Silence - Winter

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Silence - Winter

Artist Gustaf Fjaestad Swedish, 1868-1948

Place of OriginSweden

Date1914

Dimensions58 × 72 in. (147.3 × 182.9 cm)

Mediumoil on canvas

ClassificationPaintings

Credit LineGift of Edward Drummond Libbey

Object number

1914.119

Not on View

Collections

Paintings

Published ReferencesToledo Museum of Art Museum News, no. 28, Dec. 1915, repr.

Godwin, Blake-More, European Paintings in the Toledo Museum, 1939, p. 326, repr. p. 327.

Christian Science Monitor, Dec. 17, 1943, repr.

Journal of New York Botanical Gardens, January 1945, repr. on cover.

Toledo Museum of Art, The Toledo Museum of Art, European Paintings, Toledo, 1976, p. 390, repr.

Exhibition HistoryMaumee, Lucas County Public Library, 1948.Label TextA master of the winter scene, Gustaf Fjaestad painted the snowbound forests and countryside of Värmland in western Sweden, a region known for its winter storms. Fjaestad developed a process in which he coated his canvas with a light-sensitive substance onto which he projected photographs that he used as a guide for his paintings. Yet his images have an almost abstract quality to them as patterns are explored in almost obsessive detail. Silence: Winter presents an evocative scene of freshly made tracks leading under heavily snow-laden branches, the only hint of any activity in the blanketed forest. Fjaestad was one of the leading Swedish painters at the turn of the 20th century; he was also a noted tapestry designer and cabinetmaker. Art, however, was something of a second career for him—he had been a champion ice skater who held the 1891 world record for the fastest English mile.