Olof Sager-Nelson
The young star of Symbolism.
Olof Sager-Nelson died of tuberculosis at the age of 27. His portraits and Symbolist pictures have a dark, decadent mood.
Olof Sager-Nelson was born in 1868 in Värmland, originally named Olof Nilsson. He came from a humble background. He studied at the Valand School of Art in Gothenburg, where Carl Larsson was then teaching.
In the early 1890s he went to Paris. There he came into contact with Symbolism and the decadent mood that marked parts of cultural life in the 1890s. He was also influenced by Belgian Symbolism and spent some time in Belgium.
Sager-Nelson was above all a portrait painter. His portraits of friends and of himself show pale, almost translucent faces against dark backgrounds. They have a dreamlike, melancholy mood. He also painted Symbolist figure pictures and landscapes at dusk. The palette is subdued, with much black, grey and blue.
He suffered from tuberculosis and travelled south in search of a cure. He died in 1896 in Biskra in Algeria, aged only 27.
His output is small, but he is regarded as one of the most distinctive Swedish Symbolists. Many of his works are in the Gothenburg Museum of Art.