Gryning Över Riddarfjärden 1899

Eugène Jansson rendered this painting of Stockholm's Riddarfjärden in shades of blue. The monochromatic palette saturates the canvas, broken only by the faint glow of dawn on the horizon and the reflected lights along the water's edge. The composition emphasizes horizontal bands: the sky, the city, and the water. Jansson uses brushstrokes that swirl and ripple, which animate the scene with a sense of constant motion. The formal structure evokes a feeling of quiet contemplation but also resonates with the Symbolist movement’s interest in conveying emotional states through color and form. The city itself is reduced to a series of dark silhouettes punctuated by the vertical thrust of towers, abstracted and simplified. In this way the artist presents an urban landscape that borders on abstraction, where the boundaries between representation and evocation blur. The persistent repetition of blue invites us to reflect on the symbolic weight of colour. This functions not just aesthetically but also as part of a larger cultural and philosophical discourse.