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Farm portrait, Jämtland farmhouse
Anders Thorén1870/1890
Nordiska Museet
Stockholm, Sweden
Farm portrait, or 'gåramålning' of Bergom 1:1 in Dvärsätt just north of Östersund in Jämtland. The painting shows a nineteenth century Jämtland farmhouse of the larger type. Around the garden, surrounded by a white fence, are several buildings, both dwellings and outbuildings. The white farmhouse was built in 1875, the farm buildings about ten years earlier. The painting was done by Anders Thorén in the early 1900s.
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Details
- Title: Farm portrait, Jämtland farmhouse
- Creator: Anders Thorén
- Creator Lifespan: 1860/1923
- Date Created: 1870/1890
- Use: Rödön, Jämtland, Sweden
- Physical Dimensions: w98.5 x h74 cm
- More Information: Anders Thorén was born in 1860 in Rödön parish and lived there all his life. He was a house-painter, but did farm paintings as a hobby during the winter. Thorén was a stationary farm painter, who was active in his home parish and neighbouring parishes. He painted to order and got about 10 crowns for each picture. Farm paintings seem to have been most common in southern Sweden, and this naive documentary style of painting was performed by self-taught artists from the late nineteenth century until around the second world war. Today there are around a hundred well-known farm painters in Sweden. These people wandered around the countryside painting pictures of the homes of farmers. The purpose of the paintings was to show how fine the homes were, which means the perspective can be shifted to make everything fit into the picture. The flag is often raised, even in cases where the farm did not have a flagpole. The buildings were the main interest in the pictures. They seldom feature people or animals. However, they often feature fruit and vegetable gardens and flower beds in such detail that it is possible to see what plants were being grown. Farm paintings were very much appreciated by their owners at a time when photography was rare and colour photography did not even exist. When the paintings were replaced by aerial photography in the mid twentieth century, their status declined and many were put away or discarded. However, farm paintings are important historical documents, as they show what the landscape and buildings looked like in Sweden from the end of the nineteenth century through to the 1940s and 1950s.
- Type: Painting
- Rights: Photo: Karolina Kristensson, © Nordiska museet
- External Link: http://www.digitaltmuseum.se/things/grdsportrtt/S-NM/NM.0287379
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