Stenarbejdere

The signature carries a country and a year — Schweiz 1888 — and the museum bought the canvas in that same year. Axel Jungstedt had trained at the Royal Swedish Academy of Arts under Edvard Perséus from 1878 to 1883, and then in Paris with Bouguereau; his scholarship years of 1884 to 1888 took him through Italy and Germany and to Switzerland for the summers of 1886 and 1887, the ground of the companion piece the Nationalmuseum owns, In the Quarry. Motif from Switzerland, painted in 1886. He settled afterwards in Stockholm and opened his own painting school, which he ran until 1896; Elsa Beskow was among his pupils. Awarded Litteris et Artibus in 1899 and appointed professor at the Academy in 1909, he spent his later years on portraits, church altarpieces and the decoration of the Stockholm Opera House, and is represented in the national galleries of Denmark and Norway. The painting is held in the Statens Museum for Kunst (National Gallery of Denmark).