Bruno Liljefors
Painter of animals and nature.
Bruno Liljefors painted foxes, eagles and birds in their habitat with a hunter’s eye. He was inspired by Japanese woodblock prints and photography.
Bruno Liljefors was born in 1860 in Uppsala. From an early age he was interested in both hunting and drawing. He studied at the Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm and then travelled to Düsseldorf to study animal painting. From there he went on to Italy and Paris.
In the early 1880s, like many Swedish artists, he was at Grez-sur-Loing and was influenced by plein-air painting. He was one of the Opponents in 1885. At home in Uppland he developed his own field of subjects: animals in their natural habitat, often at moments of hunting or danger.
Liljefors painted foxes, hares, black grouse, eagles and seabirds. He observed them as a hunter and knew how they moved and how they blended into their surroundings. He was inspired by Japanese woodblock prints, with their unusual cropping and low horizons, and by photography, which could freeze a movement. Sea Eagles of 1897, with two eagles striking an eider in the breakers, is among his best-known works and is in the Nationalmuseum. He was a master of camouflage in painting. The viewer often has to search for the animal, which blends into snow, grass or reeds.
He also painted the backgrounds for the dioramas at the Biological Museum in Stockholm, which opened in 1893 and where the animals are displayed in their natural habitats. In the later part of his life he lived, among other places, in the archipelago and outside Uppsala. He was married twice, both times to sisters. His son Lindorm Liljefors also became a painter.
Liljefors died in 1939. He is regarded as one of the world’s foremost animal painters and has had a great influence on later nature and wildlife artists, not least in Sweden and the United States.