Jenny Nyström, the Convalescent

Jenny Nyström, The Convalescent Margareta Gynning Senior Curator, Communications and Audiences Art Bulletin of Nationalmuseum Stockholm Volume 22 Art Bulletin of Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, © Stockholms Auktionsverk, Stockholm Graphic Design is published with generous support from (Fig. 5, p. 35) BIGG the Friends of the Nationalmuseum. © Royal Library of Belgium, Brussels (Fig. 2, p. 38) Layout Nationalmuseum collaborates with © Teylers Museum, Haarlem (Fig. 3, p. 39) Agneta Bervokk Svenska Dagbladet and Grand Hôtel Stockholm. © Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Shelfmark: We would also like to thank FCB Fältman & Riserva.S.81(int.2) (Fig. 2, p. 42) Translation and Language Editing Malmén. © Galerie Tarantino, Paris (Figs. 3–4, p. 43) Gabriella Berggren, Erika Milburn and © Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain Martin Naylor Cover Illustration (Figs. 3–4, pp. 46–47) Anne Vallayer (1744–1818), Portrait of a Violinist, © National Library of Sweden, Stockholm Publishing 1773. Oil on canvas, 116 x 96 cm. Purchase: (Figs. 5–6, pp. 48–49) Janna Herder (Editor) and Ingrid Lindell The Wiros Fund. Nationalmuseum, NM 7297. © Uppsala Auktionskammare, Uppsala (Publications Manager) (Fig. 1, p. 51) Publisher © Landsarkivet, Gothenburg/Johan Pihlgren Art Bulletin of Nationalmuseum is published Berndt Arell, Director General (Fig. 3, p. 55) annually and contains articles on the history and © Västergötlands museum, Skara (Fig. 4, p. 55) theory of art relating to the collections of the Editor © Svensk Form Design Archive/Centre for Nationalmuseum. Janna Herder Business History (Fig. 2, p. 58) © Svenskt Tenn Archive and Collection, Nationalmuseum Editorial Committee Stockholm (Fig. 4, p. 60) Box 16176 Janna Herder, Linda Hinners, Merit Laine, © Denise Grünstein (Fig. 5, p. 152) SE–103 24 Stockholm, Sweden Lena Munther, Magnus Olausson, Martin Olin, © The National Gallery, London (Figs. 1–3, 6–7, www.nationalmuseum.se Maria Perers and Lidia Westerberg Olofsson 17, pp. 167–169, 172–173, 179) © Nationalmuseum, the authors and the owners © The National Museum of Art, Architecture and of the reproduced works Photographs Design, Oslo/Jarre Anne Hansteen, CC-BY-NC Nationalmuseum Photographic Studio/ (Fig. 8, p. 174) ISSN 2001-9238 Linn Ahlgren, Bodil Beckman, Erik Cornelius, © Nicholas Penny (Figs. 9–10, 12–14, 16, Anna Danielsson, Cecilia Heisser, Per-Åke Persson pp. 175, 177, 179) and Hans Thorwid © Museum Gustavianum, Uppsala (Fig. 11, p. 176) Picture Editor © Getty Museum CC-BY. Digital image courtesy of Rikard Nordström the Gettys Open Content Program (Fig. 15, p. 178) Photo Credits © The Swedish Royal Court/Håkan Lind © Samlungen der Hamburger Kunsthalle, (Fig. 9, p. 188) Hamburg (Fig. 5, p. 15) © Eva-Lena Bergström (Figs. 1, 3–4, 6–7, 9, © Museum Bredius The Hague (Fig. 6, p. 16) pp. 191–192, 194–196, 198) © The National Museum of Art, Architecture and © Statens Museum for Kunst/National Gallery of Design, Oslo/Jacques Lathion (Fig. 2, p. 23) Denmark, Copenhagen, CC-PD (Fig. 2, p. 193) © Kalmar läns museum, Kalmar/Rolf Lind © The Nordic Museum, Stockholm/Karolina (Fig. 3, p. 27) Kristensson (Fig. 5, p. 195) Art Bulletin of Nationalmuseum Volume 22, 2015 acquisitions/the convalescent Jenny Nyström, The Convalescent Margareta Gynning Senior Curator, Communications and Audiences Jenny Nyström (1854–1946) was a portrait painter and a pioneering picture-book artist, the first person in Sweden to make a profession of illustrating children’s books. Her classicist visual language had a de- cisive influence on the emergence of the mass-produced image in the country. Firm- ly rooted in the academic tradition and familiar with its formulas, she removed its solemn stamp of high culture and carried over history, religious and genre painting into the more modest world of the illustration.1 Convalescents Around the turn of the 20th century, con- valescing women and girls were a popular theme in visual art. In the painting The Convalescent from 1884 (Fig. 1), now acqui- red by the Nationalmuseum, Nyström has chosen to represent the subject from the narrative perspective of the classicist tradition, with an idealised young female figure at centre stage, hovering between life and death.2 The seriously ill patient is contra- sted with the shamelessly healthy-looking and pretty girl standing by her side. The invalid looks upwards, trustingly placing her fate in God’s hands. The picture is full Fig. 1 Jenny Nyström (1854–1946), The Convalescent, 1884. Oil on canvas, 154 x 115 cm. Purchase: Hedda and N. D. Qvist Fund. Nationalmuseum, NM 7303. 