Girl in the Red Hat shows Carl Larsson's acute observation, rigorousness of composition, freshness of color, and enchanting subject matter that contribute to make this painting an extremely appealing work. Partially screened by a spruce branch, a girl in a red bonnet, green jacket, and red skirt bends to look out of the doorway of a log cabin situated along the banks of a lake. Strong diagonals of birch tree branches, not yet in full leaf in early spring, fill the left half of the composition. The placid water reflects houses on the opposite bank.

Born into an improvished and troubled family in Stockholm, Larsson began studying art at age 13. In France from 1877, he practiced plein air painting but did not participate in the more radical contemporary developments in French art. Inspired by the philosophy of William Morris, leader of the British Arts and Crafts movement, Larsson and his wife Karin returned to Sweden in 1882. Along with their many chilkdren, the small home in Sundborn that they transformed by themselves and decorated became the subject of Larsson's paintings, watercolors, and illustrated story books. Thanks to the new availability of color reproduction in book printing around 1900, his watercolors became widely known. Larsson's aesthetic inspired what today we think of as classic Swedish modern interior design with its hand-crafted, folk-inspired simplicity, love of nature, and clear colors.

Source: News, Oct Nov Dec 2013.