Carl Johansson

Impressionist Nordic Landscape, Sörleviken, part of UNESCO World Heritage list

c. 1915

Carl Johansson began his art studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in 1882, where he had Edvard Perséus and Per Daniel Holm as teachers. He joined the Opponents in 1885, which meant that he was forced to leave the academy. Johansson made study trips to France in 1891–1892, Tenerife in 1894 and Italy in 1901 and 1914, also participated in the World's Fair in Paris in 1889, the anniversary exhibition in Buenos Aires in 1910 and San Francisco in 1915. Johansson started by painting small, neatly painted landscape paintings in a traditional style, but after he came into contact with the art of the French artists Claude Monet and Camille Pissarro, his paintings became more impressionistic. He worked with clear and cold colours, with a factual analysis of the photography and where the vegetation appeared more markedly. In his older days, he used a noticeable blue tone in his paintings, giving him the nickname Ultramarin-Johansson. Since he took most of his motifs from Norrland, he also got the epithet Norrlandsmålaren (The Northern Painter).