Julius Kronberg

Julius Kronberg (1850 in Karlskrona – 17 October 1921 in Stockholm) was a Swedish painter.

Julius Kronberg received education at the Royal Swedish Academy of Arts in Stockholm in the 1860s. A travel scholarship brought him to Paris via Düsseldorf and Copenhagen. He is associated with the Düsseldorf school of painting. He stayed in München where he continued studying before settling in Rome in 1877. He was a professor at the Royal Swedish Academy of Arts between 1895-1898.

Works

The painting Jaktnymf made Kronberg known to a wider audience. Among his largest official commissions rank three major paintings for the Royal Palace in Stockholm (1891–1893) and works for the Royal Dramatic Theatre (1906–1908). Apart from the official commissions, Kronberg made several paintings for the Hallwyl palace in Stockholm. One of his famous paintings is David och Saul (David and Saul the King), a painting which is considered by modern scholars as strongly homoerotic.

After his death in 1921 his studio was donated to the Nordic Museum in Stockholm, and at the expense of his friend, the Countess Wilhelmina von Hallwyl, was moved to Skansen. The studio and its contents feature on the sleeve for the 1981 ABBA album, The Visitors.

Kronberg at work

David och Saul (1885)

Kurtis i skogsbacken

Diana (1896) Hallwyl Museum