Lot 216: Georg Pauli (Jön Köping 1855-1935 Stockholm)

Georg Pauli (Jön Köping 1855-1935 Stockholm)
On the pier
signed twice 'G. Pauli.' (lower right)
oil on canvas
39 1/8 x 55 7/8 in. (99.2 x 141.8 cm.)

C.G. Laurin, Minnen 1898-1908, Stockholm, 1931, p. 245 (illus.).
S. de Vries-Evans, The Impressionists Revealed, Masterpieces from Private Collections, London, 1992, p. 133 (illus.).

Carl G. Laurin Collection.
Herman Asch Collection.
Folke Aschberg, by descent from the above.

THE PROPERTY OF A PRIVATE COLLECTOR
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The process of industrialisation in Sweden at the turn of the century started a Summer retreat into the healthy and harmonious life of the countryside. Artists' colonies sprang up throughout the archipelago and 'a country that only a few years before had been described as "a land with nothing to paint" was suddenly discovered by artists and the pictorial mapping of the Swedish landscape began on a scale hitherto unknown.' (T. Gunnarsson, Nordic Landscape Painting in the Nineteenth Century, New Haven and London 1998, p. 229).

In a letter dated 22 June 1887, Richard Bergh entreated Pauli; 'We must become Swedes, we have been Frenchmen long enough. We must take our French gloves off and get back into our "peau de Suède" - only then will we really conquer the Swedish public; we must pluck at their finest heartstrings - then victory will be ours forever!' On the pier is a quintessentially Swedish image; depicting a family awaiting the arrival of a steamboat.

The present work depicts Carl G. Laurin and members of both his and Asch's families. Laurin himself describes the work in his Memories of 1931; 'It is a very particular feeling of Swedish summer on a steamboat pier. Georg Pauli painted the pier where I often sat myself or rather took a walk when I lived at Rudboda. It was the Hustagaholm pier on Lidingö island at Kyrkviken. Pauli has in a beautiful way reproduced the quiet waiting and family gathering which characterises such places' (op. cit).