Sweden's Nordic nature with its archipelago coast, deep forests, raging rivers and wide, calm lakes has always attracted travellers and lovers of romantic landscapes. Gustaf Rydberg is one of the country's most important landscape painters.

Rydberg, born in Malmö in 1835, learned his trade as a student at the art academies in Copenhagen and Stockholm. But like many other Swedes, he went to the Düsseldorf Art Academy in the middle of the 19th century. The most important German landscape painters of their time taught there, some of whom were already influenced by the open-air painting of the Barbizon School. They were interested in close observation on the spot, they were looking for landscapes that were still untouched by modern developments and ultimately expressed a longing for something completely different. Professors such as Oswald Achenbach shaped this romantic view of landscape, and Rydberg took lessons with him in 1862 and 1863. After completing his studies, Rydberg was drawn back to his native Skåne in southern Sweden during the summer months. This partly hilly, partly flat peninsula with its extensive cornfields, lonely farmsteads and gnarled groups of trees was the real goal of his art. Since his childhood he was influenced by this landscape, it was a place of longing for this sensitive person from the big city Malmö. In 1864 he moved to the Swedish capital Stockholm. There, however, he rarely found his motifs; he remained true to rural Sweden in its many facets. At that time, the Swedish king also ruled over Norway. As a special award for his work, Rydberg was able to accompany King Karl XV on his journey through Norway in 1868 and capture this wild country with its rugged fjords in sketches and paintings. One year later he returned there once again, financed by the king.

Ultimately, however, Gustaf Rydberg is remembered above all as a master painter of the Swedish landscape. His style is characteristic: low-lying horizons, evening moods in reddish light, snow-covered farms, bare tree skeletons in the middle of wide fields, lonely mills in front of a wide, seemingly endless horizon line, cloud mountains in front of impenetrable forests... From about 1885 until old age he lived in the tiny village of Torsebro near Kristianstad in his beloved homeland of Skåne. Here he found many interesting motifs: for example, the impressive rapids of the river Helgeà near Torsebro. Numerous water mills were operated there. Gustaf Rydberg died in 1933 at the age of 98 in his native town. There was already a big jubilee exhibition behind him, which the Swedish Academy of Arts had arranged for him in 1920. You can see it in his pictures: You have to imagine Gustaf Rydberg as a happy man. However, he remained unaffected by modern developments in landscape painting and in art in general. This in no way detracts from the mastery and expressiveness of his late romantic paintings.