Self-Portraits — the Hansson Family Portrait Collection

On International Women’s Day 2022, Stockholms Auktionsverk held a widely noted auction of works by female artists from the Hansson Family’s collection. Several final prices exceeded expectations and certain works sold for ten times their estimate. In the spring of 2023 this was followed by the auction of the family’s collection of works by Ester Henning, which attracted considerable attention and helped establish a new price level for her distinctive artistic practice.
A consistent hallmark of the Hansson Family’s collecting and exhibition activities has been a willingness to go their own way. The family has frequently championed overlooked or undervalued artistic practices long before they attracted market attention.

This applies not least to several female artists, among them Hilma af Klint and Lotte Laserstein. The early 20th-century provincial landscape painting — an area long particularly close to the family’s heart and the foundation of their museum project — has in recent years also gained growing international recognition. Works long regarded as peripheral in Sweden are now shown at leading international art fairs in Maastricht and New York and at prominent art dealers in London and Paris, before often finding their way into significant museum collections.

Interest in the self-portrait as an art form has simultaneously grown internationally. From a contemporary perspective, this development can partly be understood against the backdrop of today’s selfie culture and social media. On a deeper level, however, the particular attraction of the self-portrait lies in its ability to bring the viewer closer to the artist than any other genre. Whether the artist portrays the image he or she wishes to convey to the world, or lays bare their innermost self without a protective filter, the self-portrait offers a unique insight into the person behind the work.

An early pioneer in this area of collecting was the art patron Hjalmar Gabrielson (1876–1949). His collection was counted among the finest in the country and included works by among others Cézanne, Renoir, Matisse and Kandinsky. He is best remembered, however, for his extensive collection of self-portraits, primarily by Swedish 20th-century artists, which following his death was donated to the Gothenburg Museum of Art.
The Hansson Family’s collection, consisting of 45 self-portraits, is most closely comparable to Gabrielson’s. The collection spans an entire century and offers a fascinating overview of the development of the self-portrait throughout the 20th century.