Eugène Jansson – the blue painter, Stockholm nights and Riddarfjärden's nocturnes

Eugène Jansson is the artist who gave Stockholm its blue night. His paintings of Riddarfjärden, Hornsgatan, and Södermalm’s stepped alleyways at dusk – executed in countless shades of ultramarine, cobalt blue, and Prussian blue, with the yellow points of gas lamps as their only counterpoint – rank among the most distinctive works in Swedish art history. No other Swedish painter at the turn of the twentieth century dared make a single color his entire mode of expression, and no other made the metropolis his landscape while his colleagues traveled to Dalarna, Värmland, and Bohuslän to paint the homeland. As posters, his nocturnes have found new life in modern homes, where their deep blue tone functions as a calm, almost meditative element.

But Jansson was more than the blue painter. After 1904, he abandoned cityscapes entirely and devoted his final ten years to painting naked, sunlit athletes at the Navy Bathhouse on Skeppsholmen – a choice of subject that was as bold as it was dangerous in a Sweden where homosexuality remained punishable by law until 1944. This page examines his life from Gamla stan to Mariaberget, the major works at the Thiel Gallery and the Nationalmuseum, the technique behind the blue light, the connection to Chopin’s nocturnes, the record price at Bukowskis in 2021, and how his subjects work in a contemporary home.

Contents
↓ Who was Eugène Jansson?
↓ From Gamla stan to Mariaberget – life and background
↓ Major works – the blue nocturnes and bathhouses
↓ Technique and style – blue, light, and music
↓ Stockholm at the turn of the century, sexuality, and legacy
↓ Where can Jansson be found today? Museums, collections, and auctions
↓ Jansson at home – how the blue night works
↓ Timeline
↓ Related artists and movements
↓ Frequently asked questions about Eugène Jansson

Who was Eugène Jansson?

Eugène Fredrik Jansson (1862–1915) was a Swedish painter, born and active in Stockholm, known as the “blue painter” for his nocturnal cityscapes in a blue color palette. He belonged to the generation associated with the Artists’ Association – Richard Bergh, Karl Nordström, Nils Kreuger, Bruno Liljefors, and Prince Eugen – but differed from them in two crucial respects. He never traveled to Paris to study, and he chose the city rather than the countryside as his subject. The result was a body of work that contemporary critics found difficult to categorize: too symbolic for the realists, too expressive for the impressionists, and too abstract for most buyers.

His artistry naturally divides into two phases. The Blue Period, from around 1893 to 1904, encompasses the cityscapes of Riddarfjärden, street scenes from Södermalm, and the nearly dissolved nocturnes in which only the reflections of streetlamps distinguish water from sky. The second phase, from 1907 until his death in 1915, was devoted entirely to figure painting: naked men sunbathing, lifting weights, hanging from rings, and diving from the springboard at the Navy Bathhouse. The later phase has made him a central figure in Swedish queer history, while the former has made him the foremost painter of Stockholm.

Fast facts: Born on 18 March 1862 in Stockholm, died on 15 June 1915 in Skara, aged 53, of a cerebral hemorrhage. Grew up on Stora Nygatan in Gamla stan. Student at the Technical School from 1878 and under Edvard Perséus; admitted to the Royal Academy of Fine Arts’ antique school in 1881. Co-founder of the Artists’ Association in 1886. Lived from the mid-1890s on Mariaberget in Södermalm, including at Bastugatan 40, with a view over Riddarfjärden. Banker Ernest Thiel bought three paintings during his first studio visit in November 1898, and 19 works in total. His final blue painting was completed in 1904; his first nude subjects were exhibited in 1907. Hornsgatan at Night (1902, 152 × 182 cm) is owned by the Nationalmuseum. Timmermansgatan (1897, 109 × 62 cm) sold for SEK 3,150,000 at Bukowskis on 9 December 2021. Retrospective at the Musée d'Orsay in Paris from 18 May to 22 August 1999. The Thiel Gallery in Stockholm has the country’s largest collection, with around 20 oil paintings.

