The Opponents and the Artists’ Association: the revolt of the 1880s

The Opponents was the name given to the young Swedish artists who in 1885 signed a petition against the Academy of Arts’ power over training and exhibitions. Eighty-four artists signed, among them Ernst Josephson, Richard Bergh, Karl Nordström, Nils Kreuger and Eva Bonnier. The following year they formed the Artists’ Association (Konstnärsförbundet), which organised its own exhibitions and later ran a school of its own. The revolt laid the foundation for modern Swedish art life.

Facts

From Düsseldorf to Paris

In the mid-19th century Swedish artists had studied in Düsseldorf, where detailed, narrative pictures were painted; read more in the guide to the Düsseldorf School. In the 1870s a new generation went to Paris instead. There were private schools there such as the Académie Julian and the Académie Colarossi, where one could draw from the live model and where women could also study. At the exhibitions the Swedes saw the Realism of Courbet and the open-air painting of Jules Bastien-Lepage, who painted peasants in full daylight.

In summer they painted in the village of Grez-sur-Loing, south of Paris, where a whole Scandinavian colony gathered. There they learned to paint outdoors, in the grey, shifting light by the river; see the guide En plein air. When they came home to Stockholm they met an academy that still ranked history painting highest and controlled the training, the most important exhibitions and the state’s purchases.

The petition of 1885

In spring 1885 the young artists organised the exhibition From the Banks of the Seine in Stockholm, with works painted in France. It aroused both enthusiasm and anger. The same year they sent a petition to the Academy of Arts demanding that teaching be modernised and that the artists themselves have more say over exhibitions. Eighty-four artists signed. The Academy rejected the demands.

In the autumn a new exhibition followed, and critics began to call the young artists the Opponents. They soon bore the name with pride. Behind the concrete demands lay a larger question: who had the right to decide what was good art? The answer, according to the Opponents, was working artists and not an institution with roots in the 18th century.

The Artists’ Association

In 1886 the Artists’ Association was formed, a society that organised its own exhibitions without the Academy’s involvement. Karl Nordström was its chairman for a long time, and Richard Bergh formulated many of the ideas in articles and books. From 1891 the Association ran a school of its own, attended by several of those who later broke through with Modernism, among them Isaac Grünewald.

The Association was not united. After a few years several members left to form other associations, and the women gradually found it hard to assert themselves. Even so, the Association broke the Academy’s monopoly. When the young Expressionists exhibited in 1909, it was no longer only the Academy but also the former Opponents who represented the establishment.

Josephson and The Water Sprite

Ernst Josephson was one of the leaders of the revolt and its tragic figure. He had studied in Paris and travelled in Holland and Spain, and he admired Rembrandt and Titian. His The Water Sprite of 1884 shows the näck, a naked young man playing the fiddle in a foaming rapid. The body glows warm against the cold water, and the brushstrokes are free and bold. The Nationalmuseum declined to buy the painting, which was considered offensive, and Josephson experienced it as a great defeat.

In 1888 he fell ill with a severe mental illness during a stay in Brittany. The drawings and paintings he made in the following years were long regarded as symptoms of illness, but the young modernists after 1900 saw in them something new and daring. Today The Water Sprite, which hangs in the Nationalmuseum, is counted among the principal works of Swedish art.

The women among the Opponents

The first generation of women from the Academy of Arts’ department for female students, which had opened in 1864, reached maturity in the 1880s. Eva Bonnier and Julia Beck signed the protest in 1885, and Hanna Pauli belonged to the same circle. Pauli’s Breakfast Time of 1887, a laid table in the garden where the sunlight glitters on the china, was thought carelessly painted but is today one of the best-loved pictures in Swedish open-air painting.

Eva Bonnier bequeathed money for art in Stockholm’s public spaces, and the fund has since paid for many works in the city. Julia Beck stayed in France and was long forgotten in Sweden. Read more in the guide Swedish women artists.

From rebels to institution

In the 1890s the Opponents turned towards Sweden: the light, the summer night, the archipelago and the farms of Dalarna. Bergh, Nordström and Kreuger painted the Halland coast in the Varberg School, Zorn painted Dalarna and Bruno Liljefors wildlife, as in Fox Family of 1886. Patrons such as Pontus Fürstenberg in Gothenburg and Ernest Thiel in Stockholm bought their art.

In the end the Opponents took over the institutions. Richard Bergh became head of the Nationalmuseum in 1915, and the 1880s and 1890s are today often called the golden age of Swedish art. The app’s network shows how the artists were connected, and the period The Opponents and the 1890s tells the whole story. The guide Art to see in Stockholm shows where the works hang.

How to recognise it

Exercise

What did the Opponents form in 1886?