User:Hegvald/AF

John Axel Fridell (6 November 1894 in Kristine parish, Falun – 26 May 1935 in Klara parish, Stockholm ) was a Swedish painter and printmaker. Mainly working in etching and drypoint, he has been called "the central figure in Swedish printmaking".

He enrolled as a student at the Royal Academy of Arts in Stockholm in 1913. During his years as an art student, he worked diligently and participated in a number of exhibitions with other artists of the same generation, but did not pay much attention to the curriculum and ended up expelled from the Academy in 1916 for neglecting his studies; he nevertheless maintained good relations with his teachers there and was allowed to continue using the academy print shop. His work became popular with wealthy collectors and he was given a number of portrait commissions.

Fridell left for Italy in 1921. On his return, he settled in his home town of Falun remaining there until 1923, when he went to Paris for several months. After moving to Stockholm in 1925, he learnt to know the collector Thorsten Laurin, whose collection familiarized Fridell with the work of English printmakers, especially F. S. Haden. In 1926, Fridell travelled to London, first settling in a small hotel in Bloomsbury. Laurin had helped him finance his English sojourn by organizing a consortium of collectors, each of whom would receive a copy of each of the eighteen prints he bound himself to produce over the period of a year.

After about a month in London, Fridell was visited by a young Swedish woman, Ingrid Starck, who like him was from Dalarna. A common friend, the art critic Nils Palmgren, had recommended Fridell as someone who could show her the sights. As she later recollected, she found him rather morose and would probably not have wanted to see him again if it had not been for a comment Palmgren had made about Fridell's work -- Palmgren had called him "our greatest currently living etcher" -- provoking her to ask the artist to come home with him to see his work. The change in his personality that came over Fridell when he spoke of his art, the blackness of the trees of Hyde Park and the fog that wrapped around them changed her view of him. They finished that evening with dinner together and continued to see one another. They were married in a ceremony in Chelsea Town Hall in April 1927.

A month after the wedding, Ingrid returned to her work at the Collection of Far Eastern Antiquities in Stockholm. After some months of correspondence, Fridell followed her in September 1927, and together they rented a couple of rooms at Skeppargatan 22 in the Stockholm district of Östermalm. In May 1928 he was awarded a travel scholarship from the Academy of Arts and went to Paris, later to Zurich (for a portrait commission), back to Paris and then to London again. In January Fridell and his wife borrowed a holiday home in Sussex constructed from two converted railway carriages in a seaside garden. Fridell produced a few rural motifs before starting to feel restless with an urge to get back to London. He wanted to work in the poverty-stricken East End. With some difficulty, Ingrid managed to find a shabby boarding house where they settled in a room with a view of Greenwich Park.

They returned to Stockholm in late April 1929. His contract with Laurin's consortium had expired and he went into business with the Bukowskis auction house and art dealership, where his friend (and later biographer), the art historian Karl Asplund, had recently acceded to the position of general manager. For a certain guaranteed minimum income per year, Bukowskis was given exclusive rights to sell his work. He made a number of portraits, including one of Selma Lagerlöf, but was dissatisfied with the quality of available printers in Sweden.

After a short trip to northern Sweden and Norway, which left little traces in his work, and spending the Christmas of 1929 with his wife and parents in Falun, he left for Paris in February 1930 in car together with his friend Reinhold von Rosen. While von Rosen continued to the south, Fridell settled in a small hotel, the Hotel Bisson, at No. 37, Quai des Grands-Augustins, with a view towards the Seine and the Notre Dame, the area where one of his artistic idols, Charles Méryon, had once lived and worked.

In the middle of April 1930, Fridell left Paris for Holland, where he quickly passed through Amsterdam, where he found no inspiration and continued to Dordrecht and finally to Rotterdam, where he stayed for a couple of weeks before returning to Amsterdam, where he went to see Rembrandt's etchings. He started work on several plates in Rotterdam and Amsterdam that he later completed after his return to Sweden, including his Old House in Amsterdam, which he was to work on for a couple of years and make in several versions. As summer approached and the weather got hotter and stuffier, he started to long to get back to Stockholm with its clearer air. Before embarking on his home journey, he spent a few weeks in the idyllic fishing village Monnikendam on the Zuiderzee coast.

Returning to Stockholm via Copenhagen, he and Ingrid settled in a flat and artist's studio at Stadsgården 22, just at the northern edge of Södermalm next to the rough and dynamite-created precipice above the Saltsjöbanan railway and overlooking the harbour. He furnished the flat in his preferred ascetic style and sat down to finish the plates from his last journey. A solo exhibition was held at Bukowskis in the autumn, accompanied by enthusiastic reviews and purchases by the Nationalmuseum. New portrait commissions followed, including one from Prince Eugen.

His health got gradually worse

-

Mr Simmons (1933) was reproduced by Czeslaw Slania as a stamp in 1974, on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the Swedish Publicist Club