ArtistSwedish
Emil Johansson-Thor
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Emil Johansson-Thor was born on March 20, 1889, in Landskrona, and his family relocated to Stockholm when he was thirteen. He initially trained as a craftsman painter before enrolling at Caleb Althin's painting school in 1907-08 and subsequently at the Royal Institute of Fine Arts (Konstakademin) from 1908 to 1912. In 1914 he travelled to Paris, where he worked alongside Emil Olsson in Mantes-sur-Seine. Contact with contemporary French art, including early Cubism, left its mark, but he would eventually steer toward something more rooted in northern European soil.
In the summer of 1917, while on a working trip with a colleague through the Scanian countryside, Johansson-Thor came across the medieval farm complex at Sireköpinge near Tågarp. He was immediately captivated by the place and settled there with his family for two years. The farm, its workers, and the surrounding flat winter fields became a subject he would return to obsessively. Between 1918 and 1922 he divided his time between Sireköpinge and France, living in Meudon and later Cagnes, before the Scanian motifs pulled him back definitively.
From 1923 to 1930, oil paintings, etchings, and dry-point engravings depicting Sireköpinge and the island of Ven formed the core of his output. He became secretary of Föreningen för Grafisk Konst in 1923, and in 1926 was appointed superintendent of the Royal Institute of Fine Arts' etching school, a post he held until 1954. In 1938 he received the title of professor. Stylistically the work of this period navigates a particular Swedish variant of new objectivity - meticulous draftsmanship, a cool palette, and motifs rendered with both affection and precision, recalling Bruegel the Elder in their panoramic winter scenes. He also served as chairman of the Artists' National Organization (Konstnärernas Riksorganisation) from 1940 to 1942, demonstrating his wider role as an art political figure.
His prints were acquired by the graphic collections of Dresden, Paris, and Brooklyn, and his paintings entered the Nationalmuseum and Moderna Museet in Stockholm, the Gothenburg Museum of Art, Malmö Museum, and Prince Eugens Waldemarsudde. Works such as 'Noaks ark' (1936), painted on Ven, and numerous Sireköpinge winter scenes preserve an agricultural Skåne that no longer exists. He died on February 28, 1958, in Stockholm.
On the Swedish auction market, Johansson-Thor circulates steadily through regional houses in the south. Auctionist currently indexes 13 items, concentrated at Skånes Auktionsverk (5 lots) and Crafoord Auktioner in Lund (2 lots), reflecting a natural southern concentration given his Skåne connections. Works appearing recently include oil paintings of farmyards dated 1945 and a group of five lithographs with Landskrona motifs. Sold prices in the database range from 300 to 1,611 SEK, placing him at a modest but consistent level in regional salerooms. His prints, particularly etchings signed and dated from the early 1950s, continue to appear alongside his oil paintings and charcoal drawings.