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A BIOGRAPHY
Jon was born in Jönköping, Sweden in 1882 by the German Slaughter Joseph Bauer and his wife Emma Wadell. He grew up with his two brothers in a flat above his fathers butchershop, and in the Villa Sjövik just outside Jönköping.
Aged on 16 years old, he went to Stockholm to study art. At first, he was rejected by the
Academy (He was too young) and started at the Althins painters school. In the fall of 1900 he was finally
accepted as student at the Royal Academy of Art. Even as a student
at the Academy he received commissions for illustrations.
The same year, a fellow student named Ester Ellqvist was accepted, and after six years they married.
In the early works of John there is a clear influence from artists like Albert Engström and Carl Larsson. Together
with Esther, he travelled to Germany and Italy for a year's study. In 1907, John gets the comission
to illustrate 'bland tomtar och troll' (Among pixies and trolls) which was to become his most
famous and loved work.
Through these illustrations, Bauer became the great fairy-tale artist to
the Swedish people. Bauer illustrated this yearly book until 1915.
On the 20th of November 1917, the canalboat 'Per Brahe' sank in Lake Vättern on its way
to Stockholm, and with it perished John Bauer, his wife and their young son, Putte.
His dramatic death gave him more publicity than most of his work.
In his pictures, Bauer moves from the particular to the ever more general in his
expression. He consciously works with a highly developed, stylized treatment of the
surface. The motives are softly layered like stage decorations, with the figures in focus.
The nature is shorn of everything non-essential. In this way, details in nature are brought
out: the columnar tree trunks, the dry lower branches of fir trees, and the soft curves of
the ground. The features Bauer has seen and drawn during his wanderings in the
Småland forest have been transformed into delicate ornaments. The fairy-tale figures in
the pictures are immersed in a stillness that makes them transcend time and story:
symbols, rather than individuals. He had created the fairy-tale art and made it his own.
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