MOLIN, Johann Peter - b. 1814 Göteborg, d. 1873 Stockholm - WGA

MOLIN, Johann Peter

(b. 1814 Göteborg, d. 1873 Stockholm)

Swedish sculptor. His father was a baker in Gothenburg. In 1843 he studied with Herman Wilhelm Bissen in Copenhagen. Later he stayed in Paris then spent eight years in Rome. His fame was established when Karl XV bought one of his works in 1847.

From 1853 he was a teacher at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, and two years later he became a professor of sculpture. His statue of Karl XII was unveiled in 1868 in Kungsträdgarden in Stockholm, where his fountain (called Molins fountain) is also located.

Fountain
Fountain by
Knife Fight
Knife Fight by

Knife Fight

In the Scandinavian countries, Neoclassicism remained a potent presence in the nineteenth century. In Sweden Johann Peter Molin was torn between a Neoclassical training and Romantic inclinations as a result of a stay in Paris from 1858. He executed the Knife Fight in Paris in 1858-59 and showed it in the 1862 Salon. The work combines celebration of the athletic nude with an anecdotal content redolent of extreme violence, the two fighters being roped together and thus obliged to fight to the death.

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