Making the case
Jung and Af Klint were not contemporaries; Jung died in 1829, and af Klint was born in 1862. There are no specific references to Jung or his work in academic literature examining known sources that influenced the Swedish painter’s work. However, af Klint had a well-documented interest in science, encompassing everything from evolution and botany to color theory and physics. While these influences tended to be scientists who were her contemporaries, Lundgren points out that the artist’s personal library included a copy of her 1823 astronomy book.
Excerpt from Jung’s Plate XXIX Lectures
Niels Bohr Library and Archives/AIP
Details from Afklint, Collection IX/University of Wisconsin, Swan, No. 101915
Helma af Klimt Foundation
Details from Afklint, Collection IX/University of Wisconsin, Swan, No. 101915
Helma af Klimt Foundation
fclint, Collection IX/UW, Dove, No. 141915.
Helma af Klimt Foundation
fclint, Collection IX/UW, Dove, No. 141915.
Helma af Klimt Foundation
Details from Afklint, Collection IX/University of Wisconsin, Swan, No. 101915
Helma af Klimt Foundation
fclint, Collection IX/UW, Dove, No. 141915.
Helma af Klimt Foundation
Af Klint was also commissioned to paint a portrait of the Swedish physicist Knut Ångström in 1910 at Uppsala University, whose library houses a copy of Jung’s book. Lectures. It is therefore quite possible that af Klint had access to last century astronomy and physics, and was likely particularly fascinated by discoveries involving “invisible light” (electromagnetism, X-rays, radioactivity, etc.).
Young Lectures It contains a speculative passage on the existence of the universal ether (since disproved), a concept that fascinated scientists and those (such as af Klint) of some occult interest in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In fact, Jung’s passage was included in a popular spiritual text in 1875, The invisible universe Written by P. G. Tate and Balfour Stewart, and heavily cited by Theosophical Society founder Helena Petrovna Blavatsky. It is known that Blavatsky, in turn, influenced Af Klint at the time he created the artist Swan, doveand Altar pieces series.
Lundgren found that “in several cases, captions accompanied Jung’s colorful figures [in the Lectures] He even seems to decode elements of af Klint’s paintings or draw attention to details that might otherwise be overlooked. Interchangeably describes the features found in AF Klint Group 10, No. 1, altarpiece“, she wrote