Jag har undersökt hur tillståndet absorption kan användas för att förstå hur försjunkenhet skapas i en målning. Detta har gjorts genom en fallstudie av sex verk, tre av Anna Ancher och tre av Johannes Vermeer. Urvalet har berott på verkens fotorealistiska stil samt att de avbildar en kvinna utförandes en aktivitet, till synes försjunken i det hon gör. Jag har undersökt målningarnas olika beståndsdelar genom att använda mig av Ervin Panofskys ikonologiska och ikonografiska analys och sedan ställt dem mot Michael Frieds begrepp absorption i en jämförande analys. Jag har kommit fram till är att absorptionen och försjunkenheten i dessa sex verk syns genom den aktivitet som den avbildade figuren utför, figurens hållning och blickriktning. Ljussättningen och kompositionen bidrar även till en känsla av närhet och intimitet som förstärker känslan av försjunkenhet.

Uppsatsen undersöker den konstvetenskapliga diskussionen angående  rimligheten i att läsa in moraliska budskap i holländsk genrekonst från 1600-talet. Detta görs utifrån en diskursanalytisk metod med fokus på textanalys. De texter som behandlas är skrivna av konsthistoriker under 1980- och 1990-talet och belyser tolkningsfrågan ur olika synvinklar. / This thesis investigates the art historical debate about whether or not it is reasonable to assume the presence of moralistic messages in Dutch seventeenth-century genre art. The study is conducted according to a discourse analytical method with emphasis on textual analysis. The texts chosen for analysis were written during the 1980s and 1990s by art historians who advocate different standpoints.

This essay examines the ways the decorated farmhouses known as hälsingegårdar of Hälsingland, Sweden, are depicted in art from the late nineteenth century Düsseldorf school of painting to contemporary pixel art and how the ways of depiction have changed over time. Three different works of art are analyzed with Erwin Panofsky’s model for iconographic and iconological analysis. Results show a gradual difference in technique and the artist's personal attitudes towards the hälsingegårdar. Starting with the genre painting’s idyllic interpretation of the peasant life as the height of nationalist values to the more provincialist cherry-picking of the late twentieth century naive painting and the final contemporary pixel art piece of ambivalence and distancing from the hälsingegårdar as a means of interpretation and understanding.

In a well-known verse Swedish eighteenth century writer Anna Maria Lenngren advise her fictive daughter to avoid reding, since it might distract her from her household chores. This paper intends to examine attitudes towards women’s reading in eighteenth century Sweden, using different kinds of sources: Satirical verses, conduct books for girls and young women and genre paintings by Swedish painter Pehr Hilleström, depicting bourgeoise and aristocratic interiors. In my analysis I make use of the public-private distinction formulated by Jürgen Habermas. Habermas describes the literary public debate as a first step towards a political public debate. The private sphere, in which women a supposed to remain, is in Habermas version divided in an economic and an intimate part, centered on the family and the home. In the satirical verses reading and books aren’t a prominent topic but is mentioned as one of many vices connected to conspicuous consumption and a life “à la mode”. The verses like to contrast the vane, modern woman to the ideal of the good householder. The conduct books give a more nuanced picture of reading as a part of an aristocratic or bourgeoise woman’s life. Reading can be seen as a useful pastime, preferable to playing cards or making idle gossip. According to the conduct books the main purpose of reading should be to inform and educate the reader, not just to entertain her. The paintings confirm the impression that reading was a well-established part of domestic life for women of the leisured classes, but some of them still allows for a more critical view, like the one seen in the verses. The written sources are consistent in the conviction that women’s reading shouldn’t lead to their participation in any public debate. Reading and the fruits of reading are seen to develop and expand the readers personality, and possibly make her more attractive to a future husband, but it is meant to be kept in the private, intimate sphere of the home.

