ArtistSwedish
Lars Jonsson
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Lars Jonsson was born on 22 October 1952 in Stockholm. His engagement with birds began in early childhood, particularly during summer visits to Gotland, where his family spent time along the island's rich coastal habitats. By the age of fifteen he had already attracted serious attention: the director of the Natural History Museum in Stockholm, Kjell Engström, arranged for Jonsson to hold his first exhibition there in 1967, a moment that effectively launched a professional career before he had finished school. The artist and author Gunnar Brusewitz was an early supporter and helped shape his sense of what bird art could aspire to.
Jonsson turned fully professional at eighteen and through the 1970s produced a five-volume series of field guides, Fåglar i naturen, published between 1976 and 1980. These books established his international reputation simultaneously as an ornithologist and as a painter, because the illustrations were not merely accurate but carried a quality of movement and atmosphere that went well beyond standard field-guide work. The series was consolidated and revised as Fåglar i Europa (Birds of Europe with North Africa and the Middle East) in 1992, a work that became a standard reference across the continent.
Since 1976 Jonsson has lived on the southern part of Gotland, in the parish of Hamra, and the island's open landscapes, beaches, and migratory flyways have formed the core of his working environment. He paints almost exclusively outdoors and in the field, often using a spotting scope to observe subjects at a distance before or during the painting process. His principal media are watercolor and oil, and he also makes lithographs. The directness of the plein-air method is fundamental to the work: the marks carry the speed and uncertainty of actual observation, and the images convey light and weather conditions that studio work rarely achieves.
His output has extended beyond birds. Landscapes, coastal scenes, and studies of light on water feature prominently in his oil paintings and watercolors, and in recent decades he has worked increasingly in this broader register. A solo exhibition paired with Lars Lerin at Stockholms Auktionsverk, titled Lars Times Two, brought renewed attention to the range of his watercolor practice.
The recognition he has received reflects an unusually wide reach for a wildlife artist. In 1988, at age thirty-five, he was designated Master Wildlife Artist by the Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum in Wisconsin, the youngest artist ever to receive that distinction. He has been included in the museum's Birds in Art exhibition since 1982. In 2002 Uppsala University awarded him an honorary doctorate from the Faculty of Arts. Since 2004 his work has been shown continuously at Museum Lars Jonsson, housed in the old vicarage at Vamlingbo on southern Gotland.
At auction, Jonsson's work appears most frequently at Stockholms Auktionsverk Fine Art, where 25 of his 65 catalogued auction appearances have taken place. Top prices include two works that achieved 10,500 SEK each, "Fasaner på Gotland" in mixed media and a study of seabirds (sulfåglar), and a work titled "Mot alla vindar" that sold for 5,000 EUR. The market for his paintings and works on paper reflects a collecting public that values both the artistic and the ornithological dimensions of the work.