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| Image | Sale date | Auction house | Location | Sale name | Lot No. | Estimate | Price Sold | Condition | Title |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Dec 6, 2022 | Stockholms Auktionsverk | Stockholm | Fine Art & Antiques | 564 | $****** - ****** | Good | Stretching eiders; Stretching eiders |
paintings
46 x 75 cm (18.11 x 29.53 in)
Oil on canvas
Signed and dated Bruno Liljefors 1934
BRUNO LILJEFORS. Stretching eiders, oil on canvas, 46 x 75 cm.
BRUNO LILJEFORS 1860 - 1939 Stretching eiders Signed and dated Bruno Liljefors 1934. Oil on canvas, 46 x 75 cm.
Bruno Liljefors is the Swedish artist who is mainly associated with nature and animal motifs, especially in dramatic situations. Common to these situations are the movements of the animals - it could be a peregrine falcon striking a prey or house finches looking for food in the cherry tree. With zoological precision, the reproduction of the animal"s physiognomy and appearance is as important to Liljefors as capturing its movement. One part of this work was that Liljefors (like many other artists before and around the turn of the century) experimented with photography in order to be able to study in detail, for example, the rings of water around the lifting mallard in order to then be able to translate it to the canvas of the painting. Liljefors followed with great interest the photography pioneers George Douglas Campbell (also known as the Duke of Argyll), Eadweard Muybridge and Ottomar Anschütz who all worked to capture, within early modern photography, sharp images of animal movements. After the aforementioned photographers" studies, Liljefors was able to retrieve detailed information about the peregrine falcon"s wing position and the heron"s wing beat per unit of time. The progress of photography attracted great curiosity and admiration also within medicine and natural science, and when a photographic association was formed in Uppsala in 1889, Liljefors was included as one of the members.
These long-term and thorough studies of animal movement mean that Liljefors" knowledge of different species" movement patterns is translated into his paintings. The motif of stretching eiders is recognizable from several paintings, but it is striking how Liljefors can problematize visual impressions and give them new forms. The motif can in many cases be perceived as the same, but as the sensitive artist and connoisseur of nature Liljefors is, the motif is viewed from different directions and angles, which means that it always feels new and unique. One of the most famous paintings with eiders is "Sträkkande eider" (1901) which can be found at the Thielska gallery. In that painting, just like in the auction"s "Stretching eiders", the wings are shaped by dissolving the contours, which gives the viewer the feeling of movement. Liljefors himself writes the following about the eider in his notes: "Then the eiders will gather in flocks to move south. The birds fly in width on one or more lines forming a long bank, which rolls forward over the surface of the water with an undulating movement, sometimes sneaking down into the wave valleys, then rising above a breach. The path divides and parts of it change places, but the individual"s courses are parallel and things are arranged according to laws that make the rampart roll calmly and steadily forward" (Ellenius, page 89).
