KunstenaarSwedish
Per Ekström
3 actieve items
Per Ekström was born on 23 February 1844 in Segerstad, a small village on the southeastern coast of Öland - the long, narrow island off Sweden's Baltic shore that would define his art for the rest of his life. The flat, treeless landscape of southern Öland, with its limestone plain, its open sky, and the particular quality of light reflected off the surrounding sea, gave Ekström his subjects, his palette, and ultimately his reputation.
He arrived at the Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm in 1865, studying there until 1872. The Academy at the time was moving away from the Düsseldorf School, but Ekström found himself drawn not to German academic painting but to what was happening in France. When King Oscar II provided support for a study journey in 1876, Ekström went directly to Paris. He would remain there for fourteen years.
Paris in the late 1870s was a productive environment for a Swedish painter interested in landscape. Ekström settled into the world of the Barbizon painters and came under the influence of Camille Corot in particular - the soft, tonal approach to light, the dissolution of hard outlines, the focus on atmosphere over anecdote. He worked in Barbizon itself and in Carolles, Normandy, developing a practice of painting directly from nature. He debuted at the Paris Salon in 1878 with "Franskt landskap" and in 1889 was awarded a gold medal at the Exposition Universelle, a significant recognition in an international context.
These years in France placed Ekström among the first generation of Swedish plein air painters - artists who brought back not just French technique but a changed understanding of what landscape painting could do. Ekström's particular contribution was his treatment of sunlight: the way it bleaches color, creates haze, flattens forms against a bright sky. His nickname, "Solmålaren" (the Sun Painter), captured exactly this quality. His Öland paintings especially - wide horizons, low sun, the sea glinting in the distance - have a directness and an openness that set them apart from the more forested, enclosed Swedish landscape tradition.
Back in Sweden from 1890, he spent a period on Öland before settling in Gothenburg in 1891, encouraged by the collector and merchant Pontus Fürstenberg, one of the most important private patrons of Swedish art in that era. Ekström returned permanently to Öland in 1910, living in Mörbylånga until his death on 21 January 1935, at the age of 90. He is regarded as the island's first major artist, and his name has been kept alive there by the Per Ekströmsällskapet, a society founded in 2016. His work is held at the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm, Göteborgs Konstmuseum, and Prins Eugens Waldemarsudde, where Prince Eugen acquired paintings directly from Ekström during the Paris years. He also served as the inspiration for the painter character Sellén in August Strindberg's novel "The Red Room" (1879).
On the Nordic auction market, Ekström's paintings appear primarily at auction houses in and around Kalmar and Stockholm, reflecting his Öland roots and strong regional following. Auctionist's database holds 27 items, with Kalmar Auktionsverk, Auktionsfirma Kenneth Svensson, and Bukowskis Stockholm the leading venues. Top prices include 40,500 SEK for "Soldis på Öland" and 29,000 SEK for "Soluppgång över havet", with consistent demand across oil landscapes signed from his long career.