From Gamla stan to Mariaberget - Life and Background

Childhood, Music and Illness

Jansson grew up in a home that balanced between the working class and the lower middle class, but where art and music had a natural place. His father Fredrik was a postmaster and skilled amateur flutist, while his mother Eugenia had dreamed of becoming a singer and painted still lifes for her own pleasure. Eugène attended the German School in Stockholm and took piano lessons - an education that would shape his entire artistic career. The family lived on Stora Nygatan in Gamla stan, and it was from these neighborhoods that his very first impressions of the city came.

At the age of fourteen, he contracted scarlet fever. The illness left him with chronic kidney problems, impaired hearing and deteriorating eyesight for the rest of his life. Many art historians have linked the blue palette and blurred, dreamlike forms in his paintings to this visual impairment, although Jansson himself never confirmed such a connection. Later in life, the illness also made him a devoted swimmer and winter bather, in an attempt to strengthen a weak body - which in turn led him to the Navy Bathhouse and to his late subjects.

Perséus, the Royal Academy and the Opponents

In 1878, Jansson enrolled at the Technical School (today’s Konstfack) and simultaneously became a student of Edvard Perséus, who ran a private painting school in Stockholm. Perséus was an important figure in Stockholm’s art scene, and Jansson assisted him with portrait production for several years. In 1881, he was admitted to the Royal Academy of Fine Arts’ antique school, but unlike almost all his contemporaries, he lacked the means to travel on to Paris. What appeared to be a limitation became his artistic destiny: Stockholm became the landscape he explored instead of Grez-sur-Loing and Brittany.

Although he stayed at home, Jansson was deeply engaged in the radical art politics of the time. He was close to the Opponents, the group of 84 artists who in 1885 demanded reforms at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, and in 1886 helped found the Artists' Association as an alternative to the academy's exhibitions. Through the association he became friends with artists such as Karl Nordström and Richard Bergh, and through them he indirectly encountered French plein-air painting, realism, and Impressionism. Jansson was also a convinced socialist, and his early painting Proletarian Barracks (1898), now owned by the Musée d'Orsay, depicts an apartment building in Söder with the same blue gravity as his later views.

The move to Söder and the blue turning point

When Perséus died in 1890, Jansson lost his most important source of income, and when his father died of pleurisy in 1891, he became the breadwinner for his mother and younger brother Adrian. The family moved to Södermalm, then a poor and partly run-down district, and eventually settled in an apartment at Bastugatan 40, high up on Mariaberget. From the windows they could see across almost all of central Stockholm: Riddarfjärden, Gamla stan, Kungsholmen, and the future site of City Hall.

This was where the blue paintings were born. First in pastel, and from 1893 in oil. During the 1890s, Jansson lived at several addresses in the same neighborhood - Timmermansgatan, Bastugatan, Hornsgatan - and each street became a painting. A decisive impression came in 1894, when Edvard Munch's work was shown in Stockholm for the first time. Munch's charged colors, simplified forms, and sweeping brushstrokes gave Jansson the courage to move beyond what he observed and paint a feeling instead of a view. Paintings such as Moonlit Night (1896) and Söder Mälarstrand (1896), both at the Thielska Gallery, show how he found his own expression within the space of a few years.

Ernest Thiel and the breakthrough

The public and critics were initially skeptical. Jansson's canvases were large - often 1.5 to 2 meters wide - and too avant-garde for both museums and private buyers. The turning point came in November 1898, when banker Ernest Thiel, on Karl Nordström's recommendation, visited the studio and bought three paintings at once. The purchase rescued Jansson from an acute financial crisis and marked the beginning of a friendship that lasted until the artist's death. Thiel bought a total of 19 works directly from the artist and had them cover an entire wall in one of the salons of his villa on Djurgården - what is today the Thielska Gallery.

Thiel's support opened doors. Other collectors, including Consul General Josef Sachs and art writer Klas Fåhræus, began buying his cityscapes, and around the turn of the century Jansson was an established artist in comfortable financial circumstances. In 1900 he made his first journey outside the Nordic countries, to Paris - at the age of 38, long after his colleagues had returned from there.

