Amongst today's travels was a stopover in Sundborn, which was the home of the famous Swedish painter named Carl Larsson. The guide books tell you to look at the Swedish design of the house, which used contemporary ideas from other parts of Europe, but created a style which is now a characteristic of 'traditional' Swedish. I found the house more appealing because of the way the family life had been portrayed there. Described as small, for its day I suspect it was quite a well-off middle class property although it did eventually have to house Carl, his wife Karin (also a painter and later a designer) and their six children.
My trip around the house was with a chatty Swedish guide - in Swedish, so I had to guess most of what was being said, but overall I found the place quite endearing and with a reasonable amount of wry humour from Carl Larsson in the way the place was decorated.
This house has now become one of the most famous artist's homes in the world and shows the development of his paintings using the colour reproduction technology of the day (circa 1890-1910).
There are conventional paintings in oil and watercolour and also what must be some of the fore-runners of the modern day cartoon, not as actual cartoons, but using styles we would all recognise today. I gather he did also produce some sequential stories in this form although I have not seen them. At the end of the tour are a large collection of paintings and drawings including a wall fresco, more paintings of his family as well as what looks like a life-size Will Young in *ahem* just a cap going for a stroll in the woods (I was told to put that last piece in).
Something that comes across strongly is Larsson's love for his family and the many and enjoyable ways they are depicted as well as the sheer volume of his output, not just in paintings, but also as wall frescos, such that hardly a portion of the home is untouched.
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