John Albert Bauer (4 June 1882 – 20 November 1918) was a Swedish painter and illustrator. His work is concerned with landscape and mythology, but he also composed portraits. He is best known for his illustrations of early editions of Bland tomtar och troll (Among Gnomes and Trolls), an anthology of Swedish folklore and fairy tales.
Bauer was born and raised in Jönköping. At 16 he moved to Stockholm to study at the Royal Swedish Academy of Arts. While there he received his first commissions to illustrate stories in books and magazines, and met the artist Ester Ellqvist, whom he married in 1906. He traveled throughout Lappland, Germany and Italy early in his career, and these cultures deeply informed his work. He painted and illustrated in a romantic nationalistic style, in partly influenced by the Renaissance and Sami cultures. Most of his works are watercolors or prints in monochrome or muted colours; he also produced oil paintings and frescos. His illustrations and paintings broadened the understanding and appreciation of Swedish folklore, fairy tales and landscape.
When Bauer was 36, he drowned, together with Ester and their son Bengt, in a shipwreck on Vättern, a lake in southern Sweden.
Biography
Early life and education
John Bauer was born on 4 June 1882 in Jönköping, the son of Josef Bauer, a man of Bavarian origin, and Emma Charlotta Wadell, from a farming family from the town Rogberga just outside Jönköping. Josef Bauer came to Sweden in 1863, penniless. He founded a successful charcuterie business at the Östra Torget in Jönköping. The family lived in the apartment above the shop until 1881 when the construction of their house in Sjövik was completed. John, born in 1882, lived at the Villa Sjövik by the shore of Lake Rocksjön with his parents and two brothers, one older and one younger; his only sister died at a young age. The family home would remain central to him long after he lived on his own. His initial schooling was at the Jönköpings Högre Allmäna Läroverk (The Jönköping Public School of Higher Education), followed by the Jönköpings Tekniska Skola (The Jönköping Technical School) from 1892 to 1898. He spent most of his time drawing caricatures of his teachers and daydreaming, something not appreciated by his teachers.
He was given to sketching and drawing from an early age, without encouragement from his family. However, when he turned sixteen and wanted to go to Stockholm to study art, they were enthusiastic for him and backed him financially. In 1898, he was one of the 40 applicants to study at the Royal Swedish Academy of Arts, and although he was deemed well qualified for a place at the academy, he was too young to be accepted. He spent the next two years at the Kaleb Ahltins school for painters. During this time he was, like many teenagers, torn between hope and despair, something that is reflected in his artwork.
By 1900, Baeur was old enough to attend the Academy of Arts. Baeur was one of the three students admitted that year; the two other successful applicants were his friends Ivar Kamke and Pontus Lanner. He studied traditional illustrations and made drawings of plants, medieval costumes and croquis; all of which served him in his later work. One of his teachers, professor and noted historic painter, Gustaf Cederström praised Bauer:
While at the academy, he received his first commissions to illustrate magazines (including the Söndags-Nisse and Snöflingan) and books (e.g. De gyllene böckerna, Ljungars saga and Länge, länge sedan). In 1904 he traveled to Lappland to create paintings for a book on the culture of the county and its "exotic wilderness". At the end of 1905, he left the academy and put "Artist" on his business card.
Journey to Lappland Following the discovery of iron ore deposits in the north of Sweden, Lappland became a frontier for industrial development, instead of an exotic wilderness of the Sami culture and midnight sun. Opportunistically, Carl Adam Victor Lundholm published his Lappland, det stora svenska framtidslandet (Lappland, the great Swedish land of the future). He engaged noted Swedish artists—such as , Alfred Thörne, Per Daniel Holm and Hjalmar Lindberg—to create the illustrations. Since Bauer was an inexperienced illustrator by comparison, Lundholm tested his abilities by sending him to create some drawings of Sami people at Skansen.
Although reluctant to audition for the commission, on 15July 1904 Bauer left for Lappland and stayed there for a month. Coming from the dense, dark forests of Småland he was overwhelmed by the open vistas and colorful landscapes. His encounters with the Sami people and their culture became important for his later works. He took many photos, sketched and made notes of the tools, costumes and objects he saw, but he had difficulty becoming close to the Sami, due to their shyness. He recorded his experiences in his diary and in letters to his family and friends. After a visit to a Sami goahti he noted: "All light from above. If the head is tilted forward it is dark. The lit parts of the figure always lighter than the tent canvas. Sharp shadows run like spokes from the middle of the goathi."
The book on Lappland was published in 1908, with eleven watercolors by Bauer. They were painted in Stockholm, almost 18 months after his visit, using the photos and sketches he had collected during his journey. Many of the photos resulted in other drawings and paintings. Most of these were romanticized versions of the photos, but he succeeded in capturing the nuances and ambiance of the goahtis, and the richness of the Sami garments and crafts. Details from the Sami culture, such as the bent knives, shoes, spears, pots and belts, became important elements in the clothes and ornamentations of Bauer's trolls. Bauer's eye for detail and his numerous notes also made the material an ethnographic documentation of the era.
