ArtistSwedish
Thure Wallner
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Thure Vilhelm Wallner was born on August 15, 1888 in Salems socken, a rural parish in Sörmland near Södertälje, and spent most of his working life close to the Mälaren lake landscape that defined his painting. A childhood marked by persistent health challenges kept him close to home and the natural world, sharpening a habit of patient observation that would shape his entire career. He received his first instruction in drawing and painting privately from Artur Bianchini, and around 1910 he continued formal studies at Althins målarskola in Stockholm.
Wallner's art sits squarely in the tradition of Swedish naturalist animal painting, a lineage often traced through Bruno Liljefors. His subjects - foxes moving through snow, hares pausing in woodland clearings, bullfinches on winter branches, birds of prey on rocky outcrops - were painted with the same careful attention to plumage, fur texture, and the quality of Swedish winter light that had made Liljefors famous a generation earlier. Where many painters treated animals as incidental staffage, Wallner placed them at the centre, studying their posture and habits directly in the field.
Beyond the Mälaren region he also travelled extensively, working in Lapland as well as abroad - including America, the Canary Islands, and Italy - integrating subjects from these journeys into a body of work that remained consistently rooted in the depiction of animals and their immediate environment. His meticulous draughtsmanship also brought him illustration work: he contributed to the Swedish hunting magazine Svensk Jakt and produced illustrations for children's books, including school wall charts, which broadened the public reach of his imagery well beyond the gallery world.
Wallner helped establish the Södertälje konstförening and participated in multiple solo and group exhibitions throughout Sweden. His work entered the permanent collection of Nationalmuseum in Stockholm, a recognition that placed him among the lasting contributors to Swedish naturalist painting of the early twentieth century. He died on March 15, 1965 in Södertälje.
On the Swedish auction market Wallner's oils appear regularly at houses including Bukowskis, Stockholms Auktionsverk, Metropol, and Ekenbergs. The 11 works recorded on Auctionist span paintings and drawings, with wildlife subjects dominating - birds of prey, hares, and waterfowl - alongside forest and lake landscapes. The top recorded result in our database is 11,000 SEK for a signed oil of a bird of prey ('Rovfågel'), with hare subjects also attracting consistent interest, reflecting the sustained collector appetite for his animal studies.