Artist Studios / At Home with the Artist

There’s nothing wrong with visiting an ordinary art museum. White-painted walls in neutrally designed rooms with artworks hung according to the latest curatorial trends. But after having visited a few dozen, hundreds even, a certain sense of boredom sets in. Is that all there is? Creating art is a different type of job than the account’s checking of numbers of the monotonous route of the mailman. But traces of a messy creative process are usually lacking in the quiet and discreet corridors of art museums. Thankfully, in many places it’s possible to circumvent the museum and go straight to the original atmosphere where the artworks were once created. In this article, we present three of our favourite artist studio museums. 

Carl Eldh’s Ateljémuseum, Stockholm

Carl Eldh was a Swedish sculptor, trained in Paris in the years around the turn of the last century, and greatly inspired by Auguste Rodin. After completing his education, he returned to Sweden and settled in Stockholm, where his work developed in the direction towards realism. Today, he is primarily remembered for his sculptures portraying prominent personalities of his time such as August Strindberg, Ernst Josephson, and King Oscar II. 

A lesser known fact is that he also regularly collaborated with many architects, including Ivar Tengbom, Erik Lallerstedt and Ragnar Östberg. Östberg gave him the prestigious assignment to create the sculptures that were to decorate Stockholm’s new City Hall (where today the Nobel Prize-dinner is held every year, in December). The City Hall was inaugurated on Midsummer’s Eve in 1923, after fifteen years of construction. When designing it, Östberg had been inspired by the Doge’s Palace in Venice, along with the belfry of the St. Mark’s Basilica (also in Venice). 

Stockholm’s City Hall is today known as the last great building project in Sweden where architects, artists, sculptors, welders, and other types of experts all came together to create a masterpiece, where the sum was larger than its independent parts. The building is a testimony to the idea that all artistic expressions, including art and architecture, are equal and part of the same creative universe. 

At Carl Eldh’s studio, preserved as a museum and overlooking a large lake just outside of Stockholm, you can see nearly five hundred of the artist’s original plaster casts and sculptures, as well as over 1000 sketches. Many of these works were planned as part of larger buildings or architectural plans, and as such, serve as a reminder that art and architecture have always engaged in a creative dialogue with one another, regardless of how we understand this relationship today. 

Musée Bourdelle, Paris

French sculptor Antoine Bourdelle worked alongside Auguste Rodin (before eventually breaking away from Rodin’s style). His more independent work foreshadowed the debut of the Art Deco style, noticeable in his façade decoration for Théâtre des Champs-Élysées. In 1949, his former home and atelier were turned into one of Paris’ most charming museums, donated by his former wife and daughter to the city of Paris. At the same time, the street was renamed as rue Antoine Bourdelle.  

Bourdelle had moved to this place already in 1885 (when the street was called impasse du Maine). It was an artistic neighbourhood; among his nearest neighbours were sculptor Aimé-Jules Dalou and painter Eugène Carrière. Bourdelle came to be based in this “land of arts” for almost 45 years. 

Inspired by Rodin, Bourdelle drew up several building plans for a future museum on this site, but regardless of his visions, the museum he imagined would not come to life until after his death. 

The sculpture studio has remained in its original state. The wooden table was once assembled by Bourdelle’s father. Visitors will often notice the extraordinary atmosphere of the room, emphasised by the light that shines in through the high glass roof, which opens to the north. 

Even though in the middle of the busy Montparnasse area, the place feels serene, quiet, and calm.  

In 1992, the 19th century studios were extended with a further wing, designed by Christian de Portzamparc. In addition, there is also the Great Hall, full of plaster casts bathed in soft light. Many artists in training come here to capture the essence of Bourdelle’s sculptures. 

The verdant garden contains Bourdelle’s most famous bronze statues, cast from the models displayed in the Great Hall. The four figures of the Monument au general Alvéar are found in front of the arcade of the brick peristyle.  Adam (depicted after he was driven out of Eden) stands between Pénélope and Les Fruits ou la nudité des fruits. 

If you are fortunate in timing your visit, there is also a temporary exhibition on display. Because of the remarkable atmosphere of this museum, it has hosted several significant fashion exhibitions, as well as temporarily displayed the works by other artists. 

Millesgården, Lidingö

Millesgården, situated on the island of Lidingö, only minutes from central Stockholm, was named after the famous sculptor Carl Milles, who lived here with his wife Olga. They acquired the land in 1906, and two years later, the villa was completed. A few decades later, they bought the neighbouring plots and could thus expand the terraced sculpture garden into the large, labyrinth-like experience it is today, filled with hidden nooks and large artworks. 

In 1936, it was donated as a gift to the Swedish people.

Milles is famous for his many sculptures, commissioned by institutions around the world, often created with inspiration from the mythology of ancient Greece and Rome. For fifty years, he worked at developing Millesgården, today widely considered the most important artwork of his life. 

To visit the sculpture park, regardless of season, is to catch a glimpse of the artist’s rich phantasmagorical landscape. Inside the couple’s mansion, the floors are full of beautiful mosaics, while the pink one-story building called Anne’s villa, built to house Milles’ private secretary Anne Hedmark and decorated by Estrid Ericson and Josef Frank, offers a completely different, more informal and relaxed atmosphere.

Olga Milles, born in Austria, was a painter and sculptor in her own right. In the meeting between the Austrian Olga and the Swedish Carl, two cultures and aesthetic traditions intersected and merged. 

Consequently, a part of the garden is called “Little Austria”, which is also where the two are buried, in a wood chapel designed to emulate the type of road chapel common in Austria and southern Germany. 

It’s often said that life has a way of imitating art. This is true also for this place, as inspiration for the chapel was found in Moritz von Schwind’s painting “Die Waldkapelle”.

The restaurant at Millesgården is not to be missed. And in the art hall, which houses various exhibitions all year round and is placed at the entrance to the garden, there is a small shop where one can buy miniature versions of Milles’ most famous works, including the iconic “The Hand of God”.