Main works - the blue nocturnes and bathing houses

Timmermansgatan (1897)

A hazy winter evening in Södermalm. The rows of houses are set at right angles to the picture plane; from the stairs in the foreground, the eye is led down to the lower-lying street and onward toward the horizon. Not a single person is visible. The entire impression is built on the contrast between the warm glow of the gas lamps in cadmium and lacquer and the dirty gray-blue, ultramarine surroundings, as the art historian Nils G. Wollin described the work as early as 1920. Timmermansgatan was long owned by Consul General Josef Sachs, the founder of NK, and remained in the family's possession until it was offered at Bukowskis Important Winter Sale on 9 December 2021. The hammer price was 3,150,000 kronor, making it Jansson's most expensive work sold at auction.

Riddarfjärden, Stockholm (1898)

The view Jansson saw from Mariaberget every evening: Riddarfjärden's dark expanse of water, the silhouette of Kungsholmen on the opposite side, and a row of points of light reflected in the water. The painting at the Nationalmuseum is one of his most reproduced subjects and the one most often used to represent him in surveys of Nordic art. Here, the city is still recognizable – one can follow the shoreline and make out buildings – but everything is subordinate to the blue whole. It is this balance between a real place and a mood that makes the subject so appealing as a poster: it is both a piece of Stockholm and a piece of abstract color.

Nocturne (1901) and Hornsgatan at Night (1902)

In Nocturne at the Thiel Gallery, the city has almost dissolved. The blurred silhouette and the white glow of the streetlights merge, and blue has been used in every conceivable shade to create a sense of infinite depth. The subject is still Riddarfjärden viewed from Mariaberget, but the painting exists between dream and reality. The title is borrowed from music – Chopin was Jansson's favorite composer – and signals that this is a mood piece rather than a topographical account.

Hornsgatan at Night (1902, 152 × 182 cm) at the Nationalmuseum is the culmination of the blue period. The gas lamps along the empty street form swirls and waves in the air; the houses and sky merge into a single blue vision. The brushstrokes cross one another in every direction, creating a movement in the image unparalleled in Swedish painting at the time. Two years later, in 1904, Jansson painted his final cityscape and told a friend that he was completely exhausted and no longer wanted to continue with what he had been doing. He stopped exhibiting for several years.

"Eugène Jansson was the boldest colorist among the turn-of-the-century painters, expressive in his art, passionate, original, and radical. While his contemporaries in the 1890s painted nationally romantic depictions of their home regions in Bohuslän, Öland, Värmland, Lapland, or Dalarna, he remained in Stockholm." – Inga Zachau, Eugène Jansson: the painter of the blue city (1997)

The Navy Bathhouse (1907) and Bathing Scene (1908)

When Jansson returned to exhibitions in 1907, it was with an entirely new subject. The Navy Bathhouse shows a man in an acrobatic dive against a backdrop of naked, sunlit men on the bathhouse jetty at Skeppsholmen. It is not the diver who is the focus of the picture but the men watching - their bodies, their gazes. The painting caused a sensation and some hostility, but Ernest Thiel bought it that same year and displayed it prominently in his gallery. Since the 1970s, when Jansson's homosexuality became widely known, the work has spent long periods in storage and been shown only in temporary exhibitions; in 2020-2021 it was loaned to IVAM in Valencia for the exhibition "Moral dis/order" about art and sexuality in interwar Europe.

Bathing Scene (1908) is a variation on the same scene in which three well-built naked men stand by the diving board waiting their turn, facing the man suspended in midair - like three male Graces. The painting originally belonged to Klas Fåhræus's collection at Högberga gård on Lidingö, was donated to the Municipality of Örebro when the Sports House was inaugurated in 1952, and hung for decades in one of the sports halls. Today it is part of the Municipality of Örebro's art collection and was loaned to the Thiel Gallery in 2020.