This paper examines the painter Peh Hilleström (1732–1816) as a participant in the eighteenth century, Stockholm art market, according to the model used by Michael Baxandall in his study of Italian Renaissance art. The art market of the eighteenth century was expanding and included new groups of buyers, outside traditional patrons of art as court and aristocracy. The main purpose of the paper is to find these new art consumers. I use probate inventories from Stockholm, from the years 1735, 1775, 1795, and 1815, in which I search for annotations of paintings. The results are examined from an economic perspective, based on wealth, and a social, based on occupation and titles. Examining these four years I find a rather extensive, bourgeois, market for art, including the less well of households, and fairly independent of social status. The sources give few if any, details of the paintings listed. Hence it is not possible to connect any of the annotations in the probate inventories to Hilleström, since artists’ names are never mentioned. From some of the clues given, there is nevertheless, possible to reconstruct the outlines of what an art collection might have looked like. The wide scope of Hillestöm’s production, illustrated by the artist’s own list of his paintings, might be interpreted as a way to cater for this new market, illustrated by e.g. the frequent repetition of motives. Finally, I examine a few of Hilleström’s own paintings in the light of the previous investigation. Together the sources give a picture of a – fairly widespread – ideal of interior decoration, in which paintings are an important part.

The Artists’ model in Sweden is a relatively unexplored topic. This study applies a discourse analytical approach to the figure of the artists’ model, based in Foucaultian thought, in order to investigate the discourse surrounding the model in Sweden during the period 1880 – 1899. The study poses the following questions: How does the artists' model appear and what themes can be identified in selected text from Swedish newspapers? How does the model appear in selected visual works and how does that relate to the model in popular culture? How does the model appear in material from the Academy of fine arts, how does this relate to the model in popular culture and what conclusions can be drawn concerning their life and working conditions? What discursive tendencies surrounding the model can be identified and how does conceptions of class, gender and ethnicity impact the model in the discourse? The investigated material is serialised novels and short stories in newspapers, visual depictions of models in art and their reception, as well as archival material from the Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts. Additional methods being used is close reading and thematic analysis.  The study concludes that the model in Sweden belongs to a wider international discourse, stereotypes of models in English, German and French context appears in Sweden, due to the international nature of both the art and publishing worlds. Models are defined by contemporary conceptions of ethnicity, gender, and age. A clear discursive tendency constructs the model as female and the artist as male. The relationship between them is often presented as romantic or sexual in nature. An opposing tendency, often presented by writers involved in the art world, constructs the artist as distant and disinterested, with an aesthetic gaze, and the model as objectified non-woman, their relationship that of working professionals. The study also argues that no particular concept of the Swedish model existed, models were more frequently conceived of as Italian or Parisian in Swedish discourse.

Sällsynta, vanliga kvinnor - Genremåleriets skildringar som kunskapskälla kring 1700-talets arbetande kvinnor i Sverige. The aim of this essay is to study whether genre paintings portraying lower and middle class women in the 18th century Sweden can act as a source of information and knowledge regarding these women ́s types of work and way of life and if so, what in the the motives can be used as a source of information and thus contribute to traditional historical research. The essay focuses on Sweden and the years between 1770 - 1810 since this was a time of rapid political, economic and cultural development which all effected the art market. These years were also the productive years of the artist Pehr Hilleström who was the most formative contributor to Swedish genre painting at the time. In this essay three motives have been analysed with attention to repertoires of work, ways of performing work and social hierarchies within work among the portrayed women. Research on aspects of economic history, material culture, work, family and gender, dress history as well as pictures as historical evidence puts the depicted women in relation to their context. The conclusion is that with knowledge of the time period and culture, special knowledge of what is displayed and thereby the adequate ability to critically evaluate the source indeed makes genre painting a useful source of information. / Sällsynta, vanliga kvinnor - Genremåleriets skildringar som kunskapskälla kring 1700-talets arbetande kvinnor i Sverige. Uppsatsen fokuserar på perioden 1770-1810 och det som då var Sverige eftersom samhälle och kultur utvecklades snabbt under denna tid vilket gynnade konstmarknaden och en ny typ av motiv då blev populärt - genremotiv. Uppsatsen undersöker om dessa kan användas som källa till kunskap och i så fall vad i motiven som kan utgöra detta. Tre motiv målade av Pehr Hilleström under den aktuella perioden valdes ut för verksanalyser. I motiven föreställande kvinnor ur ett lägre samhällsskikt och som utför någon typ av hushållsrelaterat arbete undersöks om kunskap och information kring dessa kvinnor och deras arbetsliv kan erhållas. Resultatet av undersökningen visar att med tillräcklig kunskap om aktuell tid och kontext, rätt specialkunskaper kring vad som avbildas i form av föremål, interiörer och klädedräkt samt adekvat källkritik så kan genremotiv användas som en källa till information och kunskap.