Carl and Karin Larsson: Creators of the Swedish Style

by Michael Snodin, Elisabet Hidemark

Carl Larsson (1853-1919) is Sweden's best-loved artist and is known around the world for his paintings of his home and family. At their famous house at Sundborn, in central Sweden, Carl and his wife, Karin, a textile designer, created a series of revolutionary interiors that combined old furniture and objects with startlingly modern concepts of color and design. These designs gave way to a new approach to interior design that continues to influence designers today. This book presents the Larssons as designers and as creators of a remarkable domestic ideal. It sets them in their artistic and social context, using contemporary photographs and comparative pictures. At its heart are the remarkable Ett hem paintings and a series of color photographs showing the interiors at Sundborn and Karin's textiles.

Genres: Art, Nonfiction, Biography, Reference, Interior Design, Scandinavian Literature

252 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1998

About the author

Michael Snodin has been responsible for the remarkable restoration of Strawberry Hill.

Reviews

[Susan Pola Staples]

Carl Larsson is perhaps Sweden's best loved painter. His influence on his homeland goes beyond painting. His style influenced home decor and IKEA based their entire line on what his home, Lilla Hyttnas at Sundborn, contained.

Larsson was a multi-talented painted. He was a gifted portraitist, an illustrator of renown, a watercolourist who captured the feeling, spirit and whimsy of the moment like no other, and a painted who worked on broad canvasses like Gozzo did on the walls of the Medici palace.

Larsson was born into poverty, received his artistic training in both in his native Stockholm and in Paris (where he met and married the equally talented Karin)..

[Jennifer Mcfarlane · Rating 4 out of 5]

Carl Larsson is now my second favorite artist (Renoir is my first). I come from a Swedish heritage, so I was curious to find out about Carl Larsson, and the more I learned about the man, the artist and the body of his work, the more I became enchanted. He really believed in getting art into the hands (and homes) of the "common" people of Sweden, and his depictions of his family and life at home are touching and even sometimes humorous. I love his use of light and would love to decorate my home in the manner that he and Karin created theirs--full of light, beauty, love and beautiful USEFUL pieces.

[Virginia Pulver · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love being the voyeur into Carl and Karin Larsson's cozy life. Karin encouraged her spouse to paint what he knew and he wisely took her advice. The long, cold, dark winters and the playful, enticing summers provided so many opportunities for the good father and artist to show his skill and his love of family. I never tire of peeking through the windows to see how these lovely people orchestrated their family life. Though this was many years ago, it still feels contemporary - love, family, and art are timeless, are they not? I am glad to have had the opportunity to be amongst this family (vicariously). The work inspires me in many ways. <3 Perhaps I should visit Sweden and Finland... - Ginn

[AnnaCecylia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful print in hardcover filled with solid informations about not only the Larssons and their home, but also Sweden at the beginning of 20th century richly illustrated with high quality photographs and reproductions

[Jackson · Rating 5 out of 5]

All kinds of wonderful art is born, collected, celebrated at their hands

[Anna · Rating 5 out of 5]

The eye-catching cover of this big book full of whimsical watercolors is misleading: the book is a meaty collection of essays on European design history, tied to the home and family life of Sweden's darling Bohemian couple, Karl and Karin Larsson. I'm condensing it into a pamphlet for future personal reference.

[Cody · Rating 5 out of 5]

Interesting not only from an artistic perspective but also historical. Many of the locations Carl painted remain almost untouched over 100 years later.

[Eva Klaess · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gorgeous!

[Marilyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a very readable autobiography that the artist never had a chance to edit, which makes it all the more interesting. Beautiful photos of his watercolor works are included.