King Gustav III of Sweden - gold, diamonds and gifts of grandeur

Nationalmuseum, Sweden’s museum of art & design, holds c700,000 ob­j­ects: paintings, sculpture, drawings and graphic art from the C16th until the early C20th, and applied arts and design. The National­museum is responsible for preserving and making art accessible to all Swedes.

Portrait of King Gustav III of Sweden
by Lorens Pasch

donated to to the Vasa hovrätt in Finland in 1783. Wiki

The recent exhibition at Nationalmuseum, called 18th cent­ury: Sweden and Europe, focused on the relations between Sweden and Eur­ope during the C18th in the visual arts and applied arts. It scanned across a century of wars and severe hard­ships, but also a time of opt­imism for the future and a belief in science where art was closely re­l­ated to politics and dipl­om­acy. Pefect timing. The C18th Rococo style be­came prevalent in interior design, painting, sculpture and the dec­or­­ative arts, starting in France, southern Germany and Austria.

The exhibition showed the new ideas and artists who came to Sweden from France, to partic­ipate in building the new Royal Palace of Stock­holm early in the cen­tury. The exhibition also looked more close­ly at the direct impact King Gustav III of Swed­en had on culture later on.

At the very time French artists came to Sweden, Swedish artists trav­elled elsewhere in Europe. In addition to art skills, the art­ists’ bus­­iness acumen contributed to taking pos­itions at the top tier of soc­iety; some even made careers as court art­ists. The exhibit­ion dealt with themes: war and diplomacy, trade and science, birth of rococo, Gustav III’s time in Italy, neo class­ic­ism and English infl­uen­ces. The greatest star was Alexander Roslin, who, after a year in Paris (1753), became a member of the French Acad­émie des Beaux-Arts. Artist Pehr Hille­ström painted everyday sc­enes from industrial sites, kit­ch­ens and parlours. Others incl­uded Jo­han Tobias Sergel, Carl Hårle­man, Louis Jean Desprez, Angelika Kauf­f­mann, Carl August Ehrensvärd, Elias Martin and Carl Fredrik von Breda.

But the works on display I would have most loved were: porc­el­ain, sil­ver and gold art, furniture etc. Since gold-silver art was my life’s passion, I would have given my spouse’s eye teeth to have been there.

The tradition of jewel-encrusted portraits of the monarch had devel­op­ed earlier in the French court, and soon became a model for other Eur­o­­pean royal houses. These portraits took the form of a pend­ant or was mounted in a jewelled setting on the lid of a gold box, the most pres­t­igious gift of appreciation. Queen Christina (1632–54) was the first Swedish monarch to adopt this French fash­ion, which then flour­ished in the C18th. 

Johan Georg Henrichsen: Portrait of Gustav III, c1778.

Gold box, guilloche, chased gold, diamonds, enamel. Made in Hanau. 

Sotheby’s. Dec 2021

Thanks to the History Blog.

 

King Gustav III (1771-92) often handed out gold boxes as a sign of royal favour. Contemporary records show that the king took a sig­nificant per­sonal interest in the des­ign and gave detailed instruct­ions to the artists. Sometimes the decoration consisted of his monog­ram in diam­onds; other times his portrait was fram­ed with jewels. Specialist cr­aftsmen collaborated to create the boxes. A sil­versmith first prod­uced the basic gold box, which was then be decor­at­ed by an engraver and ad­orned with gemstones by a jeweller. Lastly a miniat­urist added the port­rait.

There were practitioners of all these crafts in Gustavian Stockholm, but some boxes were imported from Russia, Saxony or France. The gold box was made in Hanau, in the present-day German state of Hessen. It was oval-shaped and décor­ated with a guilloche-engine-turned wave and circle pattern with­in a chased/embossed border. It was made in a combination of two different gold alloys to prod­uce colour variations. After the box reached Stock­holm, the king’s por­trait was on the lid in a frame of diam­onds.

The portrait was the work of Johan Georg Henrichsen (1707–79), court enameller of King Gustav III, appointed in 1773. He worked ex­clusively from originals in pastel or oil created by other artists, but his col­our palette was more intense. Hen­richsen also produced coats of arms of nobility using miniature techniques.

Scottish adventurer/officer John Mackenzie Lord Macleod, 4th Earl of  Cromartie (1726–89), had been loyal to Bon­nie Prince Charlie, the Young Pretender. He was held prisoner after the British army defeated the Jacobites at Cull­od­en in 1746. Two years later he was pardoned, but the family had its estates conf­is­cated. In 1750 John Mackenzie joined the Swedish army, becoming Colonel of the Björneborg regiment.

Mackenzie left the Swe­d­ish army and returned home in 1778, ha­v­ing been granted a full am­nesty and having his estates res­t­ored. On his depart­ure from Sweden, the gold box was given to him from King Gustav III as a gift. It stayed in the family for c200 years, un­til heirs sold it in 1969 then an auction at Sotheby’s London in 2021 (sold for $220,000).

Nationalmuseum receives no state funds to buy artwork; instead they rely on donations from private foundations. The Mackenzie box, gifted from Anna and Hjalmar Wicander Found­ation, is now on display in the National Museum’s Treasury, alongside a miniature portrait of Mackenzie.

The Gustavus III Box

Swedish, 1751

The Victoria & Albert Museum: 

Above: cover

Below: side panel

For other gifts of grandeur from Gustav III, see 1751. One enamelled gold box was set with a miniature in watercolour on ivory under glass of Gustavus III of Sweden (1746-92), surrounded by moonstones. On the base and sides, see miniatures of ships or the Swedish naval port of Karlskrona  where war­ships were mount­ed. The back side of the box featured a scene of a fortification at Sveaborg, the Swedish fort near Helsinki. The box’s ends were also mounted with watercolours on ivory.

King Gustavus III presented this box to British banker, inventor and patron of the poet Robert Burns, Patrick Miller of Dalswinton (1731-1815), given to Miller after he offered his double-hulled ship with a paddle wheel to the King. His ship, the British Sea Monster, was dep­ict­ed on the base.

King Gustavus III died a young man in 1792. He was at a masked ball when an assassination attempt caused a terrible infection. But I am not sure why very few of his royal gifts of grandeur have survived intact.