KunstenaarSwedish
Einar Wallquist
2 actieve items
The mountains around Arjeplog appear in watercolor after watercolor by Einar Wallquist - birch groves in low winter light, vast fells under open sky, and the faces of Sami men and women he encountered in his infirmary over four decades. He was not trained as an artist. He arrived in Arjeplog in 1922 as a 26-year-old provincial doctor, drawn north by what he called "a touch of wilderness romance," and the art grew out of the life he found there.
Born on 5 January 1896 in Steneby parish, Dalsland, Wallquist trained in medicine and chose the remotest possible post when he qualified. Arjeplog, a sparsely populated municipality far above the Arctic Circle, would be his home for the rest of his working life. Between patient visits, he sketched - careful pen drawings with attention to shadow and daylight, and watercolors that recorded the terrain and the people of the northern Lappmark. His portraits of patients, rendered during consultations and quiet moments at the surgery, carry an intimacy that formal portraiture rarely achieves.
The drawings and watercolors went alongside a prolific writing career. His debut book, "Kan doktorn komma?" (Can the Doctor Come?), appeared in 1935 and became a bestseller, the first of roughly 25 works of fiction and memoir depicting life on the edge of the Swedish north. The book was filmed in 1942. Many of his titles were translated into other languages. The same eye that guided the brush guided the prose: attentive, sympathetic, grounded in direct experience of a way of life that was rapidly changing.
Wallquist was deeply interested in Sami culture and the material history of the region. Over his years as doctor he began quietly collecting objects - silverwork, craft items, everyday tools - that documented the area's cultural heritage. After retiring in 1962, he spent three years preparing what would become his most lasting contribution outside medicine and art: in October 1965 he opened Silvermuseet in Arjeplog. The museum holds the largest collection of Sami silver in the world, and remains one of the most significant cultural institutions in Swedish Lapland. Wallquist continued as museum director until his death on 21 December 1985, just short of 90.
His visual work is represented at Moderna Museet in Stockholm, and he exhibited separately at Prins Eugens Waldemarsudde and in Luleå and Falkenberg. On the Nordic auction market, Wallquist's works appear mainly at houses in northern Sweden - Norrlands Auktionsverk leads with 13 items, followed by Karlstad Hammarö Auktionsverk and Stadsauktion Sundsvall. The 24 items recorded on Auctionist are overwhelmingly paintings and works on paper. Auction prices reflect the modest market for his art separately from his considerable reputation as an author and museum founder: works typically sell in the range of 450 to 1,300 SEK. The highest recorded sale is an akvarell from 1978 at 1,300 SEK.