Ivar Arosenius

Ivar Arosenius
Ivar Arosenius, Public domain

The artist of fairy tales and family.

Ivar Arosenius painted and drew imaginative watercolours and made the book The Cat’s Journey. He died at the age of 30.

Ivar Arosenius was born in 1878 in Gothenburg. He suffered from haemophilia, which meant that all his life he knew he might die young. He studied at the Valand School of Art in Gothenburg under Carl Wilhelmson and then briefly in Stockholm, including at the Artists’ Association school.

He led a bohemian life and travelled to Paris several times. He painted mainly in watercolour and gouache and developed a highly personal style. His pictures are filled with fairy-tale figures, princesses, trolls, knights and musicians, often with a mixture of humour, tenderness and darkness.

In 1906 he married Eva Adler, and soon their daughter Lillan was born. The family settled in Älvängen outside Gothenburg. His wife and daughter became his most important subjects, and the pictures of family life are among the best-loved in Swedish art.

For Lillan he made the picture book The Cat’s Journey, about a little girl who rides through the world on a cat. The book was published in 1909 and has since become a Swedish classic.

Arosenius died in January 1909, aged only 30. The Gothenburg Museum of Art has the largest collection of his works. He is regarded as one of the most original Swedish artists around 1900.