“My Art Museum”, located in the high-rise dominated Gangnam-gu district in Seoul, South Korea, is helping to commemorate 65 years of official interactions and cooperation between Sweden and the Republic of Korea. The museum is holding a special exhibition of paintings from the Nationalmuseum or National Museum of Fine Arts in central Stockholm, Sweden’s largest museum with a focus on art and design.

Owen encouraged anyone local who may have the opportunity to come and visit South Korea to make a stop at the exhibition.

“The traveling exhibition is titled ‘From Dawn to Dusk: Nationalmuseum Stockholm Collection’ and runs through August 25,” Owen said. “The exhibition includes about 79 paintings from Swedish, Norwegian, and Danish artists. The focus of ‘From Dawn to Dusk’ is the development of ideas and techniques of artists from the Nordic region, especially from the late 19th century to the early 20th century. The paintings are arranged in four sections, here called chapters, each with a particular theme that highlights some of the developments in Nordic painting that occurred during that time.”

Chapter One of the paintings follows the theme, “The dawn of innovation, Scandinavian art in a new light”. It introduces a historical development among Swedish artists in the late 1880s that resulted in the founding of The Artists’ Association — Konstnarsforbundet in Swedish — who were opposed to the more conservative ideas of the much older Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts.

Pictured is Jeffrey Owen, a Jamestown native who resides in South Korea, and recently visited a private art museum in South Korea. Submitted file photo

“The artists within The Artists’ Association demanded reform and modernization and new approaches for supporting artists,” Owen said. “The ideas of these artists were especially influenced by developments in the art world in France at the time and many had pursued training and international exchanges in France.”

Owen added that this group of artists included Carl Larsson, who lived from 1853 to 1919 and whose life and works may be familiar to many in the local area.

Chapter Two of the exhibit is titled “The noon of freedom, achievements of Nordic female painters” and highlights the contributions to Nordic painting that female artists have made.

“The paintings here remind visitors of the difficulties that female artists faced as they were determined to showcase their paintings and for some female artists, raising their families at the same time,” Owen said. “Several paintings by Swedish artist Anna Boberg, who lived from 1864 to 1935, known for her paintings of far northern landscapes in Norway and Sweden, are included.”

Additionally, Owen said a quote from Boberg is shown in the exhibit above one of the paintings, and says “I was so enchanted by the nature of Lofoten that I flatly refused to go home. I wanted to stay and paint, paint, paint.” The quote is shown in English and translated in Korean.

Pictured is “Foggy winter day. To the left a yellow house. Deep snow.” by Laurits Andersen Ring.

Chapter Three, “The monumental twilight, Scandinavian symbolism and national romanticism,” highlights the development of approaches to painting that the artists used to define a regional or national character in their work. One painting included in this section is “Foggy winter day. To the left a yellow house. Deep snow.” by Danish painter Laurits Andersen Ring.

“With its dark overcast skies and plowed country road, the scene here looks like it could be from Chautauqua County,” Owen said.

The final chapter of the exhibition, Chapter Four, titled “The cozy light, Scandinavian homes and interiors,” is set in a smaller room with a lower light level, Owen said. A short video that runs for six minutes and twenty-nine seconds shows a black and white film from 1916, showing aspects of life around the Larsson family property in Sundborn, Sweden, such as boating on a pond and his wife, Karin Bergoo, and one of their children sitting for a painting.

Owen specifically highlighted one of Larsson’s paintings from 1880.

“A warm emotion seems to be invoked in Larsson’s painting ‘Idyll’ with the well-dressed couple enjoying their time together under a dense forest canopy,” Owen said. “The exhibition also briefly introduces the history and collections of Nationalmuseum Stockholm, with its origins as a Royal Museum or Kungliga Museet in Swedish, dating back to 1792 up to some modern pieces in the collection.”

An image from a black and white film showing artist Carl Larsson and family life in 1916 in Sundborn, Sweden. Submitted photo

For local residents, if not able to visit the exhibition in person, Owen said if anyone is interested in learning more about the museum by visiting https://www.nationalmuseum.se/en/

“Idyll,” painted during an earlier time in Carl Larsson’s life, when he lived in France. Submitted photo