The
John Bauer Museum is part of Jönköpings läns museum (Jönköping
County Museum), and contains works and sketches by the world-famous
fairytale artist John Bauer. Several of his most well known works can
be seen in the permanent Bauer exhibition.
John Bauer’s Fairytale World is a remarkable experience for all
the senses, whatever your age. And naturally, you can see his amazing
original pictures, and discover the artist behind the works.
Jönköpings läns museum
Dag Hammarskjölds plats 2
Box 2133
SE-550 02 Jönköping
Sweden
Tel: +46 (0)36-30 18 00
Fax: +46 (0)36-30 18 18
e-mail: info@jkpglm.se
The John Bauer museum is located
at Jönköpings läns museum, situated in the eastern part
of central Jönköping. Coach and car parking close to the museum
building. The museum has facilities for the disabled.
Opening hours:
Open: Tue-Sun, 11.00-17.00, Wed, 11.00-20.00
(in July and August) Mon, 11–17
Opening
hours for swedish holidays
Entrance fees
Free entry until 9 May 2010.
Entry fee between May 11–Sep 12, 2010: 40 SEK (visitors aged under 18, free)
Useful information:
Guided introduction: SEK 275 (about 20 min.)
Guided tour during opening hours: SEK 600 (Introduction, and presentation of Bauer’s biography and artistry following a visit to the exhibition. Total time of visit about 45 min.)
For guided tours or introductions outside opening hours: SEK 1200.
Book your visit! Book by e-mail: info@jkpglm.se
telephone +46 (0)36-30 18 00, fax: +46 (0)36-30 18 18
John Bauer - A biography
John Bauer was born in Jönköping in 1882. He grew up with his two brothers in an apartment above their father’s butcher’s shop in Östra torget, and in Villa Sjövik on the outskirts of Jönköping. At only sixteen years of age, he went to Stockholm to begin studying art. Two years later, he was accepted as a student at the Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts. He was already being given illustrating commissions while he was at the Academy. The influence of artists such as Albert Engström and Carl Larsson can be seen clearly in his early works.
 In the summer of 1904, the young John went on a month-long hike in the mountains with his camera over his shoulder and his sketchbook under his arm. The commission was to illustrate a magnificent volume on Lapland. In 1906 he married his friend from the Academy, Ester Ellqvist. They travelled together to southern Germany and Italy on a yearlong study trip, and the encounter with the Italian early renaissance had a profound impact on John’s work.
Between 1907 and 1915, John Bauer illustrated fairytales in Bland tomtar och troll (Among elves and trolls), a book published annually at Christmas. It was with these illustrations that John became the Swedish people’s favourite fairytale artist. But he constantly tried other means of expression, painting monumental frescoes, writing fairytale plays for children and writing a libretto for the ballet Bergakungen (The Mountain King).
On 20 November 1918, the canal boat Per Brahe sank on a voyage to Stockholm. The whole Bauer family - John, Ester and their three-year-old son Bengt, known as Putte - died.
The fairytale artist
John Bauer was first commissioned to illustrate the fairytale book Bland tomtar och troll (Among elves and trolls) in 1907. The illustrations would eventually make him Sweden’s favourite fairytale artist. The mature artist emerged in the 1912-15 issues, which include many of John Bauer’s most famous illustrations, including Princess Tuvstarr gazing down into the dark waters of the forest tarn.
In his pictures, John is increasingly moving away from the transient towards a more universally applicable expression. He works deliberately on the extreme stylisation of the picture. The subjects are subtly layered as if they were scenery in a theatre. Everything non-essential is peeled away, leaving nature unadulterated. In this way, the detail in nature is made clear: the tree trunks like pillars, the dry lower branches of the trees and the undulating lines of the ground. The details that John saw and drew during his wanderings through the forests of Småland have been transformed into graceful decorations that embellish the picture. The pictures’ fairytale forms have been absorbed in a tranquillity that lifts them above the transitory and beyond the text they relate to. They are more symbols than characters. The fairytale illustrations have become art.
Bauer’s forest
 "The forest constantly feeds the imagination", wrote John. And it was during his solitary wanderings with a sketchbook under his arm, on long cycle and canoe trips in the countryside round the south of Lake Vättern, that John approached his fairytale world. In his sketchbook he drew detailed studies of branches, sections of tree trunks, stumps, foliage, rocks and plants. John revered nature; for him it was a marvel. Through his art, he wanted to show us nature’s temple and to reveal to us another world, that of Beauty. He gradually refined and simplified his fairytale forest, elucidating what was natural and down-to-earth. The trunks of the trees provide a symmetrical frame for the solitary Princess Tuvstarr by the tarn. A frozen moment, a timeless feeling of endless stillness, and an inexplicable melancholy takes over. It is as if creation is holding its breath. John tells us his own fairytale. Just as Carl Larsson gave us a domestic utopia, John Bauer has created an idealised image of the forest - a dream we carry within us.
Trolls
 John’s trolls can be tiny creeping things under a tree root, or gigantic mountain trolls, but usually they are the size of people. With their big noses, pointed ears and long hairy arms, they look as if they have sprung from nature. It is the eyes that differentiate John Bauer’s trolls from other people’s. Their different and limited ability to think means the trolls do not understand the human world, but their eyes hint at a good-natured and curious interest.
Trollmor
Trollmor - Mother Troll - was the first fairytale figure to take shape in John’s fairytale world. She is a small, hunched crone, supporting herself on a crooked stick. On her head she wears a light-coloured hood, knotted at the back of her neck, or a pointed hat decorated with a brightly coloured feather. Of her face, only her big nose can be seen. Her arms are long, her fingers have long, claw-like nails, and she is dressed in a cloak, sometimes patched.
Humpe
One of John’s favourites is Humpe, a small troll with a gentle disposition and a longing for the light world of people. Humpe is almond-eyed, snub-nosed and red-haired like a little faun. He first appeared in 1912, in the fairytale Trollsonen som hade solögon och vart skogsman - a romantic saga about a troll-boy that appealed to John. John returned to Humpe in works such as the late watercolour Moderskärlek (Mother love), painted in 1917.
The Princess
 Many
have seen John’s wife, Ester, as the model for his fairytale princess.
And certainly the princess of the fairytale,
girlishly slender with long blonde hair, bears a resemblance to Ester.
But John also found inspiration for his princess in the mediaeval Madonnas
and the female portraits of the renaissance that he had studied on his
Italian travels with Ester in 1908–09. He often uses his gentle princess
as a light contrast to the dark gloom of the forest or the ungainliness
of the trolls.
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