Skärgårdsmålaren Roland Svensson Special

Roland Svensson - Skärgårdsmålaren Anders Hanser first met Roland Svensson when Posten issued stamps featuring his archipelago scenes in 1996. At the time, Roland Svensson was just a name to Anders and, being a landlubber, he knew nothing of Roland’s stature among many islanders.

Born in 1910, Roland Svensson depicted the Stockholm archipelago more than anyone else through lithographs, watercolours, oil paintings and illustrations for his own books and those of others, as well as more remote island worlds in other oceans. He wrote around ten books, which he illustrated himself. But, as mentioned, Anders knew little about him. Then Anders discovered that Roland had been an outstanding storyteller in several radio programmes many years earlier, and had the idea of creating a slide show about and featuring Roland. The only problem was that Anders had no time, as he was constantly fully booked with various commissions. Roland therefore weighed on Anders’s conscience for several years. But then, in 1999, he contacted the artist: if Roland promised to attend the premiere in a few weeks’ time, Anders would in turn promise to finish the slide show. Roland agreed. Anders booked the auditorium at Nordiska museet. As the well-known Swedish composer Hugo Alfvén was also a skilled watercolour painter and very fond of the Stockholm archipelago, the programme about him would also be shown alongside Roland’s. The slide show was finished the day before, and it was an ordeal for Anders. He had only been to Vaxholm and Sandhamn and did not recognise the places in Roland’s pictures. He arranged the images entirely by instinct and mixed in suitable music. It was going to be so exciting. The auditorium at Nordiska museet filled to the very last seat. The artist arrived with his wife Ingrid. Anders anxiously awaited the reaction. After the screening, she said spontaneously: “Roland, this is the best thing you’ve ever done!” Understandable, as it is Roland telling his own story alongside his own pictures. The experience is also enhanced by music. It was a great success, and Roland Svensson also had the pleasure of seeing the programme on SVT before he died in the summer of 2003, aged 93.

Att rita på sten

An immensely important place for Roland Svensson was the Nordic region’s only industrial lithographic printing workshop, which Rolf Jansson had established in Nacka in the mid-1940s. He moved it to Vikmanshyttan in Dalarna 30 years later. The lithographic workshop is used by Scandinavia’s leading artists, and the printing press itself was built as early as 1889 and was in operation at the Paris World’s Fair in 1896. One of the customers using the press was probably none other than Tolouse-Lautrec, for the famous Moulin Rouge posters!

In the film from the lithographic workshop, Mats Westman explains its cultural history and the technique, a chemical method based on the principle that grease and water repel one another. The artist and printmaker Jordi Arkö demonstrates the technique of drawing on stone, just as Roland Svensson did. Even the subject is in Roland’s spirit. Around 350 editions, approximately 90 per cent of Roland’s output, were printed on the press at Vikmanshyttans stentryckeri, which is thus well over 100 years old.

Tristan da Cunha- Världens ensligaste ö

In the 1960s, the artist Roland Svensson made many much-loved radio programmes, and it is from some of these that Anders Hanser has drawn the audio excerpts for these three programmes. He made the first in 1999, about a sailing trip through the Stockholm archipelago, Roland Svensson – Skärgårdsmålaren, and it has become a true classic. At the premiere, Roland’s wife Ingrid spontaneously exclaimed: “Roland, this is the best thing you’ve ever done!” The same could also be said of the latest film about Tristan da Cunha, the world’s most remote archipelago, which lies between South America and Africa. It can only be reached by boat, and its nearest neighbour is 2,500 kilometres away. Roland was fascinated by islands and visited Tristan da Cunha four times, making 10 radio programmes about the archipelago with its couple of hundred inhabitants. To this must be added the works of art he created there and the many thousands of photographic slides he took.