River landscape with mill, 1839 - Per Wickenberg (1812 - 1846)

River landscape with mill, 1839
Dimensions: 51 x 70 cm (canvas)
Oil on canvas (original canvas),
Signed and dated lower left
Canvas by Legendre

Wickenberg was born in Malmö, Sweden. He was the son of an army officer. He showed an early talent for drawing and painting, and began taking private lessons at the age of thirteen. After finishing high school in 1830, he helped his family by selling goods on Malmö's barges. The following year, his friends and family raised enough money to enable him to enroll at the Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts.
Despite this financial support, after some time in Stockholm, he found himself in financial difficulty, which eased somewhat when he was offered lodgings with the family of Michael Anckarsvärd (1742-1838), a military officer who was also a part-time artist.
He also received support from Johan Gustaf Sandberg (1782-1854), who turned out to be a critic, and from the new Swedish Art Association, which had been founded in 1832. During a cholera epidemic in 1834/35, he was able to stay at a farm in Närke belonging to Johan Anckarsvärd.
In 1836, he developed some kind of eye disease. Once again, members of the Anckarsvärd family came to his rescue, raising the necessary funds so that he could travel to the spa town of Töplitz for treatment. After his recovery, he spent some time in Berlin.
Shortly afterwards, he moved to Paris, where he shared a studio with the artist Olof Johan Södermark (1790-1848), until he was able to afford his own on rue Saint-Honoré. He soon attracted a wealthy clientele and was able to obtain a larger studio on rue de la Bienfaisance in Paris. In 1838, he won a gold medal at the Paris Salon. The following year, he was nominated as a candidate member of the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture, and became a full member in 1842, the year he received the Royal Order of Vasa in Sweden.
He traveled in France and the Netherlands and made a brief stay in London in 1843. During this period, his health deteriorated further, and his eye problem recurred every year, preventing him from painting. Diagnosed with tuberculosis, he moved to Nice, then to the Pyrenean mountain resort of Eaux-Bonnes, in search of treatment. In vain, he died in Pau in 1846, at the age of thirty-four.
His works can be seen at the Nationalmuseum, Nordiska museet and Musée du Luxembourg, among others.