Gustavian Neoclassicism or 1920s Classicism?

Both are Swedish forms of Classicism with columns, pediments and light rendered façades, but they are separated by 130 years and by their attitude. Gustavian Neoclassicism, around 1770–1810, as in Gustav III's Pavilion at Haga and the Linneanum in Uppsala, follows the rules of Antiquity closely. The Nordic Classicism of the 1920s, known abroad as Swedish Grace, simplifies the forms, alters the proportions and plays with them. It also looked back to Gustavian architecture itself. Compare the ten slender columns of Tengbom's Concert Hall of 1926 or the displaced windows of Asplund's Villa Snellman with the correct orders of the 18th century.

Facts

Two Classicisms 130 years apart

Classicism has returned again and again in Europe, and in Sweden there are two periods that are easily confused. The first is the Neoclassicism of the late 18th century, which in Sweden is often called Gustavian after Gustav III. The second is the Nordic Classicism of around 1920, which emerged when architects had tired of the heavy brick of National Romanticism. Both have smooth, light surfaces, symmetry and classical details.

The confusion comes easily because the architects of the 1920s themselves took their models from the 18th century. They rediscovered Swedish Gustavian and early 19th-century architecture, and they travelled in Italy and were fascinated by simple farmhouses and small towns. A house from 1918 can therefore at first glance resemble a manor house from 1790. The difference lies in how the rules are followed.

Gustavian Neoclassicism: the rules are followed

Neoclassicism was the architecture of the Enlightenment. The excavations at Pompeii and the surveys of the buildings of Athens gave a new, more exact picture of Antiquity, and the orders and proportions of the columns were closely followed. Gustav III had seen Italy and France and wanted to give Sweden the same style. The Frenchman Louis Jean Desprez, Olof Tempelman and Louis Masreliez were among those who shaped it.

Gustav III's Pavilion in Haga Park, built around 1787–1792, has a simple and light façade with a low columned portico facing Brunnsviken. Inside, Masreliez painted the walls with light ornament in Pompeian style: tendrils, medallions and thin lines on a pale ground. The Linneanum in Uppsala's Botanical Garden, begun in 1788 to an idea by Desprez, has a portico with four Doric columns without bases, after the Greek temples at Paestum. The choice shows how careful people were about their models.

Out in the country the style can be seen in manor houses with mansard roofs and wings, and in rural churches with white gables and temple fronts. A timber house could be painted pale so that it would look like plaster or stone. Furniture and interiors are described in the design guide to Gustavian style.

The classicism of the 1920s: the rules are bent

Nordic Classicism emerged just before and after the First World War. Villa Snellman in Djursholm, which Gunnar Asplund designed in 1917–1918, looks like a simple manor house with a symmetrical façade and a mansard roof. But the windows of the upper floor are not directly above those below, and one wing lies at an angle. The house feels alive and slightly uneasy, and that is the intention.

In the Lister District Courthouse in Sölvesborg, 1919–1921, the courtroom lies as a round hall in the middle of the square building. The same idea, a round room in a cube, became Asplund's Public Library in Stockholm of 1928, where he first drew a dome but removed it and let the pure cylinder stand. Ivar Tengbom gave the Concert Hall at Hötorget, inaugurated in 1926, a closed blue cube with ten tall, slender Corinthian columns in front, extended far beyond the proportions of Antiquity.

The style received its international name, Swedish Grace, in the English press after the Swedish exhibition in Paris in 1925. It was closely linked with the applied arts, where Simon Gate and Edward Hald made engraved glass for Orrefors in the same light Classicism. The period is described in the history of design under Swedish Grace.

How to tell them apart

Start with the columns. A Gustavian column has the proportions of Antiquity and a complete capital. A column from the 1920s is often unnaturally slender or tall, the capital simplified or exaggerated, and sometimes the column exists only as a flat pilaster or a painted line. The drawing of the Corinthian column below shows what it looks like when the rules are followed.

Then look at the windows and the wall. The 1920s loved small windows in large, smooth walls, sometimes displaced, sometimes in unusual shapes. The colours could be strong: the blue of the Concert Hall, the warm orange rendering of the Public Library. The Gustavian façade is light, evenly divided and calm. The plan is a third clue. Houses of the 18th century have straight sequences of rooms in symmetry, whereas architects of the 1920s liked to put round rooms in square houses and let the rooms shift against one another.

Finally the context: Gustavian buildings are often palaces, manor houses, churches and academic buildings, whereas Nordic Classicism built concert halls, libraries, schools, courthouses and housing for a growing city. In Denmark the same style is found in Carl Petersen's Faaborg Museum and in the Police Headquarters in Copenhagen.

And then Functionalism

Nordic Classicism was short-lived. Two years after the Public Library, Asplund was chief architect of the Stockholm Exhibition of 1930, where Functionalism made its breakthrough. But the step was shorter than it seems: smooth walls, simple volumes and care for detail were already present in the houses of the 1920s.

The styles are described separately under Neoclassicism and Nordic Classicism and in the guides to Neoclassicism in architecture and Nordic Classicism. The Swedish timeline can be found in the history under the Gustavian era and Swedish Grace.

How to tell them apart

Exercise

A rendered house has a symmetrical façade, but the windows of the upper floor are displaced in relation to those below. Which period does that suggest?