The Castle and its collections > Paintings

Paintings

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The art collection

 

The Skokloster Castle collections number a thousand pictures, from the 15th century to 1961. Of the 770 pictures left by Carl Gustaf Wrangel, the Castle’s founder, at his death in 1676, some 150 have been identified at the Castle.

The portraits, numbering 600 items, are the biggest category, followed by landscapes, history paintings, religious paintings, still-lifes, genre paintings, allegories and mythological pictures.

How did Skokloster get its pictures? Apart from those which belonged to Wrangel, the remaining 850 or so were collected and preserved by subsequent owners down to 1967 through inheritance, gifts and purchase. The great majority come from the Brahe family, who owned Skokloster for 253 years.

Artists

So many artists are represented at Skokloster that not all of them can be mentioned here, but one or two names are especially interesting. David Klöker was born in Hamburg in 1628 and got to know Wrangel during the terminal phase of the Thirty Years War. Wrangel engaged him as portrait painter, and Skokloster has ten or so portraits signed by him and dated 1651. Klöker later became court painter in Stockholm and was raised to the nobility under the name of Ehrenstrahl. Gerbrand van den Eeckhout, another important artist, was a Dutchman and had studied under Rembrandt in the 1630s. He painted the picture of Joseph and his brothers.

Nineteenth century artists represented include the portraitist Fredrik Westin, a professor at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts.
The portraits, numbering 600 items, are the biggest category, followed by landscapes, history paintings, religious paintings, still-lifes, genre paintings, allegories and mythological pictures.

How did Skokloster get its pictures? Apart from those which belonged to Wrangel, the remaining 850 or so were collected and preserved by subsequent owners down to 1967 through inheritance, gifts and purchase. The great majority come from the Brahe family, who owned Skokloster for 253 years.

Artists

So many artists are represented at Skokloster that not all of them can be mentioned here, but one or two names are especially interesting. David Klöker was born in Hamburg in 1628 and got to know Wrangel during the terminal phase of the Thirty Years War. Wrangel engaged him as portrait painter, and Skokloster has ten or so portraits signed by him and dated 1651. Klöker later became court painter in Stockholm and was raised to the nobility under the name of Ehrenstrahl. Gerbrand van den Eeckhout, another important artist, was a Dutchman and had studied under Rembrandt in the 1630s. He painted the picture of Joseph and his brothers.

Nineteenth century artists represented include the portraitist Fredrik Westin, a professor at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts.

 

The Skokloster castle portrait collection