1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Fogelberg, Benedict Erland

FOGELBERG, BENEDICT (or Bengt) ERLAND (1786–1854), Swedish sculptor, was born at Gothenburg on the 8th of August 1786. His father, a copper-founder, encouraging an early-exhibited taste for design, sent him in 1801 to Stockholm, where he studied at the school of art. There he came much under the influence of the sculptor Sergell, who communicated to him his own enthusiasm for antique art and natural grace. Fogelberg worked hard at Stockholm for many years, although his instinct for severe beauty rebelled against the somewhat rococo quality of the art then prevalent in the city. In 1818 the grant of a government pension enabled him to travel. He studied from one to two years in Paris, first under Pierre Guérin, and afterwards under the sculptor Bosio, for the technical practice of sculpture. In 1820 Fogelberg realized a dream of his life in visiting Rome, where the greater part of his remaining years were spent in the assiduous practice of his art, and the careful study and analysis of the works of the past. Visiting his native country by royal command in 1854, he was received with great enthusiasm, but nothing could compensate him for the absence of those remains of antiquity and surroundings of free natural beauty to which he had been so long accustomed. Returning to Italy, he died suddenly of apoplexy at Trieste on the 22nd of December 1854. The subjects of Fogelberg’s earlier works are mostly taken from classic mythology. Of these, “Cupid and Psyche,” “Venus entering the Bath,” “A Bather” (1838), “Apollo Citharede,” “Venus and Cupid” (1839) and “Psyche” (1854) may be mentioned. In his representations of Scandinavian mythology Fogelberg showed, perhaps for the first time, that he had powers above those of intelligent assimilation and imitation. His “Odin” (1831), “Thor” (1842), and “Balder” (1842), though influenced by Greek art, display considerable power of independent imagination. His portraits and historical figures, as those of Gustavus Adolphus (1849), of Charles XII. (1851), of Charles XIII. (1852), and of Birger Jarl, the founder of Stockholm (1853), are faithful and dignified works.

See Casimir Leconte, L’Œuvre de Fogelberg (Paris, 1856).