Courtship and marriage
Bauer met fellow student Ester Ellqvist at the Royal Swedish Academy of Arts. Ellqvist studied at the separate department for women, since women were not allowed to attend the same classes as the men and their education was conducted in a different manner. So, while Ellqvist was talented and ambitious, she did not have an equal opportunity as her male colleagues to develop her artistry, and society's expectation was that her role in life would be that of housewife, not an artist.
Bauer started courting her in 1903, but since they were apart most of the time, this was done by mail. Their relationship developed as they shared their dreams, aspirations, doubts and insecurities in their correspondence. For Bauer, Ellqvist became his inspiration, muse, and "fairy princess"; it was as such he painted her for the first time in Sagoprinsessan (The Fairy Princess). He made sketches for the painting in 1904, and finalized them in an oil painting in 1905. Ellqvist is portrayed as a strong, enlightened and unobtainable Valkyrie. The painting was shown at Bauer's first exhibition at the Valand Academy in Gothenburg in 1905 (where he was one of eleven debutants) and in Norrköping in 1906, where it was sold to a private collector. It is now in the Jönköpings läns museum. Bauer tried to mold Ellqvist into his vision of a creature of the woods and as the perfect artist's wife; he wanted her to make a home for them in a romantic cottage in the woods, while he wandered about the forest seeking inspiration.
Ellqvist, on the other hand, had been raised in Stockholm and was a lively person who enjoyed the social life that could only be found in towns or cities. She wanted to settle down in a comfortable place with a husband and have children. Bauer was not sufficiently established an artist to provide for a family; throughout his entire lifetime he relied on his parents for financial support. When he proposed to Ellqvist, Bauer did so without the approval of his parents, who thought that he should be more established in a career and self-supporting before marriage.
On 18December 1906, Bauer and Ellqvist were married. Little is known of their first years together since they now lived in the same house, making letters unnecessary. Bauer had jobs illustrating covers for magazines, like Hvar 8 Dag, and began work on Bland tomtar och troll (Among Gnomes and Trolls). In 1908, John and Ester traveled to Italy together; on their return they found a house, the "Villa Björkudden", situated on the shores of Lake Bunn just outside Gränna. They bought the house in 1914, and the following year their son Bengt (called "Putte") was born. The birth of Putte marked a harmonious and joyful time for the couple. Bauer made his final illustrations for Among Gnomes and Trolls, his grand farewell to the series, which freed him to explore playwriting and make frescos. He showed his paintings at exhibitions and experimented with modernism, but all this came at a cost. Bauer was often away, leaving Ellqvist alone at home, and he no longer had the steady income that the illustrations had provided. By 1917, their marriage was in trouble, and in 1918, Bauer put his thoughts about a divorce in a letter to his wife.
Over time, Bauer used Ellqvist as a model less frequently. With the birth of their son, Bauer started to paint pictures with children as part of the composition. The painting Rottrollen (The Root Trolls), completed in 1917, is of Putte sleeping among troll-shaped roots in a forest.
Journey to Italy
Bauer and his wife made a long journey to Italy at Josef's expense in 1909. They chose to travel through Germany and on to Italy based on his readings of medieval towns during a 1902 visit to Germany with his father. The couple visited Verona, Florence, Siena and spent two months in Volterra. They continued through Naples and Capri, spending the winter in Rome.
Throughout their travels they studied art and visited churches and museums, which appealed to Bauer's eclectic mind. In the evenings they went to small tavernas to enjoy the ambiance; all of which is recorded in the letters they sent home to Bauer's family. Bauer's sketchbooks are full of studies of antique objects and Renaissance art, some of which he used for his illustrations. A portrait of Ghirlandaio by Sandro Botticelli is said to be the basis for Svanhamnen (The Swan maiden), and Piero della Francesca's work was the inspiration for Den helige Martin (Saint Martin, the Holy). He also became intrigued by frescoes. He was exuberant in the study of art, but he also became homesick for the quiet serenity of the Swedish forest which resulted in some of his best winter pictures with white snow, dark woods and the sky glittering with tiny stars.
Their journey was abandoned after a murder in their building in Rome. Bauer was interrogated by Italian police due to a misunderstanding. He was never a suspect but the situation became public, leaving a bitter memory of their visit to Rome.
Death on Lake Vättern Bauer, Ester and their three-year-old son, Bengt, were on their way to their new home in Stockholm, where Bauer hoped for spiritual renewal and a new life for himself and his family. A recent, well-publicized train accident at Getå caused Bauer to book their return to Stockholm by boat, the steamer Per Brahe.
On the night of 19November 1918, when the steamer left Gränna it was loaded with iron stoves, plowshares, sewing machines and barrels of produce. All the cargo did not fit into the hold and a significant portion was stored unsecured on deck, making the ship top-heavy. The weather was bad and by the time the steamer was at sea a full storm was raging; the wind caused the cargo on deck to shift, some of it falling overboard, further destabilizing the ship. The ship capsized and went down, stern first, just from the next port, Hästholmen, killing all 24 people on board, including the Bauers. Most of the passengers had been trapped in their cabins.