At the Petit Palais, Bruno Liljefors sublimates wildlife

There are works from the past that strangely resonate with our contemporary sensibilities. The paintings of Bruno Liljefors (1860–1939) are among them. His wildlife scenes captured from life and its pieces of a nature whose fragility we know at a time of ecological emergency seem to have abolished time to speak directly to us. Almost a century and a half later, the Scandinavian artist who helped to forge the image of wild Swedish nature thrills our senses and tickles our consciences eager to repair and reconsider links with living things.

In the forest, by the sea, hidden in the tall grass of a meadow, buried under the snow at dusk, in the middle of the night, at dawn or under a sunset, Scandinavian fauna and flora depicted by Bruno Liljefors pulsate with contagious vitality and make the spectacle of nature a continuous wonderas cruel as it is.

He showed off his perfect muscles while posing as a model

If these images speak to us today, Bruno Liljefors was indeed a man of his timean era marked by the theory of the evolution of species of the famous naturalist Charles Darwin, the appearance of photography and the brilliant discoveries of the Parisian artistic avant-gardes. Son of a gunpowder merchant, he grew up in Uppsalaa town north of Stockholm surrounded by fields and marshy areas, where he goes whenever the opportunity gives him, accompanying his father and uncles hunting.

But it is armed with pencils and a sketchbook that he then immortalizes what he observed without making noise. The child being in fragile health, his parents encourage him to strengthen his body through contact with nature spending as much time as possible outsideincreasing the number of exercises and endurance tests. The efforts pay off. Bruno develops impressive physical strength. He became a gymnast and acrobat and, at 16, even performed in a circus with his little brothers.