Gustav Wilhelm Palm, Pencil Drawing of a Roman Peasant Smoking a Pipe.

A fine pencil drawing study of a Roman peasant leaning against a wagon weel and smoking a pipe by Gustav Wilhelm Palm (1810-1890). Signed with monogram and dated 1842. On the bottom of the drawing written “Campagnoli de Roma”

Gustaf Wilhelm Palm (1810-1890) was a Swedish landscape painter and art professor. At 18 years in 1828 of age he attended the Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts.

His early paintings were landscapes in the Romantic style that showed the influence of Carl Johan Fahlcrantz. After a trip to Norway in 1833, with Count Michael Gustaf Anckarsvärd, he came under the influence of Johan Christian Dahl and began to depict nature more realistically. This change came to fruition in his book of lithographs from 1837.

That same year, he went to Berlin for treatment of an unspecified eye disease. Rather than returning home, he travelled throughout Germany and spent two years in Vienna. Then continuing his trip and finally arriving in Rome in 1840. That winter, he went to Venice, filling sketchbooks that he took back to Rome when he arrived there again in the summer of 1841. Altogether, he spent eleven years in Italy, becoming part of a local community of Swedish artists that dominated the Swedish art scene until the ascension of the Düsseldorf School. His best work is usually the paintings and drawings he did “en plein air” during his stay in Italy.

In 1851, he toured through Spain and Paris on his way back to Sweden. The following year, he was named a member of the Royal Academy. In 1856, he married Eva Sandberg, the daughter of Professor Johan Gustaf Sandberg. Their daughter, Anna Palm de Rosa, also became a painter. He began teaching at the Academy in 1859. His students gave him the nickname “Palma Vecchio” (Old Palm, in Italian), and he began signing his paintings with a picture of a palm tree. Upon his retirement in 1880, he was named Professor Emeritus. He remained uninfluenced by the new styles of art that developed during his last years.

His works may be seen amongst others at the Nationalmuseum,Göteborgs konstmuseum and the Uppsala University Library.

Plein air painting is about leaving the four walls of your studio behind and experiencing painting and drawing in the landscape. The practice goes back for centuries but was truly made into an art form by the French Impressionists. Their desire to paint light and its changing, ephemeral qualities, coupled with the creation of transportable paint tubes and the box easel—the precursor to the plein air easels of today—allowed artists the freedom to paint “en plein air,” which is the French expression for “in the open