Open-Air Studio. From A Home (26 watercolours)

Open-Air Studio. From A Home is one of the most self-referential images in the Ett hem series, depicting the outdoor workspace Larsson used at Sundborn when weather and light permitted. The open-air studio — essentially a cleared outdoor space with good north light, sometimes under a canvas awning — was a practical arrangement for a painter committed to working from direct observation. For Larsson it also carried ideological weight: working outdoors connected him to the plein-air tradition he had absorbed at Grez-sur-Loing and signaled his refusal to confine painting to the artificial conditions of a closed studio. The watercolor medium was especially suited to outdoor work, being portable and quick-drying in a way that oil was not. Depicting his studio in the Et hem series placed artistic production within the same domestic and natural context as cooking, fishing, and family life — an insistence that art-making was part of ordinary, integrated human activity rather than a separate, elevated pursuit.

Transparent watercolor with the outdoor light quality of a summer working day at Sundborn. The studio setting provides pictorial interest through the objects of artistic production — canvases, brushes, easels — set within the natural garden environment. Light effects on these varied surfaces demand careful, responsive handling.