Alexander Roslin

Alexander Roslin – First artistic attempts with ship studies and drawings

Alexander Roslin was born on 15 July 1718 in Malmö. In 1724, his father, a government and town medical officer, moved the family to Kristianstad, and then to Karlskrona in 1730. In the Swedish Baroque city, which had served as a naval base since its foundation in 1679, the almost completely inexperienced painter Roslin received his first commission from Officer Lars Ehrenbill, an acquaintance of his father who served as a doctor in the Admiralty. Roslin subsequently went to Stockholm to take painting lessons from the Swedish portrait and history painter Georg Engelhard Schröder. When his apprenticeship finished, Roslin remained for a further two years as Schröder’s assistant before he received the call from his patron and sponsor Ehrenbill in Göteborg in 1741 who had been appointed commander there. Roslin worked there briefly as a portrait painter, but moved the following year to Schonen where he lived until 1745.

Great success in Paris; celebrated portraitist of the ruling classes

Alexander Roslin eventually left his home of Sweden to try his luck elsewhere. He celebrated success as a portrait painter in Bayreuth, Parma and Rome, but found his ultimate focal point in Paris. Princess Louise Elisabeth of France, daughter of King Ludwig XV wrote Roslin a letter of recommendation which opened doors for the artist. He was also soon highly esteemed by his artist colleagues, and only one year after he arrived, was already accepted in the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture. Counted amongst his close friends was François Boucher, who was extremely famous in Paris and served as court painter to the king and favourite of the infamous
Madame de Pompadour. Roslin demonstrated an incomparable eye for the particularities of the ruling class whom he depicted in his portraits with all their wealth and splendour in detail and with spirit, in line with the taste of the time, which did not deny him its applause and favour.

An artistic highpoint of 18 th century portrait painting

Alexander Roslin married the painter Marie Suzanne Giroust, whom he portraited many times. One of these pictures, showing his wife dressed in a Bolognese carnival costume and smiling charmingly from behind a black veil is considered today one of the greatest works of 18 th century portrait painting. The art of Alexander Roslin occasionally exhibited the influence of the painting style of the famous Rococo master Jean-Marc Nattier. Roslin’s fame, which showed the French upper classes at the height of their power, a few years before their bloody downfall, also reached the noble courts of Europe and he has thus been occasionally described by the critics as a chronicler of decadence. In his homeland of Sweden, Alexander Roslin was made an honorary member of the Academy of Arts in 1773, painted the portraits of the Swedish royal family in Stockholm in 1774, and in 1775 followed the call of the Russian empress to St. Petersburg.

Alexander Roslin died in Paris on 5 July 1793.