl Larsson; Signerat med pensel och penna, Stockholm, vol. 1, p. 88). Larsson thus chose to paint a festive panorama which focused on the Swedish children whose tradition it was to decorate their school before the summer holidays with birch leaves, bouquets of flowers, brooms and rushes. He called the painting Ute blaser sommarvind ('Outdoors Blow the Summer Winds'), a quote from Samuel Hedborn's lullaby.
Larsson worked on the painting for a year during which time he made careful observation of the people in his village of Sundborn in Dalecarlia. Many of these studies are in the Nationalmuseum, Stockholm and The Ateneum in Helsinki. Larsson used his own children amongst some of the village children for models. Our picture dates from 1902 and depicts his daughter, Lisbeth, carrying a large wreath of flowers, and behind his other daughter Brita, carrying a bouquet of cornflowers.
This sketch is identical to the final figure in the full composition. Larsson’s fascination with strength, activity, sunlight and the clear colour of Swedish folk art are all evident in our study for the painting. When Ute blaser sommarvind was finished in 1903, Larsson was regarded as being at the pinnacle of his career.
We are grateful to Torsten Gunnarsson for his assistance in preparing this catalogue entry.