Motiv från Lofoten (Scene from Lofoten)

Anna Boberg was not only a talented designer (working in ceramics, glass and textiles) but also a, self-taught, painter who excelled in exotic landscapes depicting the rugged beauty of northern Norway. A defining moment in her life was coming face to face with the arctic landscape of Lofoten (an archipelago and traditional district in the county of Nordland, Norway) and its distinctive scenery with dramatic mountain peaks, open sea, sheltered bays, beaches and untouched lands. In her autobiography, Envar sitt ödes lekboll (1934) Boberg remembered the impact that the landscape had on her: ‘After a week in nature based at the fishing village of Svolvær, I was so taken by the mountains of Lofoten that I just plain refused to go home. I wanted to stay and paint, paint, paint. My husband went home via Trondheim and from there he sent me all the items I required for painting.’ And paint she would! Boberg spent a lot of time in Lofoten over the years and was very productive whilst there. Stockholm’s Nationalmuseum, alone, holds nearly 200 (!) of her landscapes (sketches/studies, watercolours and oil paintings) from the region in its collection. Anna Lena Lindberg writes (in Anna Katarina Boberg, www.skbl.se/sv/artikel/Anna Boberg, Svenskt kvinnobiografiskt lexikon, article by Anna Lindberg, retrieved 2025-03-10):

A few weeks’ studying at the Académie Julian in Paris notwithstanding, Anna Boberg was basically self-taught when she was struck by the sublime nature of Lofoten - the land of the mountains, the midnight sun of summer and the northern lights of winter and the sea, all as magnificently unforgiving as beautiful. […] Her husband, architect Ferdinand Boberg, supported her and had a hut built for her. From 1901 she returned to Lofoten and Nordland as often as possible, usually on her own and preferably in wintertime. […] Little has been written about Anna Boberg’s paintings from Lofoten. Her autobiography offers little information on her contribution to the Swedish art world as it reveals nothing of her relationship with her contemporary colleagues. It appears that she was part of the same national romantic movement which portrayed regional environments, as several of the members of Konstnärsförbundet (the Swedish Artists’ Federation) did. At best she received mixed reviews, and sometimes negative reviews when she exhibited in Stockholm, while she got positive reviews in Paris, Venice, Rome and other cities. In addition to those works held in the collection at Stockholm’s National museum other examples of her work can be found in several Swedish museum collections and also abroad.

The hardship and endurance involved in Anna Boberg’s art were poetically encapsulated by Hanna Astrup Larsen (1873 - 1945, Norwegian-American writer, literary editor, translator and anthropologist) in 1913. Writing in the American periodical The Craftsman, Larsen described how: ‘For several months of each year this delicately nurtured woman of gay Stockholm braves such hardships as men endure in order to put a new dot on the map or plant the flag of their country where flag never waved before.’ This was the era of Roald Amundsen (1872 - 1928) and Captain Scott’s (1868 - 1912) polar expeditions, but the flag Boberg planted was that of women painters and their fortitude in the pursuit of art.

Michael Prodger (associate editor at the New Statesman) writes (in ‘Anna Boberg’s timeless Arctic landscapes’, article in The New Statesman, 13 July 2022):

By then, courtesy of an article in the Boston Daily Globe entitled – for effect rather than accuracy – “Barefoot in Polar Snow: Swedish Woman Artist Braves Cold for Arctic Effects”, Boberg (1864-1935) was already hailed as “Sweden’s greatest artist”. Although her reputation subsequently slipped behind contemporaries such as Anders Zorn, Carl Larsson and Hilma af Klint, she was undoubtedly the hardiest of the lot. For more than 30 years Boberg was more at home on the Lofoten archipelago, a group of isolated islands off the coast of Norway and more than 100 miles north of the Arctic Circle, than in Stockholm or any of the capitals of Europe.

Boberg, as pointed out by Prodger, was not the first artist to head this far north – Johan Christian Dahl (1788 - 1857, Danish-Norwegian artist considered the first great romantic painter in Norway and often described as ‘the father of Norwegian landscape painting’) and Peder Balke (1804 - 1887, Norwegian painter known for portraying the landscape of Norway in a romantic and dramatic manner) had travelled there in the first half of the 19th century – and nor was Boberg the only woman painter in the Arctic. Others included Emilie Demant Hatt (1873 - 1958, artist, writer, ethnographer and folklorist, her area of interest and expertise was the culture and way of life of Sámi people) from Denmark and a fellow Swede, Anna Nordlander (1843 - 1879, known for her portraits and depictions of genre- nature- and folk life; also counted as a pioneer in the illustration of the lives of the Forest Samí of northern Sweden). There were also pioneering female mountaineers and travel writers beginning to explore the region. None, however, was as embedded in the landscape and scattered communities as Boberg.

Indeed, Boberg’s intense examinations of the coasts, mountains and glaciers of Lofoten were, in her own mind, almost as scientific as they were artistic. She imagined herself ‘as giving an illusory glimpse of a respectable polar researcher!’ – and she was partly correct. Her paintings of glaciers and the photographs taken by both her and her husband, are now used to compare the health of the area’s glaciers then and now.

In recent years there has been a revival of interest in Boberg internationally. In the summer of 2024, Ben Elwes Fine Art in London presented the highly appreciated exhibition Anna Boberg (1864 - 1935) Painting the Arctic Summer and in 2025 Boberg was also included in the celebrated exhibition Northern Lights at Fondation Beyeler, Basel, Switzerland. International museums that have recently acquired works by Boberg include the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Canada (Sunlight and Showers) and the Krannert Art Museum, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, USA (Fishing Boats, Lofoten, Norway).

Provenance

Stockholms Auktionsverk, Stockholm, Klassiska & Asiatiska, 10 - 11 December 2024.

Firestorm Foundation (acquired from the above sale).

Exhibitions

Prins Eugens Waldemarsudde, Stockholm, Kvinnliga pionjärer - Visionära landskap, 4 March - 20 August 2023, no. 35.

Literature

(Ed.) Karin Sidén, Kvinnliga pionjärer - Ester Almqvist Anna Boberg Ellen Trotzig Charlotte Wahlström - Visionära landskap, exhibition catalogue, Prins Eugens Waldemarsudde, Stockholm, 2023, illustrated p. 29 and listed in the catalogue p. 188.

Copyright Firestorm Foundation