David Wallin
David August Wallin was a Swedish artist. In 1932 he won an Olympic Gold Medal in the art competitions of the Olympic Games in Los Angeles for his oil painting "At the Seaside of Arild".
Background
David Wallin is best known for his oil paintings with genre motifs and idealized images of nude women in atmospheric landscapes, where he stressed the affinity of human and nature. He also painted tender depictions of mother and child, and a series of portraits of famous Swedes and genres as figures, landscapes and nudes, still lifes and religious images. He is represented in a large number of museums.In 1905 he married the artist Elin Wallin, born Lundberg. He was the brother of the Swedish-American artist Carl E. Wallin, and he was the father of the Swedish artist Bianca Wallin and the artist Sigurd Wallin.
Biography
Childhood and early years
David Wallin grew up on a farm, Varby, in Östra Husby parish, a locality on Vikbolandet, which had been in the family since the 17th century. His parents were the carpenter Alexander Wallin and his wife Inga Helena Larsdotter. He grew up in a large household with many siblings, a sister and four brothers. The home was strictly religious, and his father turned to the Bible and the writings of Carl Olof Rosenius for daily guidance. The popular revival movement was a powerful influence on life in the large household with the many children.Wallin dreamt early of a career as an artist, his first artistic experience was an altarpiece by the artist Pehr Hörberg in Östra Husby church. He worked as a store clerk and as a painter's apprentice in Norrköping 1893–1896, simultaneously attending lectures at a technical evening college. In 1896 he arrived in Stockholm and found work in the studio/atelier of Carl Grabow, a Swedish decorative painter of theatrical décor. Carl Grabow had established a decorating studio in Kungsholmen in Stockholm. The Grabow Collection at the Drottningholm Theatre Museum is unique documentary material for those wishing to study Swedish scenography of the late 19th century and the first years of the 20th century. Then Wallin continued his studies at the Technical Evening College in Stockholm under Anders Forsberg, who was a Swedish artist and art teacher and the teacher of freehand drawing at the Technical School.
Royal Academy of Arts in Stockholm: 1898-1904
In 1898 Wallin was admitted at the Royal Swedish Academy of Arts in Stockholm, where his fellow students included Karl Isakson, Ivar Arosenius and John Bauer. His teacher was among others Georg von Rosen. In 1903–1904 he studied briefly at the École des Beaux-Arts and Académie Colarossi in Paris, where his teacher was the Norwegian naturalist painter, illustrator, author and journalist Christian Krohg.In 1902 Wallin received the Academy’s Ducal Prize for his oil painting "Kraka" and in 1904 he was awarded the Royal Medal for Portrait Painting. "Kraka" is a Norse mythology oil painting, of a little girl called Aslög or also called "Kraka" or "Kraka meets Ragnar Lodbrok". David Wallin’s oil painting of "Kraka" has the dimensions of 223 x 149 cm.
Kraka was a Norse princess. She caught the attention of the old king Ragnar Lodbrok thanks to her immense beauty. Before Ragnar took Kraka to his wife he wanted to bring her wisdom to a test. Ragnar invited Kraka to dinner and told her at the same time that she should neither be dressed nor undressed. Kraka survived the challenge by coming dressed in a fishing net. This is the story of the Norse fairy figure Kraka in the Norse mythology. Kraka is also known as the legendary Aslög in the Norse mythology. She is the daughter of Sigurd and Brynhild Fafnesbane, wife of Ragnar Lodbrok. Aslaug, Aslög, Kraka, Kráka or Randalin, was a queen of Scandinavian mythology who appears in Snorri’s Edda, the Völsunga saga and the saga of Ragnar Lodbrok. Some other Swedish painters, who had earlier painted "Kraka", are Mårten Eskil Winge and August Malmström.
