About Eugène Jansson
Eugène Fredrik Jansson (18 March 1862, Stockholm – 15 June 1915, Nacka) was a Swedish painter known for his night-time land- and cityscapes dominated by shades of blue. Towards the end of his life, from about 1904, he mainly painted male nudes. The earlier of these phases has caused him to sometimes be referred to as blåmålaren, "the blue-painter". Queer commentators have described Jansson as Sweden's first gay artist, a reputation based primarily on his male nudes. == Life == Jansson's parents, Eugenia and Frederik, belonged to a social stratum straddling the working and the lower middle class, but they were interested in art and music and ambitious for their two sons, Eugène and his younger brother Adrian. His father was a postal messenger, and a skilled amateur flautist, while his wife had aspired to be a professional singer and painted still lifes for her own enjoyment. Eugène went to the German School in Stockholm and took piano lessons. After a retinal detachment and diagnosis of a severe congenital heart conditioner, an attack of scarlet fever at the age of fourteen caused him health issues from which he suffered for the rest of his life, including bad eyesight and hearing and chronic kidney problems. Jansson enrolled in the Tekniska skolan (now Konstfack) in 1878 and studied with Edvard Perséus, a painter who ran a private art school in Stockholm. He was accepted into the Antique school of the Royal Swedish Academy of Arts in 1881, but did not have the means to follow most of his contemporaries to Paris for further studies.
Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.