Charlotta NordströmUniversitetslektor

Up the Stylish Staircase: Situating the Fürstenberg Gallery and Art Collection in a Late Nineteenth-Century Swedish Art World.

»The charming place that we now have in our city is not a gallery, no it is – First Row.«

In the beginning of 1885, Pontus and Göthilda Fürstenberg opened their newly built art gallery in their home to visitors in Gothenburg. The gallery was unique as an exhibition space for contemporary Nordic and French art. Many of the artworks that were on display around the time of the opening were recent purchases made by the Fürstenbergs at the Salon in Paris.

This book situates the Fürstenberg Gallery and Art Collection within a Swedish art world of the late nineteenth century – an art world that is strongly associated with a modern breakthrough in Swedish art through the exhibitions that were arranged in Stockholm by a formation of artists, the Opponents. Artists like Per Hasselberg, Carl Larsson and Bruno Liljefors were rising to fame in the mid-1880s. The Fürstenberg Gallery and Art Collection becomes linked to a variety of art-historical situations, exhibition practices, and art collecting practices, while keeping in mind the specificity of a public art gallery that was embedded within a domestic environment.

Summary of doctoral dissertation, defended in october 2015, Stockholm University.