Peter Krafft, the Elder

Stockholm 1724 - 1793

Pehr Krafft was a student of Johan Henrik Scheffel and Carl Gustav Pilo. Like many of his fellow painters in Sweden, Krafft travelled abroad to put the finishing touches to his accomplishments. In 1755, Pehr Krafft arrived in Paris, the centre of European culture in the 18th century. One of the most respected portrait painters in the city, Alexander Roslin from Sweden, was Krafft's role model, mentor and patron.

Krafft learnt the sophisticated style and technique of Roslin and his kindred French, but was also greatly influenced by Jean-Baptiste Chardin, who painted more prosaic and intimate themes. In 1762, Roslin arranged for Krafft the post of court painter in the small Frankish residential town of Bayreuth where Roslin himself had started his international career. After Bayreuth, Krafft spent a year in Warsaw as court painter, but then chose to return to Sweden in 1768 instead of pursuing a promising career abroad.

There were many reasonably well-off people in Stockholm at the end of the 18th century and they wanted paintings, especially portraits, for the walls of their homes that reflected the elegance of the court in simpler ways. There was plenty of work for a portrait painter who was skilled but also modest enough, and Pehr Krafft became the favourite painter of the bourgeoisie and civil service aristocracy in Stockholm. His simple, elegant and always professional portraits are so convincing and so many in number that his friendly, subdued and slightly sentimental characterization has very much shaped our view of Gustavian people.