Brought up in a Stockholm slum rife with cholera, Larsson went on to paint his family life in the idyllic Swedish home. Here’s how he started.
Barbizon
Leading Spanish landscape painter of the late 19th century, he went to France to train in the 1860s, where he painted with Calame and Pissarro.
Known best for his watercolours of his wife and family in their ideal and idyllic Swedish home, his work is far richer and more varied.
How to tell Breton from Millet, and trying to settle the question as to which was the greater artist.
Some extraordinary paintings exploring transient and unusual effects of light, culminating in a retrospective, and his most radical work of all.
As the social message in his paintings faded, so they became brighter, and more appealing. Then he painted Ceres and dandelions…
Two of his most famous paintings were made in this period: The Gleaners, and The Angelus. Initial reaction was hostile, and neither became popular until after his death.
His style avoided sentimentality, showing life on the land as it really was. His paintings were faithful expression of what country life was really like for the poor.
Initially a portrait and history painter, he co-founded the Barbizon School in the late 1840s, turning to evocative scenes of poor country people.
Born two centuries ago, his paintings anticipated and influenced those of the mainstream Impressionists. He even painted from a floating studio.