Nude Youth (1907) and Sailors' Ball (1909)

Nude Youth from 1907 depicts Knut Hyman, a young man Jansson met at the bathhouse who became his close companion; they shared living quarters in the artist's studio until around 1912. Sailors' Ball (1909) at the Thiel Gallery depicts the Sunday dance at Exercishuset on Skeppsholmen, seen from the audience: signal flags and sharply glowing chandeliers on the ceiling, the sailors' dark uniforms dominating the crowd, and the women's dresses standing out in other colors. During the 1912 Olympic Games in Stockholm, Jansson exhibited his paintings of athletes on a larger scale than before. The reception remained reserved, but no one could deny their originality - since antiquity, the male athletic body had not been studied so closely, from so many angles.

Technique and style - blue, light, and music

A single color as the entire expression

What makes Jansson unique is not that he painted in blue - twilight blue was fashionable throughout the Nordic region in the 1890s, from Krøyer's blue hour in Skagen to Prince Eugen's tranquil lakes - but that he made the color his sole instrument. In his mature work, there is scarcely any color other than blue in all its shades: Prussian blue in the depths, ultramarine in the midtones, cobalt and lighter broken tones toward the sky. Against this stand the small yellow and white points of the gas lamps, often applied in thick paint straight from the tube. It is the same principle Whistler used in his nocturnes of the Thames, but Jansson pushed it further: in his work, the contrast between warm and cool becomes almost the entire content of the image.

Brushwork and movement

Jansson's brushstrokes are highly visible and often cross one another in different directions, giving the surface a vibration of which the swirling lamplight on Hornsgatan is the clearest example. As the blue period progressed, the forms were gradually simplified. In the early views from 1896–1898, one can still make out houses, quays and boats; in the late nocturnes around 1901–1904, often only the blue mass of water and sky and a few reflections of light remain. This movement toward abstraction means that Jansson is sometimes regarded as a precursor of abstract painting, decades before the breakthroughs of Hilma af Klint and Kandinsky, even though he himself never abandoned representational art.

Chopin and the nocturne as a form

Music was a primary source for Jansson's art. There was a piano in the home on Mariaberget, and he often played Chopin - above all the 21 nocturnes, "songs of the night." Friends described the blue light in his paintings as directly connected to his way of playing. That several of his city views bear the title Nocturne is therefore no coincidence: in painting, he sought the same thing that Chopin sought in music, a mood that is rhythmic and sensual rather than narrative.

Memory as a sketchbook

It is often said that Jansson used his memory as a sketchbook. He did not paint on location at night, but in the studio, after hours of observation from the window or during evening walks along the streets of Söder. But he also drew: the Thiel Gallery collection contains several of his early sketchbooks from the 1880s, with quick pencil studies of ships, carriage drivers, strollers, women, children and sailors. For the bathhouse motifs, he also worked from photographs and made preparatory drawings. The late figure period is therefore technically more traditional than the blue one - the models stood in the studio, and according to contemporary accounts, Jansson let them remain naked there between sittings as well.

Turn-of-the-century Stockholm, sexuality and legacy

Jansson's two subject areas - the deserted streets at dusk and the bathhouse's naked men - have long been treated as two separate chapters. More recent research, especially art historian Hans Henrik Brummer's article in Konsthistorisk tidskrift in 1999 and Patrik Steorn's dissertation Nakna män (2006), connects them. Both the dark streets and the bathhouses were places where men who loved men could meet in early twentieth-century Stockholm, and the blue paintings can be read as images of nocturnal wandering in which the streets' emptiness also suggests a possible encounter. From that perspective, Jansson's city views are in fact always populated, even when no person is visible.

Homosexual acts were prohibited by Swedish law until 1944. Jansson's nude paintings could in principle have been used as evidence in a trial, and the fact that they could nevertheless be exhibited and purchased by one of the country's richest men was due to the era's vitalist cult of the body: the fit naked male was an accepted ideal in the struggle against the supposedly weakening effects of industrialisation and the big city. After Eugène's death in 1915, his brother Adrian, who was himself homosexual and outlived him by many years, burned all the letters and a large part of the papers - presumably to avoid scandal.

