Eugène Jansson

The painter of the blue city.

Eugène Jansson painted Stockholm in blue twilight and at night from his window on Söder. Later he painted naked men in bathhouses and gyms.

Eugène Jansson was born in 1862 in Stockholm into a poor family. He was a sickly child and had to break off his schooling. He studied briefly at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts but was largely self-taught. He was a member of the Artists’ Association, but for a long time stood in the shadow of the better-known Opponents.

In the 1890s he found his subject: Stockholm at dusk and by night. From the flat on Södermalm where he lived with his mother and brother, he painted the view over Riddarfjärden, the street lamps and the city lights reflected in the water. The colour is almost entirely blue, and these pictures earned him the nickname “the blue painter”.

The pictures are both realistic and intensely atmospheric. The long, curving streets and wide skies have been compared with Edvard Munch. The banker Ernest Thiel bought many of his works, and today the Thiel Gallery in Stockholm holds an important collection. Prince Eugen also collected his paintings.

Around 1904 he changed direction completely. He gave up the cityscapes and began painting naked men: sailors in the Navy’s bathhouse, wrestlers and athletes. The pictures are powerful, muscular and full of light. Today they are often read in the light of his homosexuality, something that could not be spoken of openly in his time.

Jansson died in 1915. After his death his brother is said to have destroyed letters and other personal papers. For a long time he was known mainly for the blue cityscapes, but in recent years his male nudes have also attracted considerable attention.