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Few visitors realise that the Gothenburg Museum of Art holds dozens of works of art from British artists and art with connections to Britain. Ranging from eighteenth-century satirical prints to twentieth-century sculpture, the art works thus span more than two hundred years of British cultural history. Most of these works are kept in the museum archive and are rarely seen by the public. The Anglo-Swedish Society has been behind the scenes to explore these remarkable works including William Hogarth in the eighteenth century and modern British sculptures in the 1960s. This page is the first in a series in which we explore overlooked British treasures in Gothenburg Museum of Art.
The British Collection at a Glance
More than 50 works with British connections.
Media include prints, photographs, paintings and sculpture.
Dates range from the mid-eighteenth century to the 1960s.
Subjects include Elizabethan explorers, Shakespeare, Victorian photography and modern British sculpture.
Most are not currently on display.
1. William Hogarth's Vision of the World
1. William Hogarth's Vision of the World
Featured image: The Bathos (1764)
Most people know Hogarth as a satirist of Georgian London. Few know this extraordinary final print, published in the year of his death in 1764.
Everything in the image is collapsing. Time has stopped. Buildings crumble. Art, science and civilisation lie in ruins. To modern eyes the strange landscape of symbolic objects can look surprisingly close to the dream-like worlds of twentieth-century Surrealism. Yet Hogarth's purpose was not psychological but philosophical: he was imagining the ultimate end of all human endeavour.
The Gothenburg Museum owns an impression of this famous print, donated through the Hjalmar Wijk bequest in 1965. It is not currently on display.
Beer Street and Gin Lane
Beer Street and Gin Lane
An Eighteenth-Century Debate
Published in 1751, this pair of images formed a visual argument. Beer Street depicted the benefits of drinking beer, portraying a prosperous and healthy community, while Gin Lane highlighted the negative consequences of gin addiction, showing scenes of poverty, illness, and despair.
Although often viewed today as humorous images, they were originally a serious intervention in a public debate about poverty, alcohol consumption and social reform.
Gothenburg owns impressions of both prints. They entered the museum in 1911 as part of a gift from Oscar Quensel and are today preserved in the archive and cannot be viewed in the galleries.
This article is the first in an ongoing Anglo-Swedish Society series exploring hidden treasures in the Gothenburg Museum of Art. Every six months we will return to the archive to uncover further connections between Britain and Sweden. Future articles will feature Elizabethan explorers, Victorian photography, Shakespearean subjects and many other works from the archive.
You can search the collection on-line via https://collection.goteborgskonstmuseum.se/
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