Marcus Larson

Painter of storms and burning ships.

Marcus Larson painted dramatic Swedish landscapes, rapids and ships on fire. He died in London at 38.

Marcus Larson was born in Östergötland in 1825. He came to Stockholm as a young man and studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, where he early showed an interest in marine painting and dramatic landscapes. In the early 1850s he went to Düsseldorf, then a centre of landscape painting, and studied there. He also visited Paris.

Larson painted Swedish nature in its most dramatic form: rapids, waterfalls, stormy seas, shipwrecks and ships burning in the night. His paintings have strong contrasts of light, with glowing fire and moonlight against dark clouds. He gave the precision of the Düsseldorf School a Romantic, almost theatrical charge. He was a skilled draughtsman and a fast worker.

He became very popular in the 1850s and received commissions from the royal family and collectors. But he was also known as a restless, bohemian figure with big plans and shaky finances. His life has given rise to many anecdotes, though several of them are doubtful.

Larson travelled to London and died there in 1864, only 38 years old. He is regarded as the most dramatic of the Swedish Romantic landscape painters. The Nationalmuseum and other Swedish museums hold several of his works.

• Romanticism
• The Düsseldorf years and academicism