Nationalmuseum
Sweden’s national museum of art was designed by the German architect Stüler, who had also designed the Neues Museum in Berlin. The building is in a Venetian and Florentine Renaissance Revival style and was completed in 1866. The galleries were arranged according to the history of art, and the stair hall later received Carl Larsson’s large murals.
The idea of a national museum took shape in the 1840s, when the royal collections in Stockholm Palace became cramped and more and more people felt that art should belong to the nation. The Riksdag decided on a new museum, and the commission went to Friedrich August Stüler in Berlin, a pupil of Schinkel with experience from Museum Island. Construction on Blasieholmen went on from the 1850s, and the building was inaugurated in 1866, the year after Stüler’s death. The architecture drew its language from Renaissance Venice and Florence, a style considered fitting for a building devoted to art. The building was constructed with a masonry structure and was planned from the outset with top lighting for the painting galleries, something new in Sweden.
The plan is a rectangle around two courtyards, with a monumental stair hall at the centre. The lower floors housed sculpture, applied art and other collections, while the paintings were given the top floor, where skylights provided even daylight. The galleries were arranged according to art-historical divisions, so that a walk through the building became a journey through the history of art, from antiquity to the present. In 1896–1908 the stair hall was decorated with Carl Larsson’s six murals on Swedish art history and cultural life. The last great painting, Midwinter Sacrifice, was rejected and remained outside the museum for several decades. The façades have round-arched windows, emphasised corner sections and moulded cornices in the spirit of the Renaissance, and the rows of windows reveal how the different floors are used inside.
During the 20th century the museum was remodelled several times, often at the expense of the original interiors, and much of Stüler’s colour scheme was painted over. Between 2013 and 2018 the building was closed for an extensive renovation. The old colours and decoration were uncovered, the services were renewed and both courtyards were given glass roofs, so that they are now used for sculpture and a restaurant. Midwinter Sacrifice was acquired in the 1990s and now hangs in the place Carl Larsson intended. Nationalmuseum is an early example of a Swedish national institution being given a building by an international architect, and it links Sweden directly to the Prussian museum tradition that began with the Altes Museum. The museum is also an important part of the cityscape facing Strömmen and the palace.