Axel Sjöberg

Axel Sjöberg was a Swedish painter and illustrator, and one of the first to document the Stockholm archipelago, the largest in the Baltic Sea. He mainly painted landscapes, genre scenes and animals. Sjöberg attended evening and weekend classes at Stockholm’s technical school before finishing school and working, firstly as a chaser at Guldsmedsaktiebolaget, and then as a lithographer at the General Staff lithographic institute.

Sjöberg later studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm from 1885-92 and eventually became a free-lance artist in 1894. In the following years, he illustrated numerous books including The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in 1897 and Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace in 1896-97. Only in the late 1890s did he concentrate more on painting, which was his main interest. Sjöberg exhibited at the World Exhibition in Paris in 1900, and received a silver medal, and also exhibited at the Venice Biennale in 1907, 1920, 1938 and 1942. He also published a number of books and worked as a sculptor.

Haymaking is probably Höskörd i Sandhamn (Haymaking in Sandhamn), a watercolor from 1930 that served as a design for a larger painting commissioned by a bank. Sandhamn is a village on the island of Sandön on the edge of Stockholm’s archipelago, which he depicted in numerous paintings.