Johan Niclas Byström

The sculptor of Swedish Romanticism.

Johan Niclas Byström worked in Rome and made statues of kings and classical gods. He brought a softer tone to Swedish sculpture.

Johan Niclas Byström was born in 1783 in Filipstad in Värmland. He came to Stockholm and studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, where he was a pupil of Johan Tobias Sergel. In 1810 he went to Rome, where he would spend most of his life.

In Rome he worked near Thorvaldsen and Canova and was influenced by their Neoclassical style. But Byström gave the marble a softer, more sensual character. He made mythological figures, including bacchantes and young goddesses, with rounded forms and a playful expression. Several of them are in the Nationalmuseum.

Byström also received major commissions from the Swedish royal family. He made portrait statues and busts of Swedish kings, among them Karl XIV Johan, and the marble statue of Carl Linnaeus in Uppsala. He had grand plans for monumental commissions and spent a great deal of money on large blocks of marble, which sometimes led to financial difficulties.

Byström died in Rome in 1848. He is regarded as the first Swedish sculptor with a distinctly Romantic tone. He brought softness and feeling to a tradition previously dominated by Sergel's austere ideals.

• Romanticism
• Romanticism in Sweden