The Quiet Rebellion of Karin Larsson’s Colorful Home

I recently realized that many of the colors in our home are similar to those in the home of Swedish artists Carl and Karin Larsson. Carl Larsson is a well-known Swedish painter and illustrator who married painter and textile artist Karin Bergöö in 1883. The two met at an artists’ colony outside Paris.

Carl and Karin

The Larssons lived much of their life in a home called Lilla Hyttnäs, which you can still visit. The house itself started out as a smaller cottage where her grandmother and aunts lived. Later, Karin’s father gifted it to her. At first it was more like a vacation cottage where they spent Christmastime and then later they moved in full time.

Carl’s paintings of their home and life with their children are charming, delightful, and show an idyllic life in the Swedish countryside. Certainly the life we know about is edited, by them and by others. But we do know that the colorful paintings Carl made are only this way because Karin Larsson designed their home and life to be so boldly colorful.

When we think of modern “Swedish design,” and its influence in the United States though IKEA, a large part was influenced by Karin’s work.

Trained in the Royal Swedish Academy of Arts, Karin was a bit of a quiet rebel artist at the time. She created a home and life that served her and her family first. Some trends of her time she enjoyed and used in her home, but in so many ways she did her own thing.

Karin Larsson at Home

Together, Karin and Carl (along with local builders) expanded the cottage. Their home not only grew to accommodate their growing family, but also to accommodate both Carl and Karin’s creative needs. Over time, they had eight children and Karin Larsson kept making art. Rather than the easel paintings she had made before, Karin painted her walls, wove textiles, sewed cushions and curtains, and hired local artisans to create her interior, architectural, and furniture designs.

Karin even designed and sewed clothing that allowed freedom of movement like loose dresses and striped aprons, very different from the corseted styles of her day. [3] Room by room she filled the cottage with color and pattern in a way that didn’t have a precedent in Swedish homes at the time, which were often dark and filled with ornate antiques. Karin and Carl were likely influenced by the English Arts & Crafts, Japanese woodcuts viewed in Paris along with French neo-Rococo design, and Swedish folk art. [4]

The Larssons were well-read, and well-traveled, with great curiosity. Their designs were personal, creative, expansive, yet allowed for visible flaws and experiments. If their home was decorated to impress anyone, it was Karin first.

I love that there were rag rugs, chairs meant to be sat in, colors chosen to make the house feel more like theirs. Rather than fixed structures and furniture groupings, they moved things about as they pleased. I can only imagine the home made winters feel cozy and summers feel idyllic.

Carl and Karin Larsson: Creators of the Swedish Style

I came across the book, Carl and Karin Larsson: Creators of the Swedish Style, and very quickly realized my own house had so many of the same colors. Our home is primarily in greens, blues, reds, and yellows. We have a red brick fireplace against Behr’s Gray Morning walls (which reads very blue) with a blue red with red fish with yellow curtains. Open to that room is a green kitchen in Behr Equilibrium with honey oak cabinets and curtains in red, yellow, and cream. A bright Marimekko print is mounted in the living room near blue curtains with a colorful blue, green, and rust red rug.

I didn’t plan any of this around a Swedish painter from the 1890s, I promise. But I loved seeing the echoes of the same colors in my own home. We moved into a house that was tan on brown on more builder’s tan more than 15 years ago. I love that it’s so much more colorful now, and we keep adding things as we find them. It’s a home that serves us and makes us happy.

So when I notice how many of our own colors land in that same family, I don’t think it’s really about Carl’s paintings – which I do adore and even have The Apple Harvest on the wall. But now I think about Karin Larsson’s work more. That her home worked for her and her family, that it should be a happy place to live in, that she made things because it was practical or enjoyable and many times both.

I love knowing that Karin’s style reached so much farther than Lilla Hyttnäs and I hope she knows it too.

Footnotes

[1] “Karin Larsson: Artist and Home Designer.” Carl Larsson Gården Sundborn.

[2] Larsson, Lena. “The Larson Design Legacy: A Personal View,” in Carl and Karin Larsson: Creators of the Swedish Style, eds. Michael Snodin and Elisabet Stavenow-Hidemark (London: V&A Publications, 1997), 225.

[3] “Karin Larsson: Artist and Home Designer.” Carl Larsson Gården Sundborn.

[4] Stavenow-Hidemark, Elisabet. “A Home of its Time – But Completely Different,” in Carl and Karin Larsson: Creators of the Swedish Style, eds. Michael Snodin and Elisabet Stavenow-Hidemark (London: V&A Publications, 1997), 51-73.

[5] Larsson, “The Larson Design Legacy: A Personal View,” 223.

References

Carl Larsson. Hide and Seek, 1898 in The Larssons. Langewiesche Königstein, 2006. Facsimile of the 1902 edition, Public Domain,
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=37585221

Carl Larsson. Letter-Writing, 1912. Nationalmuseum, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=52134555

“Karin Larsson: Artist and Home Designer.” Carl Larsson Garden Sundborn.
https://carllarsson.se/karin-larsson/

Snodin, Michael and Elisabet Stavenow-Hidemark, eds. Carl and Karin Larsson: Creators of the Swedish Style. London: V&A Publications, 1997.