Engagement and marriage: 1905
David Wallin was engaged in springtime 1905 and in September the same year he married his fellow artist Elin Wallin, born Lundberg. The wedding was on September 14, 1905, in Sankt Nikolai kyrka in Örebro, Elin's hometown. After the wedding the couple made a combined wedding and study trip to Paris and London during the years 1905–1906. The couple eventually became the parents of seven children, five daughters and two sons, born in 1906 to 1924.Artistic influences
Among Wallin's favorites in Paris were Jean-François Millet, Pierre Puvis de Chavannes and Gustave Moreau. Jean-François Millet was a French painter and one of the founders of the Barbizon school in rural France. Millet is noted for his scenes of peasant farmers, he can be categorized as part of the naturalism and realism movements. Pierre Puvis de Chavannes was a French painter, who became the president and co-founder of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts and whose work influenced many other artists. Gustave Moreau was a French Symbolist painter, a late nineteenth-century art movement of French and Belgian origin, whose main focus was the illustration of biblical and mythological figures. He was the movement's inspirational teacher, and he did much for the era. He was a professor at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, he pushed his students to think outside of the lines of formality and to follow their visions. Wallin also became acquainted with the works of Édouard Manet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and other impressionists artists painting in the style of impressionism, an association of Paris-based artists.In London Wallin studied the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and other groups, including James McNeill Whistler, who was an American-born, British-based artist. In London there were major collections of Pre-Raphaelite work in the Tate Gallery and Victoria and Albert Museum. Tate is Britain's national gallery of international modern art and forms and V&A is the world's largest museum of decorative arts and design.
David Wallin's own portrait "Portrait of my Wife" was shown at "Le Salon", Salon, at the Grand Palais des Champs-Elysées on Avenue Alexandre III in Paris. This portrait was a portrait with a sitting model in silver-grey colors which are outlined against dimmed masses of leaves. The avenue Champs-Élysées was located adjacent to the Palais de l’Élysee and the presidential palace, with its rounded gate, and the Grand Palais, was built in the late 19th century. The "Grand Palais" was a large glass exhibition hall that was built for the Paris Exhibition of 1900. It was located in the 8th arrondissement of Paris.
Early subjects, early important portraits and other motifs
The subject matter of David Wallin's earliest independent paintings was associated with his native soil, for instance his "Family Estate". The most important among them, “The Boy and the Migratory Birds”. The big painting reveals the influence of the French painter Jean-François Millet, but is clearly inspired by real life.A number of chiaroscuro portraits testify to his infatuation with Rembrandt during his student days at the Academy. Chiaroscuro is Italian for “light-dark” in art and is characterized by strong contrasts between light and dark, usually bold contrasts affecting a whole composition. It is also a technical term used by artists and art historians for using contrasts of light to achieve a sense of volume in modeling three-dimensional objects such as the human body. Chiaroscuro originated during the Renaissance as drawing on coloured paper, where the artist worked from this base tone towards light, with white gouache, and dark, with ink, bodycolour or watercolour. The French use of the term, clair-obscur, was introduced in the seventeenth century. In photography, chiaroscuro is often effected with the use of "Rembrandt lighting".
Another motif was that of his wife and the mother-child theme, e.g. "Spring", an oil portrait of his wife in the Lill-Jans Forest in Stockholm. Several sketches of his wife show remarkable coloristic free and easy manners. Some charming oils include "Elin sewing", "Elin against blue sky", and "Elin in sunshine".
In 1908, Wallin was awarded an Academy travel fellowship from the Academy's special fund, which was later extended for another year. The following year, in 1909, he received the Wohlfahrt Award. The scholarship was an award of financial aid for the student to further education. The criteria of the award was that the value and the purpose would further his artistic education. The awards allowed him to live, first in Italy, and then in France during the period 1908–1913, with only brief visits to his native country and to Spain.
Italy: 1908-1910
In Italy, Wallin was based in Rome and Florence during the years 1908–1910 together with his family, his wife and his three daughters at that time. In Rome the family stayed at Via Frattina. Numerous sketches and jottings in his sketchbooks testify to studies of Renaissance painting. His own compositional ideas often consist of vague sketches with one or more figures in a dimly suggested landscape, often romantic couples.In Rome he painted figures and street-life studies in addition to portraits, including several of "Mrs. Carin Lidman", born Thiel, later Mrs. Carin Östberg. In 1919 she married the famous Swedish architect and artist Ragnar Östberg, most famous for designing Stockholm City Hall. Ragnar Östberg was also Professor of Architecture at the Art Academy in Stockholm architecture school from 1922 to 1932. Wallin's portrait of Mrs. Carin Lidman shows a shimmering young womanhood which is reproduced in richly nuanced, scented colors.
Wallin spent two summers at the Scandinavian Artists’ colony at Volterra in Tuscany, where he returned to a genre that he had embarked on at home, it was that of nudes in a landscape. His wife and children served as models. The best of these studies suggest the love of light playing on skin and greenery so typical of plein-air painting. Volterra is a small town 45 km southwest of Florence.