family in Stockholm. In the beginning of the seventies, he
went through the Academy of Arts, and he afterwards
travelled in Holland, Italy, and France. At first he was
strongly influenced by the Dutch and Venetian schools of
art; then he went to Paris, where he received deep impres-
sions from Manet. When Josephson exhibited his portraits
at the Paris Salon in 1881, he was lauded in the foremost
art magazine of France, Gazette des Beaux-Arts, as one of
the greatest of contemporary portrait painters. It was
more difficult to obtain recognition in his native land.

Josephson was the man who took the initiative in the
above-mentioned opposition to the Academy, the result of
which was Konstnärsförbundet. The duration of his crea-
tive period was to be short; for as early as 1888, during his
art studies in Brittany, he was attacked by a mental disease.
An unusually rich and intense inner life lies back of his art,
and is revealed in his coloring as well as in his ideas. In
fact, this characteristic quality can be detected even in the
sketches which were made during his illness. Though hazy
and distorted, they often disclose the guiding light of genius,
while they are conventionalized in execution.

Josephson had learned much from Rembrandt and the
Venetians of the sixteenth century. He made a superb copy
after Rembrandt's Director of the Clothes Dealers' Guild.
and his first paintings bear witness to influences from the old
masters. In 1878 he painted Saul and David, with its warm
golden tone and its rich, deep pigments, calling to mind the
Venetian masters of the Renaissance. The painting has
been presented to the National Museum by a society called
Friends of the National Museum.

Josephson is excellently represented in the finely selected
and arranged collection of Klas Fåhæus in Högberga,
Lidingö, where a whole wall is devoted to him. The eye is
at once arrested by the portrait of Fru Gustaf af Geijer-
stam, with its look of foreboding, while perhaps the most
noteworthy of all is the large painting Cheating Gamesters,
a mere sketch but masterly from a coloristic and dramatic
viewpoint. Among Josephson's portraits are those of the

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