Goby

Elisabet Bergstrand-Poulsen was born in 1887 in the small-land village of Långa Lake. After studies in sculpture at the Stockholm Academy of Fine Arts, and with a scholarship of SEK 5000, EBP travelled to Paris, Algeria and Italy, where she met her future husband, the Danish carver Axel Poulsen. The spouses settled in Chralottenlund outside Copenhagen, where after nine years they had completed their common house, which they called the “Monastery” because of their appearance. To cope with the economic pressure caused by the building, EBP began to paint and write. The stories and pictures consisted in the memories of childhood in Långa Lake. EBP worked throughout her artistry in different techniques, but from the beginning it was mainly her watercolours that attracted attention. Some of these are illustrated in her first books The Women of the World (1927) and the Feast Days of Life and the Year (1928). Most famous, she became for the gob meadow The women’s seasons, which were praised by the art elite of the past and were roasted for their monumental and decorative merits. The daily press stated: “It is something of Karlfeld’s Virgin Mary over more than one of these host Marias of behaving beauty.” Elisabeth died in 1955 and is buried at Ordrup’s Church in Denmark. In 1953, the Women’s Seasons were woven at Barbro Nilsson’s studio in Stockholm, by Thorwald Bergquist, the then county of Kronoberg. The Gobel Meadow has since been in the possession of the Museum of Småland.