Julia Beck

Julia Beck
Scanned by user AlphaZeta, photographer unknown, Public domain

Sweden’s pioneer of mood painting.

Julia Beck was one of the first in Sweden to paint atmospheric landscapes. She lived most of her life in France.

Julia Beck was born in 1853 in Stockholm. She studied at the women’s department of the Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts in the 1870s, at a time when women still had limited opportunities to train as artists.

In the early 1880s she travelled to Paris to continue her studies. She came to live in France for the rest of her life, for many years in Vaucresson west of Paris. She painted portraits to support herself, but her real interest was landscape.

Beck belonged to the Opponents and signed the protest against the Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts in 1885. Her relationship with the Artists’ Association later became strained, and she went her own way. This contributed to her being long forgotten in Sweden.

Her landscapes are still and subdued. She painted water, mist and twilight with soft transitions between colours. The pictures anticipate the mood painting that became typical of Swedish art in the 1890s, and she is regarded as one of the first Swedish artists to work in that way.

Julia Beck died in Vaucresson in 1935. In recent years she has attracted renewed attention as research has highlighted the women of the Opponents’ generation.