Still Life with Guns

Items are hanging on very realistic nails on a wall of pine. Some letters, a calendar, a plan of a fortress, a sketch of a fighting scene and a comb are slipped in under a red band attached to the wall. Above this papers are two pistols hanging and between them a fold stick of bone, a rule and a pair of scissors. All is very detailed and finely executed, you can even read the smiths´ name on the locks of pistols: the master B. Mård at Jönköping weapon factory. The texts on the letters can also be read.

Painting this piece of art Carl Hofverberg worked for the Swedish Count Ture Gabriel Bielke at the period when the Count was rebuilding his manor Tureholm some 70 kilometres south of Stockholm. The painting was specially made to be hanged in the writing-room, or the office of the manor, later called the armoury. The same year Hofverberg also painted an other trompe l´oeil , very much like this one for the Counts´ brother Carl Gustaf Bielke. No more such paintings are known by his hand, neither is any painting by him known of before around the1750:ies. From that time onwards he has left several art works as testimonies of his career: altar pieces in rural churches north of Stockholm, in the landscape of Jämtland, where he was born, as well as in the neighbouring landscapes of Medelpad and Ångermanland. Otherwise he was a military man, a captain and regimental master of quarters at the regiment of Jämtland.