Tranquil impressionist oil painting by Knut Hanqvist in subdued colors, with a tree and a little pink house. Oil on canvas, Signed and dated lower right, "K. Hanqvist -44."
Painted in 1944, this canvas is built around a single bare tree, its branches spread flat against a pale, wind-scoured lake — a compositional device that owes something to Hanqvists academy training in structure and something to a more personal, quieter sensibility. Golden autumn foliage still clings to the trees at the left, set against water rendered almost entirely in cool greys and lilac-whites, with a single warm accent — a pink rooftop and its curl of chimney smoke — placed far across the water to anchor the whole scene. The handling is tighter and more controlled than the loose, breezy brushwork of his still lifes from the same period, closer to the discipline of Hanqvist's Stockholm years.
The painting is cleaned and comes with a complementary, well-suited vintage wooden frame. The canvas contains a small skillful restoration, which is not detectable from the front of the painting, and is great condition.
Size: 56 x 65 cm (with frame)
About the artist:
Swedish painter Knut Axel Hanqvist (1904 – 1981) was born in Norrköping, where he spent his first years after school working in his family's shop before beginning formal study at eighteen under the painter Albert Sjöström. He went on to Otte Sköld's painting school in 1928 and 1931, then to the Maison Watteau in Paris in 1929, and finally to the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm from 1931 to 1936 — a long, deliberate education that shows in the structural confidence of his later work. He held solo shows at De Ungas Salong in Stockholm, Färg och Form, and Galerie Blanche through the 1940s, and is represented today at the Moderna Museet, Norrköpings Konstmuseum, and several regional Swedish museums.
