Water colours, paintings and drawings

In his youth in the 1880's Hugo Alfvén studied with the painters Otto Hesselbom and Oscar Törnå. Above all it is landscape painting that attracts his interest. Part of the studies comprised copying of paintings at the National Museum of Art. Some of them are preserved in the Alfvén Museum and some among relatives.

For some time Alfvén was uncertain whether he should devote himself to painting or to music. When he finally choose music it was easier for him to become friendly with painters than with composers. In his fiftees, when visiting Italy he bought a box of water colours and took up painting again.

From 1922 and a decade to follow are preserved a row of landscape paintings from Italy and from Dalecarlia together with some portraits painted with an expert hand. Some of them are to be seen at the Alfvén Museum, others are in private possession. In 1925 Alfvén exhibited his paintings in Uppsala together with other academic amateur painters. The art critic Ulf Linde characterised Alfvén in his capacity of water colour painter at the occation of an exhibition held at Waldemarsudde in 1992 in the following way: "In his youth Hugo Alfvén studied painting with Oscar Törnå and Otto Hesselbom.

But he was to devote himself to music - a painting in tones where moods sometimes have similarity with Hesselbom's. The water colours shown in the exhibition are later, all of them made in the 1920's when he after a long pause began painting again at Anacapri; no national romantic half-light sticks to them - they are clear and transparent as glass and - maybe not unexpectedly - very well composed. 'When the floodgate was opened to my so long withdrawn impulses to paint they poored forth like a torrent' he wrote.

He became objective such as Oskar Bergman, he registred all with an admirable persistency; he could really complete what he had envisaged. And his hand was accurate; his scores were famous for their precise calligraphy - when his fourth symphony was edited they could just make a photograph of the original score. His hand was equally disciplined when he made drawings. It is indeed inexplicable that his water colour technique is not experienced as dry, that the ambition does not put the lyricism in the shade - but this never occurs. Probably he had too much inside, an innate life which it was not possible to surpass with the most dutiful perfectionism. He accomplished delightful things."

Click the pictures for a bigger image

Edö isle. Oil painting from his youth. Alfvén Museum	Anacapri, 1924	Anacapri, 1924
Sketch of old women from Dalecarlia. Water colour. No date. Alfvén Museum	Portrait of Lekatt Mats 1926. Alfvén museum	Self portrait Capri 1922. Sepia. Original at the Alfvén museum
Linnéanum, Uppsala. Water colour, 1930. Alfvén museum	View at lake Siljan from Tällberg, 1925. Alfvén museum	View at lake Siljan 1933
Winter in Dalecarlia	The lonely tree, 1933. Alfvén Museum	Carin at the well, 1937.
Olallo Morales, 1926. Original in the Music Academy	Morales' daughter, 1936. Original Alfvén Museum.