Gustaf Lundberg

Gustaf Lundberg (Stockholm, 1695–1786) was a Swedish Rococo pastelist and portrait painter. He trained and worked in Paris before being appointed court portrait painter in Stockholm. He matters because he brought the light, elegant Rococo portrait style to Sweden, where Baroque portraiture had previously prevailed.

He was the son of a royal chef and Sabina Richter, from a family with several artists. Orphaned at an early age, he was raised by his grandfather, the goldsmith Fredrik Richter. In 1712 he became an apprentice of the German-Swedish painter David von Krafft, and in 1717 he travelled to Paris, where he studied with Hyacinthe Rigaud, Nicolas de Largillière and Jean-François de Troy. The decisive influence was the Venetian painter Rosalba Carriera, who lived in Paris from 1720 to 1721 and steered him towards pastel.

In Paris he became one of the leading portrait painters of his day. He painted Louis XV and Queen Marie Leszczyńska, and gave pastel lessons to the deposed King Stanisław Leszczyński, the Queen's father. He portrayed many Swedes passing through the city and painted his colleagues François Boucher and Charles-Joseph Natoire. His friendship with the Swedish ambassador Carl Gustaf Tessin, an art collector who let him stay in his palace, opened doors for him. In 1741 he was elected to the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture, but his popularity began to wane soon after, as newer pastelists adopted a more realistic manner.

In 1745 he travelled through Spain and Portugal, and in Madrid he painted Louise-Élisabeth, daughter of Louis XV. That same year he returned to Sweden, where, thanks to Tessin, he was introduced at court and became the leading Rococo painter in the country. In 1750 he was appointed court portrait painter (hovkonterfejare), and he painted the Crown Prince, later Gustav III, on many occasions. He died in Stockholm in 1786 and was buried in Uppsala.

His pastels document the taste of the French and Swedish aristocracy in the mid-eighteenth century and remain a record of that genre in both countries.