John Bauer - the fairy-tale forest, trolls, and the illustrator of Swedish folk tales
For many Swedes, John Bauer's art is the first visual world they ever encountered. The dense spruce forest with moss-covered boulders, the silvery-gray mist between the trunks, the silent troll with deep-set eyes, and the little princess in a white dress - these motifs have followed generations from the bedside storybook to the walls of adulthood. Bauer was active for just over fifteen years, died at the age of 36, and left behind a body of work that is remarkably small in scope but virtually unmatched in impact. No other Swedish artist has shaped, to the same extent, how an entire country imagines its own folklore.
This page explores John Bauer's life, his artistic method, his most important works, and the legacy he left behind. We look at how he constructed his forest spaces, why his trolls look the way they do, the role the 1904 journey to Lapland played in his visual language, and how his watercolors fit into Nordic art history. The page concludes with practical advice on how Bauer's motifs work in a modern Swedish home, a timeline of his life, and answers to the most frequently asked questions about the artist.
Contents
↓ Who was John Bauer?
↓ From Jönköping to the Royal Academy
↓ Among Gnomes and Trolls - the most important works
↓ Technique, visual language, and artistic signature
↓ The Lapland journey and the origins of the trolls
↓ Bauer's legacy
↓ John Bauer at home
↓ Timeline
↓ Related artists
↓ Frequently asked questions about John Bauer
Who was John Bauer?
John Albert Bauer was born on 4 June 1882 in Jönköping and drowned on 20 November 1918 in Lake Vättern. He was an illustrator and painter, active during the period in Swedish art when National Romanticism, Symbolism, and Art Nouveau met and blended. His major contribution was the illustrations for the fairy-tale collection Among Gnomes and Trolls, published for the Christmas trade every year from 1907. Bauer contributed to the 1907–1910 editions and then to those from 1912–1915, and was already regarded during his lifetime as Sweden's foremost fairy-tale illustrator.
What distinguishes Bauer from the other illustrators of his time is that he never treated the fairy-tale image as decoration. He constructed each spread as a fully realized composition with its own spatiality, lighting, and striking psychological intensity. The trolls are not comic monsters but heavy, sluggish, and sorrowful creatures with an inner life. The princesses do not meet them with fear but with a kind of quiet curiosity. This duality - the dangerous and the beautiful in the same image - is the very core of Bauer's art and explains why the images work just as powerfully for adults as for children.
Quick facts: Born on 4 June 1882 in Jönköping, Småland. Died on 20 November 1918 in the waters of Lake Vättern off Hästholmen, aged 36. Studied at the Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm from 1900–1905. Married the artist Ester Ellqvist in Gränna in December 1906. Illustrated Among Gnomes and Trolls in 1907–1910 and 1912–1915. Traveled to Lapland in July 1904 on commission from the publisher C.A.V. Lundholm. Represented at Jönköping County Museum, the Nationalmuseum, the Gothenburg Museum of Art, and Malmö Museums. Auction record: SEK 6.75 million for the watercolor Tuvstarr Still Sits There, Gazing Down into the Water in Wonder at Uppsala Auktionskammare.
From Jönköping to the Royal Academy
Bauer grew up in Jönköping as the son of a butcher of German descent. The family lived near Lake Vättern and the forest, two landscape elements that would become permanent features of his visual world. He drew early and intensely; Jönköping County Museum still preserves drawings from his childhood, making it possible to follow his development from his earliest attempts through his final decorative commissions.
The Student Years in Stockholm
At the age of sixteen, Bauer left Jönköping for Stockholm with the stated intention of becoming an artist. After preparatory studies, he was admitted to the Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts, where he was enrolled from 1900 to 1905. At that time, the Academy was a conservative institution, and Bauer was not among the students who rebelled against it. He took his academic training in drawing with him and then used it for an entirely different purpose than it had been intended for: to give credible anatomy and weight to creatures that do not exist.
While still a student, he received his first paid commissions as an illustrator for books and magazines. It was a deliberate choice. Illustration gave him an audience and an income while his independent painting did not yet provide either, and it forced him to work with narrative and composition in a way that would prove decisive.
Ester Ellqvist and the Marriage
During his years at the academy, Bauer met Ester Ellqvist, an artist who later became his wife. They married in Gränna in December 1906. Ester became not only his life partner but also his model: her face and figure recur in several of the princesses who inhabit the enchanted forest. The couple traveled together to Germany and Italy, and the encounter with Renaissance painting during their years in Italy can be seen in Bauer's later works, particularly in the way he composed groups of figures and handled gold and decorative surfaces.
The extensive collection of letters preserved at the Jönköping County Museum provides an unusually detailed insight into the marriage and Bauer's daily working life. The letters show an artist who oscillated between confidence and doubt, and who, toward the end of his life, increasingly wanted to leave fairy-tale illustration behind to devote himself to monumental painting.
Among Elves and Trolls - The Most Important Works
The fairy-tale collection Among Elves and Trolls began publication in 1907 as an annual Christmas book featuring texts by several different authors. Bauer was hired as the illustrator and came to shape the editions so strongly that the book series and his name effectively became inseparable. He illustrated the volumes from 1907-1910, took a break, and returned in 1912-1915. It was within this limited period of production that most of his best-known images were created.