His legacy has grown as both phases of his career have received their due attention. The Musée d'Orsay in Paris showed a retrospective from 18 May to 22 August 1999, the first major presentation outside Sweden, and since 2000 the museum has owned Proletärkasern (1898). Thielska Gallery has repeatedly placed him in dialogue with contemporary artists, including in the exhibition "Men by the Water" with Jan Hietala, and during the museum's centenary in autumn 2025, his large figure paintings of circus performers and sailors' balls were included in the exhibition "The Sweet Life" alongside Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. In Swedish art history, he is now regarded as the most original colourist of his generation and as an early link between Symbolism and abstract painting.

Where can Jansson be found today? Museums, collections and auctions

Anyone who wants to see Jansson's originals has it relatively easy, since almost his entire body of work remains in Sweden. Thielska Gallery on Djurgården in Stockholm has the country's largest collection - around 20 oil paintings, as well as pastels, drawings, sketches and etchings from his student years in the 1870s up to 1915. Mångård, Söder Mälarstrand, Nocturne, Jag. Självporträtt (1901), Porträtt av Ernest Thiel (1902), Flottans badhus and Matrosbal are displayed here. Nationalmuseum owns, among other works, Riddarfjärden, Stockholm (1898), Hornsgatan nattetid (1902) and a self-portrait. Jansson is also represented at the Gothenburg Museum of Art, Prins Eugens Waldemarsudde and in the Örebro Municipality art collection, as well as abroad at the Musée d'Orsay.

In the auction market, Jansson is one of the most expensive Swedish turn-of-the-century artists. The record, SEK 3,150,000 for Timmermansgatan at Bukowskis in 2021, was set against an estimate of SEK 3-5 million. High-quality blue cityscapes appear only every few years, while smaller pastels, drawings and the late figure studies are more accessible. The detailed catalogue raisonné in Nils G. Wollin's Eugène Janssons måleri from 1920 is still used by auction houses to verify provenance. More about the artist can be found on Wikipedia and in Wikidata.

Jansson at home - how the blue night works

Why the blue tone is so easy to live with

Jansson's nocturnes make particularly successful posters for one simple reason: they are based on a single colour family. An image in twenty shades of blue with a few yellow points of light rarely clashes with anything in a room, and works just as well against a white wall as a dark one. The deep tone creates a sense of calm that suits bedrooms, home offices and reading nooks, while the light from the lanterns keeps the image from feeling heavy. The motifs are also distinctly Stockholm without being touristy - for those who live or have lived in the city, Riddarfjärden and Hornsgatan are personal places; for everyone else, they are simply beautiful city views at dusk. In Bozetto's collection of famous artists, these Nordic turn-of-the-century motifs are among the most sought-after for precisely this reason.

Format, frame and placement

Jansson painted on a large scale - Hornsgatan at Night is almost two metres wide - and the motifs benefit from being displayed in larger formats, preferably 50 × 70 cm or more, so that the movement of the brushstrokes and the many shades of blue can be fully appreciated. A slim black or dark blue wooden frame enhances the nocturnal atmosphere, while an oak frame creates a warmer, more Nordic look that works well with wooden furniture and light textiles. Read more in our guide to framing art and see our frames. A single large Jansson poster looks best on its own above a sofa or bed; if you want to combine it with others, it works wonderfully in a gallery wall together with other blue posters or black-and-white photographs of Stockholm.

Tip: Jansson's blue nocturnes look their very best in a room with subdued, warm evening light - a floor lamp or wall lamp nearby makes the yellow points of the lanterns in the image "light up" just as they did from Mariaberget. Avoid hanging the artwork directly opposite a large window, where daylight can bleach the dark areas; a wall at an angle to the window is usually best. Against a dark blue or gray-green wall, the effect is almost like a window opening onto the night - see our guide to posters for dark walls.

