Nils Dardel

Nils Elias Kristofer von Dardel — who signed Nils Dardel — is a post-impressionist Swedish painter. He was born on 25 October 1888 in Bettna (Södermanland, Sweden) and died in New York on 25 May 1943 from a heart attack. His grandfather was the painter and chamberlain of the king of Sweden, Frederick (Fritz) von Dardel.

He studies at the Stockholm Royal Academy of Arts from 1908 to 1910. He moves to Paris in 1910, and remains there most of the time until 1939. In 1940, he leaves for New York via Cuba. While in Paris, he travels to North Africa, Japan, Peru and Mexico.

His life in Paris is hectic and bohemian and dandy-like; he makes friends with a fellow Swede, Rolf de Maré, who is well-off and would later create the Ballets Suédois, and meets with fellow artists in Montmartre and Montparnasse. In 1920, he gets secretly engaged to Nita Wallenberg. He marries Baroness Thora Klinkowström in 1921. She is a Swedish artist living in Paris as well. Modigliani made her portrait in 1918 (see below).

He tries several techniques of fellow painters: cubisme (only briefly, see the Senlis "rue de Paris" below), fauvism with pure colours (see the "Black Diana"), abstraction (Crime passionnel), surrealism. However, he is basically a figurative painter and produces numerous portraits, and — in the 1920s — burlesque scenes with multiple characters. In later years, he will return to a more traditional realism (see the Mexican women).

Nils Dardel's paintings are shown in various museums in Stockholm, Göteborg, Malmö, Oslo and Hamburg.

The "Dying dandy" was sold in 1984 for the sum of 3.4 million crowns, at the time the highest price paid for a painting by a Swedish artist.