Johan Tobias Sergel

The Swedish artist Johan Tobias Sergel stands as an important transitional figure for the The Swedish artist Johan Tobias Sergel stands as an important transitional figure for the history of sculpture, moving away from the rococo-influenced antique designs of his sometime associates Bouchardon and Clodion and taking instead first steps toward the Neo-Classicism that would be further developed by his younger contemporaries Canova and Thorwaldsen. Trained initially in Sweden by the French artists working on the new palace at Stockholm, Sergel then spent eight months in Paris and, more importantly, over a decade in Rome, from 1768-79. In Italy, his associates included a dazzling international circle of artists including Henri Fuseli, Nicolai Abildgaard, George Romney, Giuseppe Cades, Thomas Banks, J-F Rigaud, Julien de Parme, and F-A Vincent, and his patrons included both French and British aristocrats, while he also received commissions for works to be sent back to Stockholm.
Beyond his contributions to sculpture, Sergel is known today for his drawings, which constitute a virtual diary of his life, often in caricature and not infrequently salacious. An extensive corpus of self-portraits is joined by scores of surviving sheets that explore his friendships, his dealings with figures at the court of King Gustav III, and his common-law marriage to Anna Rella Hellström.
In the late 1790s, following the assassination of Gustav III and the death of Anna Rella, Sergel fell into a deep depression, an illness to which he was prone throughout his life. After some months alone at home, he accepted the invitations to visit a number of old friends, first Jean-Jacques De Geer at Finspang, then Carl August Ehrensvärd at Dömestorp; he then went to Copenhagen with Abildgaard, who had jointed him at Dömestorp. While in Denmark, he continued a regular correspondence with Ehrensvärd and others, describing in letters--often illustrated by Sergel--the activities he undertook with their mutual friend.
Abildgaard himself was in a bout of depression, following his divorce, the death of his son, and the destruction in a fire of the paintings at Christianborg Castle that he considered his masterpiece. Sergel noted Abildgaard's melancholy and declining health in his letters to Ehrensvärd; the present drawing of “Sick Abildgaard” was almost surely once an illustration to such a letter, for it descended in the Ehrensvärd family until the twentieth century.
Ehrensvärd seems to have separated the texts from the accompanying drawings in the letters he was sent by Sergel, and it is possible that the present drawing can be matched--via the jagged upper edge--to one of the surviving texts, which are mainly in the Lund University art collection.
Many other drawings document Sergel's 1796-97 trip to the homes of De Geer at Finspang and Carl August Ehrensvärd at Domelstorp and then to Copenhagen with Abildgaard, among them the Carl Ehrensvärd as Apollo, flying to Inspect Sergel and Abildgaard at the Metropolitan Museum (2000.582) and numerous sheets among the huge collection of Sergel drawings at the Nationalmuseum.