Lot 80: Nils Dardel (1888-1943)

Nils Dardel (1888-1943)
Tva flickor: Margit and Vibeke Trolle
signed and dated 'Dardel 1934' (lower right)
oil on canvas
146 x 114 cm.

Vibeke Trolle, thence by descent to the present owner.

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Two elegantly dressed young girls stand motionless against a monotonous white background. One avoids our gaze, the other looks straight at us; both have the same subtle, mysterious smile. Identifiable as Margit and Vibeke Trolle, daughters of Danish Alf Trolle who was the captain and deputy leader of the large-scale 'Danmark Expedition' to Greenland in 1906-1908, their appearance looks almost ethereal, as a vision. They lived in Paris where Nils Dardel had moved from Sweden, to escape from what he perceived to be the narrow constraints of the Stockholm Art Academy. Often blurring the border between dream and reality in his oeuvre, this work mixes Symbolist and Realist sentiments and represents a rarely composed and sombre example of the artist's characteristically wild and naivistic style. Typically drawn towards depictions of bohemian life, Dardel has here momentarily left behind his fascination for the itinerant, anarchistic or dramatic and created a serene, mysterious and subtle small masterpiece.