Thiel Gallery
The banker Ernest Thiel had his villa built for his collection of Nordic art at the far end of Djurgården. Ferdinand Boberg gave the house light rendered walls, an onion dome and details inspired by the Orient. The collection, with Munch, Liljefors and Carl Larsson, remains in the rooms.
Ernest Thiel was one of the richest men in Sweden around the turn of the century and one of the great patrons of new Swedish art. He bought works by Bruno Liljefors, Carl Larsson, Ernst Josephson and Edvard Munch, who also painted his portrait. Ferdinand Boberg, who designed Rosenbad and Waldemarsudde, designed the villa in 1904–1907 with both reception rooms for the family and rooms for the collection.
After losses during the First World War Thiel had to sell the house and the collection, which the state bought in 1924. It has been a museum ever since. The building shows the breadth of National Romanticism: not only brick and stone in the Vasa style, but also light render and borrowings from the Orient and the Mediterranean, in a villa that is as much a work of art as a home.