Cat in a Summer Meadow

Carl-Johan Olsson Curator, Paintings and Sculpture

Art Bulletin of Nationalmuseum Stockholm

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Cat in a Summer Meadow

Carl-Johan Olsson Curator, Paintings and Sculpture

Fig. N Bruno Liljefors ( NUSMÓNVPV ), Cat in a Summer Meadow, NUUT . Oil on canvas, SN ñ TS cm. Purchase: Sophia Giesecke Fund. Nationalmuseum, åã TNOUK

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få NVVO the Nationalmuseum acquired five paintings by Bruno Liljefors. Four of them – Red-Backed Shrike, Corncrake, Chaffinches and Willow Warbler – were mounted togeth - er, while the fifth, Nestlings of Red-Backed Shrike (Fig. Q), was purchased separately. Originally though, the last-mentioned painting was framed together with the new - ly acquired Cat in a Summer Meadow and the composition of four bird studies. To begin with, these six paintings constituted the largest known set of the kind of animal studies, mounted together, which Liljefors executed in the NUUM s, and of which only a few intact examples now exist. The acquisi - tion of Cat in a Summer Meadow (Fig. N) is also important in the sense that it means that the painting Nestlings of Red-Backed Shrike (Fig. O) can now be experienced in the way Liljefors intended (Fig. P). Cats and dogs are the only domesticat - ed animals given a prominent place in Lil - jefors’ pictorial world. There are clear dif - ferences, though, between his images of the two. Dogs figure primarily in scenes re - lated to hunting, and act at the hunter’s command. Cats, on the other hand, usually appear as independent predators. Liljefors’ love of felines is well documented, and the way he depicts them seems to reflect a painstaking process of observation that gives his representations of cats a subtle sensitivity compared with those of dogs. From its position in the lower right- hand corner of the painting, our Cat in a Summer Meadow appears to have its gaze locked on a quarry outside the picture. Judging from its posture, it is moving very slowly. Although unconventional perspec - tives were something very much associated Fig. Bruno Liljefors ( ), Nestlings of Red-Backed Shrike, . Oil on canvas, cm. O NUSMÓNVPV NUUT SMKR ñ QS with Liljefors in the s, it is difficult to Purchase: Axel Hirsch Fund. Nationalmuseum, åã SUTQK NUUM find compositions from that period which place the most meaning-bearing element so far from the centre of the image. 1 What, then, can Liljefors’ intention with this arrangement have been? Allan Ellenius, in Liljefors: Naturen som livsrum (Nature as Liv - ing Space), recounts how the commissioner of another cat subject ( Cat in a Flowering Summer Meadow, NUUQ ) complained that

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Fig. P Bruno Liljefors ( NUSMÓNVPV ), Cat in a Summer Meadow and Nestlings of Red-Backed Shrike, NUUT . Oil on canvas, VP ñ NRS cm. Nationalmuseum, åã TNOU and åã SUTQK

“there was ‘too little’ in the picture, making strike us as unconventional. The young periphery in a painting like Cat in a Summer the surroundings desolate”. 2 Ellenius adds birds are perched high up in the picture, Meadow may be comprehensible to the view - that “Liljefors commented on this criticism and below them we see a sandy bank over er. But if the lower part of Nestlings were to in a letter to Zorn, explaining that the cat which a plant spreads its green leaves. The be taken out of context, it is uncertain stalking its prey makes a ‘better impression’ five nestlings are painted in great detail, whether that would be the case. A conceiv - without a lot of unnecessary details.” 3 In the while the vegetation is characterised by able explanation for the way the focus is newly acquired painting, which is dated more economical brushwork. In the lower made to dissolve downwards through the three years later, the artist has taken this part of the canvas, the artist has used sug - picture is that Liljefors wanted to use the op - idea a step further. In the NUUQ painting, he gestive brushstrokes to represent an intri - tical disposition of the human field of vision placed the flowers in an even pattern across cate mass of foliage. as a starting point for both viewing and rep - the entire picture surface. In the later one, Scanning the whole of the picture sur - resenting the subject. A simple test shows the vegetation is painted with less emphasis face with our gaze, we notice a striking con - that, if that was his intention, he has suc - on the representation of individual details trast between the birds, with the area ceeded. Focus on the birds and note at the and with no evident thought for the decora - around them, and the lower portion with same time how, without lowering your gaze tive effect that informed the earlier picture. the leaves. I have found no other example in the slightest, you perceive the foliage be - As in Cat in a Summer Meadow, the per - of Liljefors’ work from the NUUM s in which low them. In all probability, your perception spective of Nestlings of Red-Backed Shrike and the focus fades away as markedly as in of the lower part of the image would have the arrangement of its different elements Nestlings . Even on its own, a segment of the been identical even if the artist had painted