25 Art Bulletin of Nationalmuseum Volume 22, 2015 acquisitions/the convalescent of overt symbols, like the dead potted plant set against the bouquet of living flowers. The compositional pattern, centred on the histrionic body language and facial expres- sions of the figures, has its roots in an older anecdotal tradition. In early 19th-century genre painting, the figures often pose as they do here, on a kind of spotlit stage, creating a sense of distance. Many of Ny- ström’s fellow women artists were to ques- tion this kind of stereotyped female ideal. In Eva Bonnier’s (1857–1909) images of sickness, we find unembellished, everyday depictions, as for example in Reflection in Blue (1887), another work in the Muse- um’s collections (Fig. 2). The women in Bonnier’s painting are represented as subjects with a strong sense of purpose and integrity, and not as frail objects. They are portrayed from a realist perspective, placing us as viewers in the same room as the person who is ill. The New Woman In the 1870s and 1880s, women artists and writers had managed to carve out considerable space for themselves on the public art scene, shaking the male norm of the artist to its foundations. The many representa- tions of convalescents should therefore be linked to the major backlash that came in the 1890s against the “New Woman” – the professional woman of the day. Misogynous subjects like this ultimately had to do with norms regarding the female body and the construction of prevailing views of feminini- ty. In the 19th century, two important ima- Fig. 2 Eva Bonnier (1857–1909), Reflection in Blue, 1887. Oil on canvas, 80 x 64 cm. ges of women took shape: the weak, deli- Nationalmuseum, NM 1702. cate and sickly upper-class woman and the strong, dangerous and infectious woman of the lower classes. The convalescent became a symbol of subordination, of the fragility of “womanliness”, and hence proof of women’s inability to participate in public life. These pictures can be seen as a reaction to the emancipation of women at that time and an attempt to return them to the home and the private sphere. In the work of the Symbolists, women became a sign of the ti- meless, of the “eternal female”. The new fe- Art Bulletin of Nationalmuseum Volume 22, 2015 26 acquisitions/the convalescent male stereotypes of the turn of the century were madonna, muse or whore, since, ac- cording to the polarised and binary gender norms of the time, “woman” was either a primordial maternal force – the “life-giving mother” – or a dangerous elemental being that lured men to their destruction. The Paris Salon Jenny Nyström’s training included studies at the Gothenburg Museum School of Drawing and Painting (now the Valand Academy of Arts) and, from 1873 to 1881, at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm. There, she won the royal medal for the competi- tion subject Gustav Vasa as a Child before King Hans (Fig. 3). Nyström received a travel scholarship from the Academy in 1882 and moved to Paris, where she exhibited at the annual Salon.In 1886 she returned to Stock- holm and married Daniel Stoopendaal, a medical student. In 1893, their son Curt was born. It was during her time in Paris that Ny- ström painted The Convalescent. The same year, 1884, she had a self-portrait accepted Fig. 3 Jenny Nyström (1854–1946), Gustav Vasa as a Child before King Hans, 1881. Oil on canvas, for the Salon.3 She no doubt submitted 128 x 153 cm. Kalmar läns museum, KLM 45139. several paintings that year, presumably in- cluding The Convalescent, but only her self- portrait found favour with the jury. Many artists at that time chose to submit self- there are crucial differences between the fini, the “licked” surface of the comple- portraits, as they were an important way them. Compositionally, The Convalescent ted work of art. The modernist avant-garde of marketing their art. Since the late 18th has its basis in drawing and is constructed equated the sketch and the finished work, century, this had been the best means of from a classicist, academic perspective. The while painters of the juste milieu – the “hap- establishing one’s “brand” on the Europe- figures are plastically modelled and highly py medium” – had difficulty deciding when an art scene. idealised. The study of the young girl, by an image was to be regarded as finished. Jenny Nyström was a skilled entrepre- contrast, is painterly in character; its tech- If the study is by Nyström, she could have neur and made her mark as an illustrator nique is sketchy and its representation of painted it either while at the Academy in while still at the Academy, at the beginning the figure realistic. In my doctoral thesis, Stockholm, or a few years later in Paris. Au- of the 1880s. With The Convalescent, she Det ambivalenta perspektivet: Eva Bonnier och gust Malmström, one of the professors at deliberately turned her back on history pa- Hanna Hirsch-Pauli i 1880-talets konstliv the Academy, attached considerable weight inting and attempted to cater for the taste (The Ambivalent Perspective: Eva Bon- to the sketch in his teaching and had his of the Salon public and their interest in nier and Hanna Hirsch-Pauli on the Art students work on preparatory studies in tear-jerking subjects and dazzling technical Scene of the 1880s), I discussed the ques- oil.

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