Between Christmas and New Year. From A Home (26 watercolours)

Between Christmas and New Year. From A Home depicts the quiet days in the Swedish domestic calendar between the two celebrations, a period of particular atmospheric character in a northern country: the darkness is at its greatest, the festive decoration still in place, family life gathered close. In the Lutheran Swedish tradition, Christmas was (and is) the central domestic festival, and its twelve-day span from Christmas Eve to Epiphany had its own internal rhythms. Larsson's documentation of this interstitial period within the Ett hem series — classifying it as 'Religious' reflects the calendar's liturgical frame — shows his ambition to capture not just attractive domestic scenes but the full texture of the year at Sundborn. The Dalarna landscape outside the warm interior would have been locked in deep winter by this date. The juxtaposition of interior warmth and exterior darkness was a theme with particular resonance in Swedish culture, where winter's severity made domestic comfort both more challenging to create and more deeply valued.

Transparent watercolor with warm interior tonality contrasting against cold blue tones visible through windows or doors. Christmas decorations provide colorful punctuation against the interior walls and furnishings. The firelight or lamp-lit interior is suggested through warm yellow-orange passages.