Old Sundborn Church. From A Home (26 watercolours)

Old Sundborn Church. From A Home takes the series outside the immediate domestic environment of Lilla Hyttnäs to document the village church that formed the spiritual and social center of the Sundborn community. The church at Sundborn — a traditional Swedish wooden structure of medieval origin — represented the depth of the community's roots in the landscape, a continuity of habitation and worship that Carl Larsson valued as a counterweight to the urban modernity he had navigated in Paris and Stockholm. Including the church in the domestic series was a statement about the scope of 'home': not just the interior of one cottage but the entire web of community, landscape, and tradition within which the Larsson family's life was embedded. The Swedish country church's characteristic red wooden exterior, surrounded by a churchyard of old graves, was a subject with powerful connotations for the national-romantic painters of the period.

Transparent watercolor suited to rendering the Falun-red wooden exterior of a Swedish country church against the surrounding landscape. The churchyard setting requires sensitive handling of weathered grave markers, old trees, and the specific quality of light in a rural Swedish setting. Architectural precision is balanced with atmospheric softness.