The most famous Swedish paintings – from the Sun Dog Painting to Hilma af Klint

The most famous Swedish paintings are the Sun Dog Painting (Vädersolstavlan, 1535), Roslin's The Lady with the Veil (1768), Malmström's Dancing Fairies (1866), Cederström's The Funeral Procession of Charles XII (1884), Josephson's The Nix (1884), Zorn's Midsummer Dance (1897), Carl Larsson's Breakfast under the Big Birch (1896) and Hilma af Klint's The Ten Largest (1907). Most of them hang in the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm. Together they show how Swedish art moved from omens and court portraits to National Romanticism, plein-air painting and abstraction.

Facts

How the list was made

There is no official list of Sweden's most famous paintings. This selection is based on which images recur in school textbooks, on stamps and posters, which ones draw visitors to the museums and which have shaped the image of Swedish art abroad. Each work has its own page in the app with its year, museum, colour palette and a longer text, and all of them belong to the Swedish thread in art history.

The list runs in chronological order, because the paintings are easier to understand together than one by one. They show how Swedish artists first learned from abroad, then wanted to depict Sweden and finally found paths that no one else had taken.

From the Middle Ages to the Rococo

The oldest image of Stockholm is the Sun Dog Painting. It shows a halo phenomenon with several suns above the city on 20 April 1535 and was probably commissioned by the Reformer Olaus Petri. The original has been lost; the copy of 1636 hangs in Storkyrkan. The image is at once a map, a news picture and a warning from God. Older still are the church wall paintings, such as Albertus Pictor's Death Playing Chess in Täby Church from around 1480, the motif that inspired Ingmar Bergman.

In the 18th century Sweden's most successful painter was working in Paris. Alexander Roslin painted royalty and aristocrats from all over Europe, and The Lady with the Veil of 1768 shows his wife, the pastellist Marie-Suzanne Giroust, in a black silk veil. The translucent fabric over the skin is one of the most admired passages in Swedish painting. The painting is in the Nationalmuseum.

The 19th century: fairies, kings and history painting

In the mid-19th century many Swedish painters studied in Düsseldorf, where the ideal was clear narratives drawn from folklore and history. August Malmström's Dancing Fairies of 1866 shows fairies dancing in the mist over a meadow on a summer night; the mist and the fairies are almost impossible to tell apart. The picture has been printed in countless school textbooks.

Gustaf Cederström's The Funeral Procession of Charles XII shows Carolean soldiers carrying the fallen king's stretcher through the snow in 1718. He painted a first version in 1878 and a second, larger one in 1884, which hangs in the Nationalmuseum. That version spread in reproductions to schools and homes and shaped the image of Charles XII for several generations. Read more about the period in The Düsseldorf years and academicism.

The 1880s: the Opponents and plein-air light

Around 1880 a group of young artists broke with the Academy of Arts, and several of them had learned to paint outdoors in France. This is where most of the paintings on the list come from. Ernst Josephson's The Nix of 1884 shows the nix naked in the rapids with his fiddle, in bold, free brushstrokes. The Nationalmuseum declined to buy it because it was considered offensive. Today it is counted among the most important works in Swedish art.

Bruno Liljefors's Fox Family of 1886 shows a vixen with her cubs in late-summer grass, so well camouflaged that you have to search for them. Hanna Pauli painted Breakfast Time in Paris in 1887, when she was 23: a laid table under the trees where dappled sunlight fills the white cloth with colour. Both hang in the Nationalmuseum. Read about the group in The Opponents and the 1890s.

The 1890s: Sweden as subject

During the 1890s many of the returned artists turned to Swedish subjects: the home, the landscape and the bright summer night. Carl Larsson's watercolour Breakfast under the Big Birch of 1896 shows the family in the garden at Sundborn, with clear contours and bright fields of colour. The series was published in the book Ett hem (A Home) and became a model for Swedish interior design.

Anders Zorn's Midsummer Dance of 1897 shows couples dancing in Mora in the blue midsummer night, painted with quick, assured strokes and few colours. Prince Eugen's The Cloud of 1896 lets an enormous white cloud fill almost the whole picture, and Richard Bergh's Nordic Summer Evening of around 1900 shows a couple on a veranda, silent before the lake in the evening light. The last two hang in the Gothenburg Museum of Art and belong to what is known as mood painting.

The 20th century: abstraction and Expressionism

In 1907 Hilma af Klint painted the series The Ten Largest, paintings more than three metres high about the stages of human life, filled with spirals, flower forms and letters. She painted abstractly several years before Kandinsky, but the works became known to a wider public only in the 1980s and world-famous after the exhibitions at Moderna Museet in 2013 and the Guggenheim Museum in 2018–2019. Today they are among the most sought-after Swedish works abroad.

Sigrid Hjertén had studied under Matisse in Paris, and her Studio Interior of 1916 shows herself, her husband Isaac Grünewald and a third figure in the studio, in strong, flat colours. Critics were harsh towards her in her lifetime; today the painting hangs in Moderna Museet and is counted among the principal works of Swedish Modernism. Read more in The Young Ones and the breakthrough of Modernism.

Where they hang and how to recognise them

Almost all the paintings on the list can be seen in Stockholm: in the Nationalmuseum, Moderna Museet and Storkyrkan. The Gothenburg Museum of Art has The Cloud and Nordic Summer Evening. All the places are on the map, and the guide Art to see in Stockholm suggests a route between them. If you want to know more about the people behind the pictures, read Famous Swedish artists and the guide to women artists through history.

A good way to learn to tell the periods apart is to put the paintings in the right order. In Practise you can place works on the timeline and see how close you get. Start by comparing The Funeral Procession of Charles XII and Breakfast Time, which were painted only three years apart: the one a story in the studio's dim light, the other a moment in free sunlight.

How to recognise them

Exercise

Which of these paintings is the oldest?