Anna Boberg
The painter of Lofoten.
Anna Boberg was an artist and designer who travelled to Lofoten every year to paint fishing villages and mountains. She was married to the architect Ferdinand Boberg.
Anna Boberg was born Anna Scholander in 1864 in Stockholm. Her father was the architect Fredrik Wilhelm Scholander, and the home was filled with art and music. She studied briefly in Paris but was largely self-taught as a painter. In 1888 she married the architect Ferdinand Boberg.
She was versatile and worked as a designer of porcelain, glass and textiles. Among other things she designed for Rörstrand and the Reijmyre glassworks and collaborated with the Handarbetets Vänner association. She and her husband often worked together and were part of Art Nouveau Stockholm.
Around 1901 she came to Lofoten in northern Norway for the first time. She was so captivated by the landscape that she returned almost every year for the rest of her life. She had a simple cabin built there and painted fishing villages, mountains, ice and the sea in winter light. She often worked outdoors in cold and wind.
Her Lofoten pictures are bold, with strong contrasts and broad brushwork. She exhibited in Paris and Berlin, among other places, and gained a good reputation abroad. In Sweden her reception was more mixed, and she was sometimes seen as a successful amateur rather than a serious artist.
Anna Boberg died in 1935. For a long time she was almost forgotten, but in recent years her Lofoten pictures have been shown again and have won fresh appreciation.