Johan Christoffer Boklund

Who was Johan Christoffer Boklund?

Johan Christoffer Boklund was a Swedish history, genre, and portrait painter from Kulla-Gunnarstorp in Scania. He was the son of a gardener. At the age of fifteen, Boklund came to Lund, where he worked on illustrations for Sven Nilsson's works on Scandinavian fauna. He then became a student at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen where J. L. Lund was his teacher.

In 1837, Boklund went to Stockholm and began studying at the Royal Swedish Academy of Arts. He made a living as a lithograph and drawing teacher, and produced several small genre paintings of the everyday life and history paintings of the 17th century.

Together with fellow Swedish painter Johan Fredrik Höckert, Boklund traveled to Munich in Germany in 1846 and stayed there for eight years. During the summers he went on study trips to Bavaria, Tyrol, and northern Italy. During this period, Boklund primarily devoted his painting to the history genre with subjects from the 17th century, but he also made some paintings depicting picturesque and architectural interior. In 1853, he sent his painting Den nyfikne trumpetaren home to Sweden and it earned him a scholarship from the government. This allowed Boklund to move to Paris, where he worked at Thomas Couture's atelier from 1854 to 1855. In December 1855 he returned to Sweden.