Princess Tuvstarr by the Forest Tarn
The motif of Princess Tuvstarr sitting beside the dark forest tarn and gazing down into the water is Bauer's most iconic image. It belongs to the tale of Tuvstarr, who lost her golden heart in the tarn, and the image captures the moment after the loss - not the drama itself but its aftermath, the silent wonder. The composition is extremely reduced: a light figure against almost black water, with the forest forming an impenetrable wall all around.
The work's standing is confirmed by the market. The watercolor Tuvstarr Still Sits There, Gazing Down Wonderingly into the Water was sold at Uppsala Auktionskammare for SEK 6.75 million, more than double the estimate and the highest amount ever recorded for the artist.
The Trolls and the Little Princess
Bauer's trolls are his most original contribution to visual art. They are massive, heavyset creatures with small eyes, broad noses, and a posture that suggests both strength and fatigue. Motifs in which a small, light-clad princess encounters a group of dark trolls recur again and again, and the contrast carries the entire image: small against large, light against dark, moving against motionless. Bauer never allows the contrast to become a simple moral division. The trolls are not evil; they are alien.
Knights, Horses, and Wanderers of the Fairy-Tale Forest
Alongside princesses and trolls, Bauer's forest is populated by mounted knights, wandering youths, and old men with staffs. The knight motifs bear clear traces of his Italian journeys and Renaissance armor painting, while the horses are often rendered with an academic anatomical precision that stands in sharp contrast to the dreamlike landscape around them. This tension between the precisely observed and the purely imagined is one of the surest ways to recognize an authentic Bauer.
"Tuvstarr is still sitting there, gazing down at the water in wonder." - Caption from Among Gnomes and Trolls, the story of Tuvstarr
Technique, visual language, and artistic signature
Bauer worked primarily in watercolor and gouache, often in combination and often on a relatively small scale. The choice was partly practical - the images were to be reproduced in a book - but it also became an aesthetic principle. The transparency of watercolor gave him the misty, absorbing light of the forest space, while the gouache formed a dense layer wherever he needed absolute darkness or sharp detail.
The forest space as stage design
Bauer constructed his forests like theater stages. The spruce trunks function as wings at several depths, while the moss and boulders form a floor, and the light almost always comes from above and behind through an opening in the canopy. The result is an enclosed space in which the viewer stands inside, not outside. This spatial enclosure is closely related to the landscape painting of Swedish Symbolism and distinguishes Bauer from the more open, airier compositions of British fairy-tale illustration.
The color palette and subdued light
The palette is strikingly restrained. Bauer worked in blue-gray, moss green, brown, and silver-gray, with sparse touches of white and gold serving as points of light in the darkness. He avoided the saturated color intensity sought by the contemporary Fauvist artists in France, instead moving toward a tonality close to the Nordic twilight. It is a color range that works exceptionally well in modern interiors, because it neither competes with furniture nor requires particular lighting.
Decorative framing and the Art Nouveau legacy
Many of Bauer’s compositions are surrounded by decorative borders, ornaments, and stylized plant tendrils. This is a direct legacy of the Art Nouveau style and of the book art that flourished in Europe around the turn of the century. The borders are never merely filler; they function as a threshold between the reader’s reality and the realm of fairy tales, reinforcing the impression of the image as a window into something else.
The Lapland journey and the origin of the trolls
In the summer of 1904, Bauer received a commission from the publisher C.A.V. Lundholm to contribute illustrations, together with other artists, to an expensive volume about Lapland. On July 15, 1904, he traveled north and stayed for a month. The journey became one of the most decisive events in his artistic career.
In Lapland, he encountered the Sámi community, its traditional dress, and its materials. Reindeer hide and Sámi fur became inseparable elements of his trolls' clothing, and the substantial, heavy textiles gave him exactly the volume and weight he sought in the creatures. It is worth noting that this borrowing took place without critical source awareness and that today it is discussed as an example of how Sámi culture during national romanticism was used as exotic visual material by Swedish artists. Knowing this does not make the images worse, but it is part of a complete understanding of them.
The journey also gave him the mountain landscape, the vast bogs, and a light radically different from that of Småland. Elements of this were later incorporated into the fairy-tale forest, which otherwise clearly draws on the spruce forests around Lake Vättern and the area around Bunn, where the Bauers lived during their final years.
Bauer's Legacy
On November 20, 1918, the steamer Per Brahe sank in an autumn storm on Lake Vättern off Hästholmen. John Bauer, 36 years old, died together with his wife Ester and their three-year-old son Bengt, known as Putte. The family was traveling from Bunn in Småland to Stockholm. The disaster abruptly ended an artistic career that was just beginning to shift toward monumental painting and decorative public commissions.
The Collections and the Research
Jönköping County Museum manages Sweden's largest collection of Bauer's sketches and finished illustrations. The collection spans his entire output - childhood drawings, academic studies, caricatures, travel sketches, and late drafts for decorative commissions - and is complemented by an extensive collection of letters to and from the artist. The museum presents the exhibition Follow John, which traces the artist's career through excerpts from letters, works, and drawings. Bauer is also represented at the Nationalmuseum, the Gothenburg Museum of Art, and Malmö Museums.