Combining Jansson with other Nordic art

Jansson belongs to the same visual world as Prince Eugen, Krøyer and Hammershøi - artists who all worked with Nordic light in muted tones. A wall with a Jansson nocturne, a Hammershøi interior in gray and a Prince Eugen lake scene at dusk form a cohesive whole in which blue, gray and green can work together. Those seeking more contrast can set the blue night against Carl Larsson's bright Sundborn watercolors or a vibrant Sigrid Hjertén; Jansson then becomes the room's calm pole. Our collection of Swedish art and our article on Nordic art in the home offer more suggestions for such combinations.

Timeline

1862 – Eugène Fredrik Jansson is born on 18 March in Stockholm. The family lives on Stora Nygatan in Gamla stan.
1876 – Contracts scarlet fever at the age of 14; suffers lifelong problems with his kidneys, eyesight and hearing.
1878 – Begins studying at the Technical School and becomes a student of Edvard Perséus.
1881 – Is admitted to the Royal Academy of Fine Arts' School of Antiquities but lacks the funds to travel to Paris.
1885–1886 – Takes part in the Opponents' revolt against the Royal Academy of Fine Arts; co-founds the Artists' Association in 1886.
1888 – Paints Portrait of the Artist's Father at home in Gamla stan.
1890–1891 – Perséus dies in 1890; his father dies in 1891. Jansson becomes the family breadwinner and moves with his mother and brother to Södermalm.
1893 – The blue paintings shift from pastel to oil.
1894 – Edvard Munch exhibits in Stockholm for the first time; Jansson is deeply influenced.
1896–1897 – Mångård, Söder Mälarstrand and Timmermansgatan.
1898 – Ernest Thiel visits the studio in November and buys three paintings: Riddarfjärden, Stockholm and Proletärkasern.
1900 – First trip outside the Nordic countries, to Paris, at the age of 38.
1901–1902 – Nocturne, I. Self-Portrait, Portrait of Ernest Thiel and Hornsgatan at Night.
1904 – The final blue city view is completed. Jansson stops exhibiting for several years.
1907 – Returns with The Fleet's Bathhouse and Nude Young Man; Thiel buys the bathhouse painting that same year.
1908–1909 – Bathhouse Painting and Sailors' Ball.
1912 – Exhibits the athlete paintings in connection with the Olympic Games in Stockholm.
1915 – Dies on 15 June in Skara from a cerebral hemorrhage, aged 53.
1920 – Nils G. Wollin's catalogue of works, Eugène Jansson's Paintings, is published.
1999 – Retrospective at the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, 18 May–22 August.
2021 – Timmermansgatan sells for SEK 3,150,000 at Bukowskis on 9 December.

Related artists and movements

Jansson stands at the heart of Nordic turn-of-the-century art, with one foot in European Symbolism and the other in the abstraction to come. The single most important influence was Edvard Munch, whose Stockholm exhibition in 1894 gave him the courage to paint emotion instead of views. Among his colleagues in the Artists' Association, Prince Eugen is his closest kindred spirit, with his twilight landscapes in muted tones, while Bruno Liljefors, Carl Larsson and Anders Zorn represent the rural-oriented National Romanticism that Jansson consciously rejected. His blue hour has its Danish counterpart in P.S. Krøyer and its quiet, gray-toned sibling in Vilhelm Hammershøi. The Norwegian counterpart to Jansson's blue night is Harald Sohlberg's Winter Night in Rondane – the same deep blue, but over the mountains instead of the city.

Stylistically, Jansson belongs to Symbolism - the movement that placed mood and inner experience before observation - and his late nocturnes point toward abstract art. The Swedish modernism that followed, with Sigrid Hjertén and Nils Dardel, built on the freedom in color and form that Jansson alone had achieved in his generation. A broader overview is available on our page about Nordic art and in the guide to art history. All our fact pages about artists and art movements are collected in the Knowledge Bank.

Frequently asked questions about Eugène Jansson

Eugène Jansson's blue Stockholm is one of the most personal contributions to Nordic art - a city seen through a single color, a feeling rather than a map. Would you like to take home the blue night? Explore classical art and Swedish art at Bozetto, where every poster is printed on premium paper that reproduces the deep blue tones with full brilliance.