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Lillans sista bädd ('The last bed of The Little One')
Amalia Lindegren1858
Nordiska Museet
Stockholm, Sweden
Few artworks have become so well known and so beloved in their time as Lillans sista bädd, painted by Amalia Lindegren in 1858. The motif is the interior of a peasant's cottage, where a family in Rättvik costume mourn a deceased infant in a cradle. The mother kneels on the floor and leans over the cradle with one hand to her face. A girl aged around three stands next to her father, with an elderly man in a fur coat at the rear.
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Details
- Title: Lillans sista bädd ('The last bed of The Little One')
- Creator: Amalia Lindegren
- Creator Lifespan: 1814/1891
- Date Created: 1858
- Physical Dimensions: w98 x h77 cm
- More Information: Lindegren's talent was discovered early, and she was able to undergo instruction at the Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm for a few months in 1849, even though she was a woman. She was awarded a government travel grant and studied painting in Paris between 1850 and 1854, after which she spent short periods in Italy and Germany, including Düsseldorf. At that time, Dusseldorf was an influential centre for art, where painting folk life was a focus and artists were interested in the archaic in environments, customs and costumes. In addition to portraits, Lindegren liked to paint motifs taken from everyday life. She found inspiration while travelling in her mother's home region of Dalarna and painted genre pictures, everyday pictures that did not need explaining to be understood. The painting Lillans sista bädd has a narrative content and the cottage interior and people's clothes are depicted in detail. This narrative realism aroused the emotions of her audience and made Lindegren's genre paintings much appreciated by contemporaries. Nordiska museet's founder Artur Hazelius also saw the value of Amalia Lindegren's painting as a communicator of everyday folk life. Hazelius, who had already exhibited cottage interiors with dolls dressed in folk costume at his museum on Drottninggatan in Stockholm in 1873, liked to choose dramatic effects and sentimentality in the tableaux he chose to set up, and in that sense 'Lillans sista bädd' was perfect. The motif was staged at the museum on Drottninggatan for the first time in 1877. The tableau was shown as one of several scenes in the World's Fairs in Philadelphia in 1876, Paris in 1878 and Chicago in 1893, and was highly acclaimed. Several newspaper articles from Paris are quoted in the commemoration sheet for Artur Hazelius from 1933. One newspaper wrote: “Never have wax or wooden figures and theatre decorations attained such an artistic effect of truth and life. All mothers cry when they see Lillans sista bädd---.” The picture of the mourning family, cottage interiors with scenes from Värmland and Vingåker and a panorama featuring Samis from Kvickjock created a worldwide reputation for the museum. Nordiska museet was given the painting as a bequest in 1975.
- Materials and Techniques: Stretcher and gilt frame with leaf motif.
- Type: Painting
- Rights: Photo: Karolina Kristensson, © Nordiska museet
- External Link: http://www.digitaltmuseum.se/things/tavla/S-NM/NM.0297936
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