Grekisk söndag (Greek Sunday)

The artistic genre of painting poultry in landscapes is well established in the history of Western art. A well-known international example can be found in the famous depictions of roosters, hens and chickens by the Dutch artist Melchior d’Hondecoeter (c. 1636 – 1695, animalier painter who was born in Utrecht and died in Amsterdam. After the start of his career, he painted, virtually exclusively, bird subjects; usually exotic or game, in park-like landscapes). Hondecoeter’s paintings usually featured roosters, hens, chicks, geese, partridges, pigeons, ducks, magpies and peacocks; in celebrated works like A Cock and Two Hens, with Chicks, in a Landscape Setting (1656 –1695, oil on canvas, 76.8 x 90 cm, National Trust, United Kingdom) and The Poultry Yard (1690s, oil on canvas, 148.2 x 170.3 cm, National Gallery of Victoria, Australia).

A geographically closer example, in Cronqvist’s case, is the Swedish landscape painter Johan Krouthén (1858 – 1932, painter who broke away from the traditions of the Swedish Academy, turning to Realism and Idealism when painting pictures of gardens and portraits of local people), whose countless idyllic, sun-drenched landscape scenes with chickens under flowering apple trees adorned the walls of many better-off Swedish homes in the early 20th century.

When, in 1964, a young and recently graduated Cronqvist took on the subject, however (in Grekisk söndag / Greek Sunday), it was with inspiration drawn from a completely different (and quite unique) artistic temperament: Francis Bacon (1909 – 1992, Irish-born British figurative painter known for his raw, unsettling imagery). Mårten Castenfors (born 1959, Swedish art critic and museum director) writes (in ‘Lena Cronqvist and the Quintessential’, article in Lena Cronqvist, 2003): 

In 1964 there is a radical change in Cronqvist’s motifs and her world of color. Suddenly there can be found in her painting an explicit fleshiness and an intensified treatment of color, which in themselves meant a marked departure from the common abstract art tendency that characterised the art world in the beginning of the 1960s. It may be that the actual transition, the way out of the informal thoughts of the times, can partly be explained by an encounter with Francis Bacon’s paintings at Liljevalch’s Museum: painting that forcibly showed that one could forego the dream of finding self-fulfilment and everything else in spontaneous flow painting. In Bacon’s world there was instead a thread leading to subjective narration and the courage to interpret the convolutions of the psyche using rich color treatment and figuration, art that was an expression and an unabashed registration of being. […] It is now also easy to see how Cronqvist even takes on a playful Swedish colorist narrative tradition that began with ecstatics like Carl Fredrik Hill and Ernst Josephson, and that continued through the 1910s and 20s with artists like Eric Hallström and Sven X-et Erixson.

That Cronqvist was indeed inspired by Bacon’s peculiarly personal and expressive painterly style has later been confirmed by the artist herself, for example in a 2003 interview with Eva Ström (‘Lena Cronqvist - A Conversation’, article in Lena Cronqvist):

When I went to the Art Academy tachisme was the only thing that counted, says Lena Cronqvist. It was all the rage to throw paint on the canvas, and that was something that felt absolutely alien to me. But one day I went to Liljevalchs konsthall and saw a group exhibition were several works of Francis Bacon were being shown - and then I felt moved. Finally something figurative. - What was it you saw in Bacon? - Humans. Human beings, simply.

The unabashed palette (commonly combined with black or darker areas), which is recognisable from Bacon’s paintings, is often found in Cronqvist’s work during these years. Cronqvist also uses compositional devices from Bacon, such as semi-circular shapes, in paintings like Ta det piano Hans (1964, oil on canvas, 110 x 100 cm) and Svartsjuka (1964, oil on canvas, 103 x 99 cm). One can also notice that Bacon’s characteristic cage-like structures occasionally seem to creep into Cronqvist’s canvases, in works like Nschyego (1964, oil on canvas, 116 x 100 cm) and Balkongen (1966, oil on canvas, 37 x 34 cm). In terms of concrete motifs, it is easy to draw parallels between Bacon’s Study of a Baboon (1953, oil on canvas, 198 x 137 cm, Museum of Modern Art, New York, U.S.A.) and Cronqvist’s Hej Babianen (1964, oil on canvas, 110 x 100 cm), while it also seems likely that Bacon’s Figure with Meat (1954, oil on canvas, 129 x 122 cm, Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, U.S.A.) well could have served as inspiration for Cronqvist’s I dörren till en verksamhet (1964, oil on canvas, 125 x 110 cm).

The ‘playful Swedish colorist narrative tradition’ that Castenfors writes about is also apparent in Grekisk söndag (Greek Sunday), a canvas that demonstrates how Cronqvist, at the time, was following in the footsteps of Swedish naïve artists like Eric Hallström (1893 - 1946) and Sven X-et Erixson (1899 - 1970). Castenfors, again, writes (in ‘Lena Cronqvist and the Quintessential’, article in Lena Cronqvist, 2003):

From the mid-60s Cronqvists painting, with its impressions from travels in Greece, Turkey, Morocco and South America, seems to spring from a lively and inquiring sense of discovery. During these years her painting is open with a skewed sense of logic that reinforces naïveté and theatrical stunts. Here everything is possible à la Chagall…[…]

When Firestorm Foundation acquired Grekisk söndag (Greek Sunday), the auction catalogue entry also stated:

This painting was shown at Lena Cronqvist's debut exhibition at Galerie Pierre in November 1965. The walls were adorned with paintings in expressive brushstrokes and several depicted various animals, such as monkeys or, as in the work in the auction, pecking chickens and a handsome rooster in the courtyard. In the same year as the painting in the auction, Lena married Göran Tunström and also completed her studies at the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm. The couple spent time in countries such as Greece and Mexico, where Lena's impressions were transferred to the canvases with vibrant colour. In ‘Greek Sunday’ she has been inspired by life in rural Greece, capturing the chickens eagerly pecking around watermelons on the farm. Even at a young age, she went her own way and her figurative images stood in stark contrast to the abstract painting that permeated contemporary art at the time. Her debut at Galerie Pierre paved the way for an acclaimed and much-publicised artistic career, based on highly personal experiences over almost six decades. She has changed the Swedish art landscape and today no one questions her obvious place as one of the most important Nordic artists of our time.

Signed and dated (lower right): ‘L. Cronqvist -64’.

Inscribed on the stretcher: ‘Lena Cronqvist Bollhusgränd 8’.

Provenance

Galerie Pierre, Stockholm.

Private collection.

Bukowskis, Stockholm, Moderna - Contemporary and Design, 27 April 1999, lot 439.

Private collection.

Uppsala Auktionskammare, Stockholm, Important Sale, 13 - 15 May 2025, lot 1015.

Firestorm Foundation (acquired at the above).

Exhibitions

Galerie Pierre, Stockholm, Lena Cronqvist, November 1965, no. 6.

Copyright Firestorm Foundation