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John Bauer was born in Jönköping in 1882 and at age 18 he was
accepted to the school of arts. In 1906 he married Ester Ellqvist
and she became the model for his many fairytale princesses. John
Bauer was best known for his illistrations in the fairytale
collection "Among Hobbits and Trolls" In 1918 John, his wife and
son were tragically killed in an accident with the ferryboat Per
Brahe. He grew up with his two brothers in an apartment above
their father’s butcher’s shop in Östra torget, and in Villa Sjövik
on the outskirts of Jönköping. At only sixteen years of age, he
went to Stockholm to begin studying art. Two years later, he was
accepted as a student at the Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts.
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He was already being given illustrating commissions while he was
at the Academy. The influence of artists such as Albert Engström
and Carl Larsson can be seen clearly in his early works. In
the summer of 1904, the young John went on a month-long hike in
the mountains with his camera over his shoulder and his sketchbook
under his arm. |
The commission was to illustrate a magnificent volume on Lapland.
In 1906 he married his friend from the Academy, Ester Ellqvist.
They travelled together to southern Germany and Italy on a
yearlong study trip, and the encounter with the Italian early
renaissance had a profound impact on John’s work. John’s trolls
can be tiny creeping things under a tree root, or gigantic
mountain trolls, but usually they are the size of people. With
their big noses, pointed ears and long hairy arms, they look as if
they have sprung from nature. It is the eyes that differentiate
John Bauer’s trolls from other people’s. Their different and
limited ability to think means the trolls do not understand the
human world, but their eyes hint at a good-natured and curious
interest.
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