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degrees of focus. The meaning which these have when we examine each picture on its own remains when we view the two togeth - er, but now an additional explanation also emerges. The passages painted least sharply in the pictures turn out to be immediately to the right of the cat and to the left of the birds. Liljefors has thus made the images dependent on one another, without allow - ing them to encroach on each other. As far as the nestlings are concerned, the simply painted area in the upper right of the cat picture shifts the focus onto them. Even more importantly perhaps, this virtually “empty” area allows the branch the birds are perched on to seem to reach in across the other painting. Fig. Bruno Liljefors ( ), Four Bird Studies in one Frame . Oil on canvas and wood, cm Q NUSMÓNVPV VV ñ NSS With the acquisition of Cat in a Summer (frame). Nationalmuseum, åã SUTPK Meadow, a work of art has been recreated and the two pictures now appear in a very different light. The ideas behind the com - positions become clear, and the whole the leaves with great attention to detail. of them incorporate at least one fox, cat or which they form constitutes perhaps the Such an intention possibly also explains the bird of prey. Such a relationship can also be most interesting example of how Bruno Lil - arrangement of the picture. Placing the seen between Cat in a Summer Meadow and jefors worked with varying degrees of focus. birds high up creates a single, larger periph - Nestlings . The immediate links between the The two paintings demonstrate what an ex - ery, rather than two smaller ones corre - pictures, however, seem in the first instance ceptional eye he had for nature and our sponding to a little less than the upper and to be purely technical. I shall attempt here perception of it. It is often noted how reluc - lower halves of the painting. There are thus to highlight features that appear to demon - tant Liljefors was to represent animals anec - fewer parts for the eye to relate to. strate the artist’s concern to create a uni - dotally. Cat in a Summer Meadow, together What significance, then, does remount - fied whole out of these two paintings. with Nestlings of Red-Backed Shrike, shows how ing the pictures have for our understand - To begin with, the colours in each pic - the “ Harimaze principle” seems to have of - ing of them? Liljefors himself does not ture have counterparts in the other. Lilje - fered a logical solution to this. It makes it seem to have written or said anything about fors has, where necessary, balanced the in - possible to depict species living in each oth - the thinking behind arrangements of this dividual hues. The blue patch of sky in er’s vicinity without imposing on the viewer kind. Research has suggested that they may Nestlings would probably, as the only ele - a sequence of events that evokes associa - be modelled on Japanese Harimaze wood - ment of blue, have been too luminous, but tions with human stories, and to focus in - cuts – woodblock prints of several images it is subtly balanced by blue accents in the stead on different manifestations of the on a single sheet, intended to be cut out form of flowers or dabs of pure colour scat - conditions in which the individual animals and glued in an irregular order on screens, tered across the left-hand picture. On the live. which are often gilt. inside edges of the paintings, a certain type I have not found any example among of brushwork seems to transcend the Notes: In Liljefors’ later work, the animals are often the arrangements preserved where two pic - boundary between them and make them NK placed markedly outside the centre of the tures are perceived as a coherent spatial en - parts of a single whole. Towards the top, picture, but this should be linked to the concept tity. Nor is this the case with Cat in a Summer the upper edges of a patch of soil in the left- of camouflage , which became one of his most Meadow and Nestlings of Red-Backed Shrike. In hand picture and some greenery in the important basic themes. all these groups of images, we can note dif - right-hand one form a diagonal that cuts OK Allan Ellenius, Bruno Liljefors: Naturen som ferent kinds of overarching relationships across both images. Perhaps the most inter - livsrum, Stockholm NVVS , p. 54. between the individual paintings, consist - esting device for getting the paintings to PK Ibid. ing for instance in possible food chains. All work together is the artist’s use of different

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