I am currently reading Heartists by Joanna Pietikäinen. It’s the biography of Carolina Benedicks-Bruce and William Blair Bruce which we bought last week from Brucebo, on Gotland. I’m about a third of the way through and have come across the artist and friend of Carolina, Gerda Rydberg Tirén (1858-1928).
Gerda was born Gerda Maria Rydberg in Uppland, just north of Stockholm. Like Carolina, she was a Swedish painter who studied in Stockholm at the Academy of Fine Arts before heading for Paris. They shared rooms in the small French village of Grez-sur-Loing.
I took this photo of her from the book.
I think it’s very enigmatic. It’s like she’s daring the viewer to say something, anything. I like it very much.
The book has some correspondence between Gerda and Carolina from the 1880’s, and she sounds like quite the party girl when they were both single. And then she married Johan Tirén. She may have still been a bit of a party girl, but I don’t know that.
Here’s an excerpt from one of her letters to Carolina:
We were all invited to the Larssons [Carl & Karin] on Christmas Eve and it was very pleasant. As are all parties in this part of the art world. The Larrsons, Spada [art critic Johan Christian Janzon], Pauli [Georg] and others. The party didn’t end until the next day. The trams had already started rolling by in the morning before we went home. Christmas Day, as you can imagine, was very much a day of rest. Ah, and we thought we would be celebrating a quiet Christmas Eve at home. We even bought a little tree in a flowerpot and put a candle in it. Instead, we were making merry.
Pietikäinen, Johanna, Trans: Larsson, Amanda, 2021, Heartists, The Gotland Museum, Gotland, Sweden.
The pair of them were in Paris during my favourite time, La Belle Époque. I can only imagine how amazing it would have been in a small French village before the turn of the 20th century, with a bunch of Swedes celebrating Christmas. I’m sure there would have been much singing and drinking involved.
What a time to be alive.
Gerda had four children with Johan, two of whom became artists. She is best known, these days, for 116 black and white illustrations she created in 1899 for an edition of Robinson Crusoe.
Incidentally, Carl Larsson didn’t think female artists should exist when he was at the Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm. It’s surprising that he married a female artist.
In a lovely and unexpected connection, Carolina’s very wealthy parents owned a summer house (mansion really) between Nyköping and Gnesta, not far from us. She would often visit as a child when she lived with her family in Stockholm. Maybe, one day, we’ll try and find the house.
