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<\/p>\nThe neoclassical sculptor and draughtsman Johan Tobias Sergel is a household name in his native Sweden, but little known elsewhere. This month Swedes will get a grand overview of Sergel\u2019s work for the first time in a generation, when Stockholm\u2019s Nationalmuseum mounts Fantasy and Reality, with a checklist of close to 400 works. Then in the autumn, Americans will get an introduction to the artist when New York\u2019s Morgan Library & Museum hosts Sergel\u2019s first monographic show in the US.<\/p>\n
Sergel (1740-1814) lived a productive and eventful life that took him from artistic circles in 1770s Rome to the late 18th-century court of his patron, the Swedish King Gustav III. Nominally an early and influential neoclassical figure, he was also marked by Sweden\u2019s love affair with the Rococo and, some scholars argue, by a proto-Romantic sensibility shared with his Rome buddy, the Swiss artist Henry Fuseli.<\/p>\n
The bulk of Sergel\u2019s work is part of the Nationalmuseum\u2019s permanent collection. But staging the Stockholm show, even if so much is already in-house, is no easy feat, says the curator Daniel Prytz. Sergel\u2019s massive marble sculptures need to be moved from their usual spots to a temporary exhibition space. Meanwhile, the Nationalmuseum\u2019s paper conservators have to prepare for display more than 200 of Sergel\u2019s fragile drawings.<\/p>\n
Sergel\u2019s Cupid and Psyche (1787) captures the god\u2019s early rejection of the beautiful woman who would become his wife. The artist\u2019s earliest sketches for the work, set for display, \u201cshow how he wanted to catch this specific moment\u201d, says Prytz, who thinks the final statue is more compelling than a different and more famous depiction of the two figures by Antonio Canova.<\/p>\n
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Johan Tobias Sergel’s A boisterous dinner (1780) <\/p>\n
Networking<\/p>\n
Both versions of the show will consider Sergel\u2019s important network of artist friends in Rome, with Stockholm hosting a number of British and Danish loans, including Fuseli\u2019s Thor Battering the Midgard Serpent (1790) from the Royal Academy of Arts in London.<\/p>\n
The static elegance of Sergel\u2019s neoclassical art was belied by his private propensity for the grotesque, the erotic, and even the pornographic, in drawings intended for consumption by his friends. This darker, stranger side shows up in works like A Boisterous Dinner (1780), in which the revellers, long beyond self-control, are welded to their drinks. Less realistic than the works in marble, the often-scabrous works on paper convey a deeper reality.<\/p>\n
Many of the Stockholm sculptures are too heavy and fragile to travel to New York, but The Faun (1774), which seems to blur torment with desire, is an exception. And some works in US collections will only appear at the Morgan, such as the ink-and-wash drawing Nicolai Abraham Abildgaard, Sick, showing Sergel\u2019s friend, an artist from his Roman years, with a hangover.<\/p>\n
The Morgan\u2019s curator John Marciari sees Sergel as a key player in the early phases of neoclassical sculpture as well as an artist who created a daringly diverse record of goings-on in his drawings. Indeed, he regards Sergel as \u201cone of the most engaging personalities of the 18th century\u2014even if you have never heard of him.\u201d<\/p>\n