Peacock, thrush, and golden pheasant

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About the Item

Peacock, thrush, and golden pheasant Oil on canvas, 47 x 59 cm, signed and dated Hugo Birger Granada 1883. Hugo Birger belongs to the so-called Opponent generation in Swedish art history. After graduating from the Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm, he travelled in the autumn of 1877 to Paris, where he shared a studio with Ernst Josephson. But Birger, who suffered from rheumatism, had a hard time enduring the city’s cold and humid climate during the winter. The prominent Swedish art collector Pontus Fürstenberg, who considered Birger one of the most promising among the Opponents, therefore ordered a large painting with a Spanish motif, so that Birger would have reason to travel to the sun and the heat. In the New Year 1882, a year after the academic comrades Josephson and Zorn, he consequently travelled to Spain in the company of another artist friend, the Norwegian Sören Dietrichson. They first stayed in Madrid and then went on to Seville, where in addition to Josephson another colleague, Christian Skredsvik, was present. Together with Josephson and Dietrichson, Birger then travelled on from Seville to Granada. There he got to know the innkeeper’s daughter Mathilda, who a few months later became his wife. In Granada, Hugo Birger painted, this year and subsequent years, a number of charming environmental and genre pictures, often with Mathilda and her sister and nephew as models. Most famous among these is perhaps the painting that Fürstenberg originally ordered for his collection: Frukost under ferian i Granada (Granada holiday breakfast). The 138 x 198 cm canvas, which today belongs to the Gothenburg Art Museum, was described as early as 1924 by the art historian Georg Nordensvan as “the main number in his study from the happy year 1882 (…) a company on a garden terrace, men and women in bright, variegated colours, in flowing sunshine with light, light shadows over white walls - a happy play of colours, which culminates in a shimmering peacock in the middle of the sun.” (Svenskt biografiskt lexikon, volume 04, 1924, p. 441). In the current painting, Hugo Birger has taken note of a small, but incomparably fine detail from the just-mentioned depiction of breakfast - the shimmering neighbour peacock - and made it the main work of the artwork. According to the art historian Sixten Strömbom, this work is a prepared study for the same animal in Frukost under Ferian. This is contradicted by the dates of the paintings unless our painting is dated afterwards. Regardless of which of them was performed first, “our” peacock is reproduced from exactly the same angle and in the same position as in the large painting, but here it is accompanied by two more birds; a thrush and a golden pheasant. The latter species originated in China but was common as a caged bird throughout Europe during the 19th century. Here it sits on a dry branch at the entrance to a house in Granada, while the thrush and peacock leisurely stroll around the surrounding courtyard. It is an extremely unpretentious and seemingly mundane motif the artist has chosen, but thanks to the birds’ beautiful plumage and strange appearance, the image still manages to evoke a breath of the south’s sweet warmth and colourful exoticism in the viewer. (CEÖ) Provenance Bror Holmquist, Kristanstad (1942); Private Swedish collection. Exhibited Åmells, Stockholm, Vårutställningen, 1990, cat no 1. Literature Christian Færber et al (ed), Konst i svenska hem, part II, Gothenburg 1942, listed under collection no. 671 with the title Granada, p. 398; Sixten Strömbom, Hugo Birger. En levnadsteckning, Stockholm 1947, listed and described in the catalogue section, p. 320 as cat no. 117. Cf. also Frukost under ferian i Granada (Granada Holiday Breakfast), 1882, cat no. 124, depicted in black and white, p. 148; Tomas Björk (red); Åmells vårutställning. Skandinaviskt måleri från 1880- och 90-talen, Stockholm 1990, described and depicted in colour as Cat No. 1.

Creator:
Hugo Birger (1854 - 1887, Swedish)
Creation Year:
1883
Dimensions:
Height: 18.51 in (47 cm)Width: 23.23 in (59 cm)
Medium:
Canvas,Oil
Period:
Late 19th Century
Condition:
Gallery Location:
Stockholm, SE
Reference Number:
1stDibs: LU1845210016592

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