Karl Nordström was born on Tjörn (an island off the west coast of Sweden) in 1855 as the son of a sheriff.He arrived in Varberg in the autumn of 1893, accompanied by his wife Tekla, who was a painter herself, and the couple’s three young children. In France, Nordström had painted in an impressionist style; upon his return to Sweden, however, he started leaning more towards synthetism, inspired by the landscapes of his childhood in Tjörn and the work of French painter Paul Gauguin. Nordström depicts Varberg fortress in several of his paintings. There are almost no details in his 1894 work ‘Varbergs fästning från söder’ (‘Varberg Fortress as Seen From the South’), whose dark colour scheme gives the scene a dramatic and ominous feel. At that time, the land south of the fortress was a wild ravage, the result of years of quarrying. In summer, Nordström painted lighter, more colourful works such as ‘Granngårdarna’ – named after adjoining farmhouses in Apelviken, where the artists and their families would spend the summer holidays.

©Hallands kulturhistoriska museum