Alexander Roslin, Double portrait (architect Jean Rodolph Perronet and his wife), 1759. Gothenburg Museum of Art. Photo: Ebbe Carlsson/Göteborgs Konstmuseum

STOCKHOLM.- This autumn, get to know Sweden’s forgotten art icon – the 18th-century master, Alexander Roslin. On show at Nationalmuseum through 13 January 2008. Many Swedes today know relatively little about Alexander Roslin, the painter who became Sweden’s most successful artist ever on the international arena. One of the aims of this exhibition is therefore to promote greater national awareness of his achievements and to place his work more firmly within the wider context of European art history. Alexander Roslin was an 18th-century Swedish portrait painter whose career – in Stockholm and the great art and cultural metropolises of Paris, St. Petersburg and Bayreuth – was nothing short of brilliant. During the second half of the 18th century, having one’s portrait painted by Roslin was the height of social prestige. His paintings, focussing as they do on the superficial, on the élitist culture of the 18th century with its predilection for extravagance and luxury consumption, are in some ways reminiscent of the high-society mores of today. The three exhibition halls are hung with over 100 portraits painted by Roslin during various periods of his life. The exhibition setting has been designed to suggest, in stylised form, the sort of environment in which Roslin lived and worked during the 18th century.

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