FOGELBERG, Bengt Erland
Swedish sculptor and archaeologist. He studied from 1803 at the Kungliga Akademi för de Fria Konsterna, Stockholm, where he joined those who opposed its conservative method of education. He belonged to the influential circles in early 19th-century Swedish art and literature that promoted a more realistic style and Romantic subject-matter, in particular Old Norse themes. In 1818 Fogelberg successfully exhibited plaster sketches of Odin, Thor and Frey (Ulriksdal, nr Stockholm, Orangerie Museum). They were the starting-points for Fogelberg’s most celebrated monumental works, which were executed much later in marble (in a greatly revised state), commissioned by Karl XIV Johan (reg 1818-44): Odin was produced in 1830 and Thor and Balder in 1844 (all Ulriksdal, nr Stockholm, Orangerie Museum). The works derive from antique sculptures, but in Odin and Thor Fogelberg conveyed in a personal way a realistic and slightly barbaric power that corresponded to the contemporary view of these figures as the Nordic equivalents of Jupiter and Mars.
A scholarship from the academy in 1820 enabled him to go to the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris. A year later he went to Rome, where he settled for good. After becoming a member of the Swedish Academy of Art in 1832, he became a professor there in 1839, though without residential obligation.
