Nils Kreuger

NILS KREUGER (1858-1930): Karikatyrbild av en läkare eller apotekare i sitt arbetsrum, signerad med monogram och daterad NK 1894, blyerts, brun tusch och akvarell på papper, 49x33 cm, bildyta 48x32,5 cm

PROVENIENS
Provinsialläkare Gösta Kreuger, Sunne (konstnärens brorson),
därefter i arv fram till 2020


English text:
A caricature of a doctor or pharmacist in his study, signed and dated with monogram "NK 1894", pencil, brown ink and watercolor on paper, 49x33 cm., bildyta 48x32,5 cm.

Provenance: Medical doctor Gösta Kreuger,
thence by descent until 2020

The scientist is depicted naked with only a leaf covering his sex. Unequivocally this must be a reference to the Bible´s rendering of Man´s expulsion from Paradise. The statuette on the working desk depicting a muscular man flexing his muscles, suggests that the scientist is occupied in trying to discover a miraculous substance for gaining strength and health, alternatively, and perhaps more likely, an elixir for eternal life. Before the expulsion from Paradise, Man was immortal. Immortality was a much discussed subject during the nineteenth Century, one can only think of Mary Shelley´s story The Mortal Immortal, where the main character drinks an elixir, but finds that immortality is a living hell where everyone he loves must grow old and die around him. In The Immortal by Jorge Luis Borges, a whole society gains immortality, but in doing so, its people lose all motivation to act and to live.

The first recorded owner of this drawing, Medical doctor Gösta Kreuger, was a relation of the artist. Nils Kreuger had four siblings, two brothers and two sisters. Gösta Kreuger was probably the son of one of his brothers. A doctor by profession, the subject surely must have appealed to him. The same year, in 1894, Kreuger executed another caricature entitled "Patent", which depicts a scientist who has created a Perpetuum mobile (sale, Uppsala Auktionskammare, "International sale", 11-14 June 2019, lot 895).

In 1894, Kreuger became a coworker at the periodical "Söndagsnisse", a humoristic magazine to which a number of artists contributed with drawings. The present drawing was not published in any of the issues from 1894 or 1895 (Microfish The Royal Library, Stockholm). In 1894 he also begun work at the well known series of paintings ad drawings depicting famous historical people seen from behind, "historiska baksidor", including royalty.


Kreuger returned to Sweden from France in 1887 and settled in Varberg, a coastal town situated 70 km south of Gothenburg, in the province of Halland. Between 1893-1895 he was joined there by Richard Bergh and Karl Nordström and together they formed what became known as Varbergsskolan (The School of Varberg), which greatly contributed to the creation of a pure national romantic style as a reaction to realistic landscape painting.

In 1894 the group presented their works at Konstnärsförbundets 8th exhibition held in Stockholm (The Artists Association). Kreuger showed his famous pointillistic triptyk "Spring in Halland" (Nationalmuseum), Pauli his "Vision" (Nationalmuseum) and Nordström his groundbreaking picture "Varbergs fäste" (Sparbanken). Kreuger also participated with a group of drawings which caught the attention of the art historian Karl Wåhlin. In a review of the exhibition in "Ord och Bild", 5th booklet 1894, he wrote: "Nils Kreuger, som utställer några mycket känsliga smärre landskap i den veka, förfinade stil, som är honom egen, förträffliga tuschteckningar och dessutom en serie kostliga historiska karikatyrer, /" (Kreuger exhibits some very sensitive landscapes in his characteristic frail but refined style, excellent ink drawings and a series of historical caricatures).