Michael Dahl

Stockholm 1659 - London 1743

Michael Dahl was a pupil of David Klöcker Ehrenstrahl. He felt insecure about his future as a portrait painter in Sweden and left for London in 1682 to try his luck, since I would rather live in poverty in a foreign country than here among my friends, as he wrote to his mother. His bold decision bore fruit and he became a pupil of Sir Godfrey Kneller, the leading portrait painter in London. The talented Dahl fully mastered his teacher's manner, which he again had inherited from Sir Peter Lely. Michael painted long-wigged gentlemen and moist-eyed beauties with such flair that already in the 1690s he had reached a position almost comparable to that of Kneller as a society painter in London. Michael Dahl never returned to Sweden, but maintained contacts with his home country. Many Swedish pupils such as G.E. Schröder and Lorens Pasch the Elder were welcomed to his grand studio in London. In this way, Dahl became an influential figure in the success story of Swedish portraiture in the 18th century.