Alfred Wahlberg (Swedish, 1834-1906) Fishing boats, Brittany, 1899 Oil on canvas

Lot description

Alfred Wahlberg (Swedish, 1834-1906) Fishing boats, Brittany, 1899 Oil on canvas 17-1/2 x 28-1/2 inches (44.5 x 72.4 cm) Signed, dated, and inscribed lower right: Alfr. Wahlberg / St Guénolé '99 PROVENANCE: Bukowskis, Stockholm, June 5, 2015, lot 937; Private collection, Ridgway, Colorado, acquired from the above. Swedish landscapist Alfred Wahlberg exemplified the extraordinarily rare artist who was precocious both as a musician and a painter. The son of a painter, Wahlberg trained with his father as a child and then gravitated to music, studying piano and clarinet at the Royal Swedish Academy in Stockholm, after which he joined an orchestra, all the while receiving preparatory education at the Royal Swedish Academy of Arts. As his enjoyment of painting grew in his early twenties, he began drawing landscapes and even sold a painting to the Swedish Art Association in 1856. The following year, perhaps buoyed by this important sale, Wahlberg committed to a career as a painter, moving to Düsseldorf to train at the Kunstakademie there. Returning to Stockholm in 1862, he quickly established himself as one of the foremost landscapists in Sweden. While his style still bore the marks of Düsseldorf's careful academicism, Wahlberg's artistic preoccupations were already emerging; his landscapes featured romantic skies and light effects and explored elaborate reflections on water. After his move to Paris in 1866, the artist's work became even dreamier, more lyrical, and almost musical in terms of its atmospheric effects. He explored moonlight views, as well as melting skies at the break and end of day with a new flickering brushwork and a brighter palette indebted to the experiments of the Impressionists. The present painting of fishing boats at low tide is a late-career work that demonstrates how, with Impressionist techniques, Wahlberg was able to conjure the shimmering colors of the shallows. HID01801242017