the antique and from the model and began to make
drawings for illustration when he was about eighteen. The public knew him
first through his drawings for the comic paper called _Kasper_, and he
shortly became a much sought after illustrator for papers and books. The
first book illustrated by him was a collection of stories by Richard
Gustafsson, the editor of _Kasper_, the next was Anderson's "Tales." In
the latter he succeeded Isidor Toernblom, who died in 1876 after having
executed only a few drawings for the first part. He became bold and rapid
in improvisation, and light and easy in execution--qualities that he never
lost. He was obliged to make of his academic studies a side issue,
bread-winning taking necessarily the first place with him. No doubt it is
to this necessity that he owes that prompt adaptation of his facility to
various uses, that practical application of his freshly acquired knowledge
which give to the simple compositions of his earlier period an especial
spontaneity. He had no time to fix himself in ruts of practice. To draw
from the Antinous one day and the next to press one's Greek outline into
service for the representation of little dancing girls and happy babies is
to effect that union between art and life which makes the first moving and
the second beautiful; the union in which Daumier found the source of his
prodigious strength. In his early years Larsson was anything but a
realist. His fancy turned to unusual and vast subjects, and his natural
impatience caused him to launch himself upon them with very inadequate
preliminary study. The first canvas attempted by him during the study-time
in Paris (time which he won at the Academy) was nearly ten feet high and
represented a scene from the deluge with figures double life size.
Naturally, he found himself unable to cope with the difficulties that
promptly arose and was obliged to give it up. In 1877, when he was
twenty-four years old, he painted a three-quarter length portrait of a
woman standing, which was his best work of that period. The genre
pictures which he sent home to Stockholm at about the same time awakened
little enthusiasm and spread the impression that he had no future as a
painter and would be obliged to content himself with illustration. As an
illustrator he became thoroughly successful, turning out a large amount of
work and gaining for himself in Stockholm the very inappropriate name of
"the Swedish Dore." He made enough money in