Mårten Eskil Winge
The painter of Norse mythology.
Mårten Eskil Winge painted the Norse gods and legends. His Thor's Fight with the Giants is one of the best-known Swedish history paintings.
Mårten Eskil Winge was born in Stockholm in 1825. He studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts and then made study trips to Paris and Italy. There he encountered grand history painting, with monumental scenes, powerful bodies and dramatic light. He was also influenced by the Romantic current that sought to create a national art based on the country's own history and myths.
Winge found his subjects in Norse mythology and in folk tales and legends. In the 19th century there was great interest in the Viking Age and the Norse gods throughout the Nordic countries, and Winge was one of those who gave the gods visual form. Loki and Sigyn (1863) shows the bound Loki while his wife catches the serpent's venom in a bowl. His best-known work is Thor's Fight with the Giants (1872), in which the thunder god swings his hammer from his goat-drawn chariot. Both are in the Nationalmuseum.
His style is dramatic and full of movement, with muscular bodies, swirling clouds and strong contrasts. He also painted fairy-tale subjects and historical scenes, and made designs for illustrations. He became a professor at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts and taught a new generation of Swedish artists.
Winge died in 1896. In his last years the young artists had turned away from the Academy's history painting in favour of Realism and plein-air painting. Even so, his Thor has become one of the most widely reproduced images of Norse mythology, and it has shaped how many Swedes picture the Norse gods.