The Ibis

Hugo Simberg : "The Garden of Death" (1896)

Finnish painter Hugo Simberg portrayed death with warmth and lightheartedness, challenging viewers to revisit their apprehensions about mortality. According to the artist, "The Garden of Death" depicts “the place where the dead end up before going to Heaven.”

The skeletons are helpers who lovingly tend to plants and flowers representing human souls. The Ateneum art museum observes that by representing human souls as plants, Simberg implies that “man is as undeveloped compared to his paradisical self as a child is compared to an adult.”

Simberg produced several variations of "The Garden of Death" using different techniques. This version was executed in watercolor and gouache. Frescos of "The Garden of Death" and another of his great works, "The Wounded Angel," adorn Tampere Cathedral in Tampere, Finland; a Lutheran church designed in the National Romantic style by Lars Sonck and built between 1902 and 1907.

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A print of this work is available in our store: https://www.theibis.net/product/hugo-simberg-the-garden-of-death-1896/

Theorem stencil was a folk art technique that was taught to women in academies and boarding schools in New England from the colonial period till the mid-1800s. According to Gregory LeFever, “Paints were color pigments mixed with gum tragacanth and water to a creamy consistency, and brushes were of the type itinerant artists used when stenciling walls or furniture. The stencils themselves were sheets of paper coated with linseed oil to promote transparency and then varnished to stiffen and seal the stencil.”

Most theorems were familiar still life subjects, like flowers and fruit. The artist would trace an image (perhaps from a book), break it down into its geometric elements and cut a stencil for each. She would then paint or draw though the stencil onto fabric, paper or wood, recreating the original composition piece-by-piece.

The rarest and most prized theorems are original designs where the artist has applied her own shading, as in this drawing by Mary Altha Nims. In addition to decorative elements like flowers and butterflies, Nims was able to handle landscape, marine and architectural subjects that were well beyond the ken of ordinary theorem artists, employing beautiful gradients with a design sensibility reminiscent of Japanese woodblock prints.

At the height of its popularity (1810-1840), the theorem supplanted embroidery in girls’ school curricula, but it declined as decorative arts and hostess skills gave way to academic studies, and a new craze for tinsel painting took hold. Today, there remain a handful of practitioners dedicated to keeping this artform alive.

Prints of these works are available in our store: https://www.theibis.net/product-tag/mary-altha-nims/