"(Per) Ekström was ten years older than most of the Paris Swedes, and in his early days at the Academy in Stockholm at the end of the 1860s he stood out amongs his contemporaries there as a free and independent artist, 'the only one with any genius at the Academy' according to (the artist) Carl Fredrick Hill. During the 1880s Ekström was already moving, basically on his own initiative, towards what could be called a personal version of Impressionism, but his originality is such that to classify him as an Impressionist in the usual sense of the term, is unwise. It is also difficult to say how far Ekström was drawing on Impressionist models, or whether he was developing the lessons of the Barbizon School in a more painterly direction. Certainly, however, the flooded or waterlogged woodland scenes that are a recurrent feature of Ekström's output in the 1880s had their counterparts among the Barbizon artists."

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     'Nordic Landscape Painting in the Nineteenth Century', by Torsten Gunnarsson, Yale University Press, 1998, p.187.

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     Per Ekström was a visual artist born in 1844 in Övre Segerstad on the island of Öland. He took drawing lessons as a child, then studied at the Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts from 1865−1872 where he received the Royal Medal from the Academy for landscape painting in 1875. In 1872 he took painting trips together with the August Strindberg as well as a study trip to Norway. During this period he was even worse off financially than the other artists, and while he was in Stockholm he lived a thoroughly bohemian life.

     He was influenced by French painting rather than the prevailing Düsseldorf School, and in 1876, thanks to the support of King Oscar II, he was able to go to Paris, Marly-le-Roy, Barbizon and Saint Germain, where he lived until 1890. There he came under the influence of the Barbizon School and Camille Corot. His first exhibit at the Salon was in 1878 and he won a gold medal at the Exposition Universelle in 1889.
    From 1882 to 1887 he was partly isolated in the village of Carolles and was strongly impressed by the plen air painting. After returning home, he became Öland's foremost interpreter and was soon called Solmålare, "the sun painter." He was a close friend of the writer and artist August Strindberg, and Ekström served as inspiration for the painter Sellén, a character in the novel, "The Red Room." In 1886 he joined the Artists' Association and participated in its first exhibition in Stockholm.

     In 1891, with advice of art collector and merchant Pontus Fürstenberg, the artist settled in Gothenburg, yet he continued to visit and paint scenes from Öland every summer and opened a studio in Birger Jarls Bazar, one of Stockholm's first modern office buildings. His studio became a popular meeting place for artists and intellectuals including the poet A.U. Bååth, the doctor-writer August Bondeson, the zoologist Anton Stuxberg, and artists such as Georg Pauli, Hanna Hirsch-Pauli, Reinhold Callmander, and Johan Ericson.

     As the 1890s progressed, he began to work in a style known as "mood impressionism" (stämningsimpressionism) where he created loose, impressionistic, atmospheric landscape scenes with sunsets.

     In 1904, he married Hanna Petronella Salomonsson, the daughter of a farmer in Alvesta, and in 1910 they moved to Öland.
     The artist is represented in these public collections:

• National Museum in Stockholm

• Gothenburg Art Museum

• Malmö Museum

• The Lund University Collection

• Hälsingborg Museum

• Prins Eugens Waldemarsudde

• Kalmar Art Museum

• Per Ekström Museum

Title:

"Öland Sunset through the Trees", 1901

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Artist:

Per Ekström (1844−1935)

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Type:

Oil on canvas

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Size:

72 x 122 cm

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Signed:

Lower right

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RHA I.D.#:

RHA-05/2011-059

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Status:

Available for lending to qualified institutions

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Provenance:

Bukowskis Auctioneer Göteborgs, May 2011 Auction

Lot 242952

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