David von Krafft
Ehrenstrahl's successor.
David von Krafft was Ehrenstrahl's nephew and pupil and became court painter under Charles XII. He painted many of the period's portraits of the king.
David von Krafft was born in Hamburg in 1655. He was the nephew of the court painter David Klöcker Ehrenstrahl and came to Stockholm as a young man to be trained by him. Krafft became a skilled portrait painter and worked as an assistant in his uncle's workshop.
In the 1680s and 1690s he made a long study tour through Europe, working in Italy and France among other places. There he was influenced by French portraiture, with its elegant but more restrained depiction of power. On his return to Sweden he succeeded Ehrenstrahl as the leading court painter after the latter's death in 1698. He was ennobled and took the name von Krafft.
Krafft painted during the reigns of Charles XII, Ulrika Eleonora and Frederick I. He made a large number of portraits of royalty, noblemen and officials, and several of the well-known images of Charles XII come from his workshop. Royal portraits were in demand in many copies for government offices, embassies and manor houses, so the workshop often made several versions of the same picture. The portraits often have dark backgrounds, and the men frequently wear armour or uniform. The style is more subdued and realistic than Ehrenstrahl's festive Baroque.
Krafft died in Stockholm in 1724. He was an important link between the Baroque of Sweden's age of empire and the new portraiture of the Age of Liberty, when painters such as Gustaf Lundberg took over. Many of his portraits are now in the Swedish National Portrait Gallery at Gripsholm Castle.