truly great picture is a rhythmic masterpiece. The placing of these
graceful swans is marvelously well studied from the point of view of
design, yet none the less does an expression of reality animate these
divine birds. There is something about swans which puts them even above
the king of birds, the eagle. I can conceive of men killing any animal,
but the thought of one of these noble birds falling victim to man's
perverse desires is incomprehensible to me. Of the other pictures by the
same artist, the flock of wild geese, standing in the shallow water of a
stony beach, carries all the conviction of being well studied which
applies to any of Liljefors' pictures. The eagles and the seagulls are
scarcely as interesting as the swans. Liljefors is never better than
when he depicts flying birds - and fly they do. There is never any doubt
about it. Those swans are actually in the air, and moving. A certain
disagreeable fuzziness in the skies of all of his pictures interferes
somewhat with their full enjoyment.

Of the other painters Mrs. Boberg should be mentioned next. She is the
wife of Ferdinand Boberg, the architect of the Swedish Building, who
himself, as a true artist excelling in a number of things, has a
splendid collection of etchings in the long black and white gallery
adjoining the Liljefors' room. Mrs. Anna Boberg's pictures, in a very
small gallery at the eastern end of this section, are not advantageously
hung. Her work is so decorative, and so painted for distant effect, that
to see it close at hand is disappointing. The eleven of her pictures are
unusual in subject and for that reason win less sympathy than they
deserve. All of them were painted on a trip she made with her husband to
the Lofoden islands, and when one considers the proverbial coldness of
the Arctic seas, her interpretations seem marvelous in their beauty and
richness of colour. A study of their titles in the catalogue seems
hardly necessary for understanding of their meaning, and I for one am