The Studio. From A Home (26 watercolours)

The Studio is one of the twenty-six watercolors from the Ett Hem series of 1899, depicting Carl Larsson's own working space at Sundborn. The artist's studio was a subject with a long tradition in Western painting — from Vermeer's Allegory of Painting to Courbet's Artist's Studio — but Larsson treats it with the same domestic intimacy he brought to the kitchen and the bedroom. His studio was part of the family home, used by his children as well as himself, and the depicted space reflects the integration of creative work into daily family life that was central to his artistic philosophy. The Nationalmuseum holds the complete set of the Ett Hem watercolors, which Larsson had intended to keep together as a unified artistic statement. The studio scene is among the most self-referential images in the series — the painter depicting the space where painting happens, within a series that is itself a meditation on domesticity and artistic creation.

The studio interior presents a complex subject: tools and surfaces of artistic work, dedicated north-facing light, and the personal objects of a working creative space. Larsson's clean-line watercolor style renders the room's geometric structure with graphic precision and warm clarity.