Pehr Hilleström
Chronicler of everyday Gustavian life.
Pehr Hilleström started out as a weaver and went on to paint interiors of homes, the court and ironworks. His pictures are a goldmine for anyone wanting to know how people lived.
Pehr Hilleström was born in 1732 on Väddö in Roslagen. He began his career as a tapestry weaver and spent many years making textiles for palaces and aristocratic homes. At the same time he learned to paint and draw at the school of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm. He was influenced by French models, above all Chardin, whose quiet scenes of daily life were held in Swedish collections.
Only as an adult did he turn to painting full time. He found his own speciality: interiors with people. He painted middle-class homes where women sew, read or receive guests, servants cooking and scrubbing, but also the court in Gustav III's Stockholm. He became a member of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts and later a professor there.
Hilleström is also known for his pictures of ironworks and mines. He depicted work at the Falun Mine, at ironworks and forges, with glowing furnaces and figures in the dark. Industrial scenes of this kind were unusual in Europe at the time. He was prolific and painted for a wide circle of buyers, often producing several versions of the same subject.
His style is simple and clear rather than virtuoso. The figures can be somewhat stiff, but every detail is carefully rendered: furniture, wallpaper, clothes and tools. This makes his paintings invaluable sources today for anyone wanting to know how people lived and worked in 18th-century Sweden. Many are in the Nationalmuseum and other Swedish collections. Hilleström died in Stockholm in 1816. His son Carl Peter Hilleström also became an artist.