The Influence on Swedish and International Visual Culture
Bauer's trolls have become the standard image of Swedish folklore. Every subsequent illustrator who has depicted a troll has had to reckon with him, and his visual world has left its mark far beyond book illustration - in film, games, and the visual language of the fantasy genre. The forest environment he created, with its heavy moss and muted light, is recognizable even to viewers who have never seen the original images.
John Bauer at Home
Bauer's motifs are among the most rewarding in Swedish art to live with, for three reasons. The color palette is muted and neutral, the compositions are self-contained and rest within themselves, and the motifs carry a story that withstands daily viewing without becoming tiresome. A Bauer in a room is rarely merely decorative; it draws the eye in the same way every time.
Placement and light
Since Bauer's images already contain their own light, they work best where they do not compete with strong daylight. A wall in partial shade, a hallway, or a bedroom gives the motifs more depth than a wall with a south-facing window. Forest motifs benefit from being hung slightly lower than usual, approximately at eye level for a seated viewer, since the compositions are designed to place you inside the room rather than above it.
Combine with other art
Bauer naturally complements other Nordic art from the same period, especially Swedish art from the National Romantic era. If you want to create a gallery wall, Bauer works best as the most substantial motif, with calmer botanical or graphic prints around it to give the eye a rest. Our guide to gallery walls explains how to build such a grouping step by step, while the guide to choosing the right art offers further discussion of how visual weight is distributed among the room's walls.
Tip: Bauer's originals are watercolors, and they look best in a frame that respects that. Choose a slim frame in dark oak, walnut, or black-stained wood, and add a generous mat in off-white or warm gray. The mat does two things: it creates the breathing space the watercolor needs, and it enhances the feeling of looking through a window into an enchanted forest. Avoid wide gold frames – they push the image toward a museum-like look that Bauer's muted palette does not need. Read more in our guide to framing art and view our selection of frames.
For those who want to explore further how nature motifs generally work in interior design, our full range of nature motifs is available, along with a broader overview in the article about decorating with posters.
Timeline
1882 – John Albert Bauer was born on June 4 in Jönköping, Småland.
1898 – At the age of sixteen, Bauer moved to Stockholm to train as an artist.
1900 – Is admitted to the Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm, where he studies until 1905. During his studies, he receives his first illustration commissions.
1904 – Travels to Lapland on July 15 at the publisher C.A.V. Lundholm's request and stays for a month. His encounter with Sámi clothing and reindeer hides has a decisive influence on the design of the trolls.
1906 – Marries the artist Ester Ellqvist in Gränna in December.
1907 – Illustrates his first volume of Among Gnomes and Trolls and is soon recognized as Sweden's foremost fairy-tale illustrator.
1908–1910 – Continues work on the fairy-tale collection and travels to Germany and Italy with Ester.
1912–1915 – Returns to Among Gnomes and Trolls after a hiatus and creates several of his best-known works during these years, including the illustrations for the tale of Tuvstarr.
1915 – Their son Bengt, known as Putte, is born. Bauer increasingly turns his attention to monumental painting and decorative commissions.
1918 – On November 20, the steamer Per Brahe sinks in an autumn storm on Lake Vättern off Hästholmen. John Bauer, Ester, and their three-year-old son Bengt perish.
Related artists and movements
John Bauer worked in a context of Swedish artists who, in different ways, all sought to give the nation its own visual world. The artist closest to him was Elsa Beskow, who worked alongside him in children's book illustration but with a lighter, warmer, and more botanically oriented visual world. Where Bauer sought the darkness of the forest, Beskow sought its vegetation.
Carl Larsson shared Bauer's watercolor technique and his national romantic outlook, but turned his gaze inward toward home and family life instead of outward into the forest. Anders Zorn represents the technical virtuosity of the same generation, with an entirely different light and a completely different range of subjects. Ernst Josephson may be the Swedish artist closest to Bauer in temperament: his Näcken inhabits the same Nordic mythological world and the same dark waters. The same Swedish forest was depicted quite differently by Bruno Liljefors, who saw it as an ecosystem rather than a fairy-tale setting.
Stylistically, Bauer belongs at the intersection of Symbolism, with its interest in dreams and the inner self, and Art Nouveau, whose ornamentation shapes his decorative borders. A broader context is provided on our page about Nordic art. More artist profiles and overviews of art movements can be found in our Knowledge Base.
Frequently asked questions about John Bauer
Discover John Bauer and Swedish fairy-tale art
John Bauer’s visual world is among the most enduring that Swedish art has produced: muted in color, closed in composition and charged with a story that never quite allows itself to be concluded. It is art that can remain on the wall for a long time. In our range of famous artists, you will find motifs by Bauer and his contemporaries, printed on archival-quality paper in sizes suited to everything from a single wall to a larger grouping.
If you would like to read more about Bauer’s collections and the research being conducted on him, detailed information is available from the Jönköping County Museum, in the Nationalencyklopedin encyclopedia and in the article about the artist on Swedish Wikipedia.