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418
IV. EDUCATION AND MENTAL CULTURE IN SWEDEN.
representing a historical personage in his real character —; farther, the
memorial of Cartesius, genial in conception as well as in execution, and the large
wall-sculpture of the resurrection of Christ — both in the Church of Adolf
Fredrik in Stockholm —; also the celebrated bronze statue of Gustavus HI, like-’
wise as the statesman above mentioned, represented in the costume of his own time
(1790, unveiled in 1808). These last named works were the outcome of his having
been recalled, and that was no mean one, but still he was intended for something
else by his genius. He was the first who, standing on an ideal basis, broke with
the baroque and the French traditions, and he felt a calling to carry that
movement forward without too strong a tendency towards the objective coldness of the
Antiquity. But it was not vouchsafed to him to carry the work out. He
became a Protesilaos, — sacrificed at the beginning of the contest but not allowed
to partake in the siege of Troy. Nay, his fate is more tragic still, for he
does not fall but must at a distance behold the continuation of what he himself
has begun while being sent out of the battle and soon forgotten by the world.
His standing as a witness to this development and encouraging the partakers in
it with a mind so noble and altogether ungrudging, cannot but intensify our
sympathy with him and call forth the respect of posterity.
A special kind of sculpture, most eagerly practised in our country during
the 18th century, was medal-engraving. Foremost in this art stood J. K.
Hedlinger from Switzerland (lived in Sweden 1718/45, with one or two
interruptions for travels to the South), a master, who at his time was the chief one
in Europe and who executed many medals reminding one of Grecian excellence.
He was succeeded, first by his clever disciple D. Fehrman (1710/1801) and
then by a follower of the latter, G. Ljungberger († 1787).
Continuing to live on the traditions of Sergei, sculpture kept up rather well
during the first half of the 19th century while the other arts were languishing
and declining. The first followers of the art of Sergei were also his disciples
— first E. G. Göthe (1799/1838), who, however, was more strongly impressed
by Canova than by his manly, Swedish teacher, e. g. in the effeminate Bacchus
(the National museum); then J. N. Byström (1783/1848), a superior competitor
to the former, who spent the later part of his life mostly in Rome, distinguished
himself in the sensually luxurious, and became a master in manipulation of the
marble: see, for instance, Juno with the child Hercules at her breast.
Of quite a different character was the third and foremost among the
sculptors during the first half of the 19th century, B. E. Fogelberg (1786/1854), who
against the ideals in the world of gods of the Antiquity — worn out during the
three centuries of the renaissance — dared to set up new, original, nationally
Scandinavian ones, sprung out of a sound, energetically creative imagination. His
success was also acknowledged by the respectful judgment of Thorvaldsen about his
Thor (in Rome 1842). Moreover, he has embellished our capital with a couple
of noteworthy statues: that of Birger Jarl and of Charles XIV, as well as
Gothenburg with that of Gustavus Adolphus. His imitator, both in general tendency
and in monumental sculpture, was K. G. Qvarnström (1810/67), of which facts
evidence is given by his mythological group of Loke and Höder as well as by his
statues of Tegnér, Engelbrekt, and Berzelius. Contemporary with him was J.
P. Molin (1814/73), who, after getting his first education in Copenhagen,
continued his work in Rome and, finally, by his Wrestlers acquired a fame which
was not in any way disturbed by the remarks made against his statue of Charles
XII (1868) and against his Fountain (1873).
Among the låte sculptors remain to be mentioned: the successor of Molin at
the Academy, J. F. Kjellberg (1836/85), who, after having finished his studies
at home, spent his time partly at Paris, where, amongst other things, he made a
frieze relief — Boys playing at leapfrog —, partly also, for a considerable time,
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