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.