Louis Masreliez
Designer of the Gustavian style.
Louis Masreliez spent many years studying in Italy and decorated Gustav III's rooms with classical motifs. He helped shape the Gustavian style.
Louis Masreliez was born in Paris in 1748. His father, Adrien Masreliez, was a French ornamental sculptor who was summoned to Sweden to work on the Royal Palace in Stockholm. The family moved there the same year, and Louis grew up in Stockholm. His brother Jean Baptiste Masreliez also became a decorative sculptor. Louis studied at the school of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts.
As a young man he travelled to France and Italy, where he stayed for more than ten years. In Rome and Bologna he studied classical art, Renaissance frescoes and the decorations that had been excavated at Pompeii and Herculaneum. He took a particular interest in grotesques, playful ornament with tendrils, figures and fabulous creatures, which Raphael had used in the Vatican.
When he returned home in the early 1780s he received commissions from Gustav III. He decorated rooms in the Royal Palace in Stockholm and in the king's pavilion in Haga Park with light-toned murals, grotesques and classical figures. Together with architects and sculptors he shaped what is now called the Gustavian style: elegant, light and classically inspired. He also designed furniture and interiors.
Masreliez also painted history pictures and was a valued teacher. He became a professor at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts and later its director. He died in Stockholm in 1810. His decorations, especially in Gustav III's Pavilion, are among the finest examples of Neoclassical interior design in the Nordic countries.