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The Swedish Art Deco
Artist Einar Nerman
Michael Hauskeller
Many great postcard artists are virtually unknown in
Britain. One of the best and most original was the
Swede Einar Nerman, whose cards only occasionally
pop up in dealers’ boxes over here, probably
because most of them were published in Sweden,
the vast majority by Axel Eliasson’s Konstförlag in
Stockholm. However, the fact that one of his theatre
advertising cards (published by John Waddington in
the 1920s) graced the cover of the 2009 edition of
Picture Postcard Values provides some evidence that
the charm of Nerman’s postcard designs is not
entirely lost upon British collectors and that they
might be far more popular than they presently are if
they were only more readily available.
As it is, though, Nerman
cards are rather hard to
find. Even on eBay they are
rarely seen, which is rather
astonishing, given that all in
all Nerman designed about
1,000 (!) postcards. Many of
them were published in
Published
by KC-Kort and numbered
221
two sizes, the familiar 5 ½ x
3 ½ in, and the smaller 4.1 x
2.7 in, which was very common
in Sweden at the time.
A checklist of Nerman’s
postcards containing many
illustrations of his work was
produced by Sonja Holmgren
and Sten Schüssler
and published in five parts
by Upplands Vykortsförening
in 1995. Picture Postcard
Values states a price of £18
for his Art Deco designs,
and £25 for his theatre
poster designs. The latter
figure is fairly accurate, but
the former is much too
high. I’ve found that at
postcard fairs you will normally
be asked to pay
about £8 for a Nerman card
in excellent condition. On
eBay you can get them even
cheaper (most of them, that
is – some rare cards always
command a higher price,
but I’ve never had to pay
more than £15). But who
exactly was Nerman?
Born in 1888 in Norrköping,
Sweden, Einar Nerman
grew up to be a lifelong
lover of both the plastic
and the performing arts.
He studied painting first in
Stockholm and then in Paris
under Henri Matisse who,
however, proved to be a
rather disappointing
teacher whose most constructive
criticism of his
student’s work seems to
have been an occasional
“pas mal”. But painting
was only one of the interests
Nerman pursued. He
also studied dance in
Nyköping, and in 1919
actually went to London,
not as a painter but as a
ballet dancer to perform
at the London Coliseum.
Yet after a short while he
found that the work didn’t
suit him and he returned to
his native Sweden. Two
years later, however, he
was back in London, on
Card from
Swedish publisher Axel
Eliassons, posted in Stockholm
in 1923
32 Picture Postcard Monthly July 2010
invitation of the great
entertainer and “Keep the
Home Fires Burning” composer
Ivor Novello, who
had met Nerman when he
visited Stockholm in 1918
to sing in a nightclub
called Rolf’s Cabaret. He
was impressed by the
décor, which, it turned
out, had been designed
by Nerman, so he asked
to be introduced to the
artist with whom he
quickly became friends.
Novello persuaded him
to try his
O n e
of the few British postcards,
published by John
Waddington in the 1920s,
advertising the show ‘Tons
of Money’ at The Pavilion in
Torquay
luck in London, so that in
1921 Nerman once more
travelled to England, intending
to stay only for a few
months, which then grew
into ten whole years. He
found work as a theatre caricaturist
for The Tatler magazine
for which he visited
two plays a week and
then sketched what he
saw. The magazine’s editor,
Edward Huskinson,
is reported to
have told him that he
didn’t need a theatre
critic because “one of
your drawings says it
all”, which I think is a
fair assessment. Later,
as an old man, he
remembered these years
spent in England as the
happiest and most productive
of his life. His caricatures
of stage celebrities
and famous persona of the
1920s, which betray, more
than any other, the influence
of Aubrey Beardsley,
are simply fantastic and
really manage to bring the
roaring twenties back to life,
much better than mere
words could do. Sadly, only
a few of these clever and
The
young Nerman as a ballet
dancer in 1917!
witty caricatures appeared
on postcards. The good
news is that there is a
book that contains many
of Nerman’s black-andwhite
drawings of the
time (John Barrymore,
the young Fred Astaire,
Gladys Cooper, Eleonora
Duse, Maurice Ravel,
Igor Stravinsky, George
Bernard Shaw and
many more) together
with earlier drawings
(showing, among others,
Sarah Bernhardt and Isadora
Duncan), and later ones
from the years he would
spend in America (e.g.
Charles Laughton, John
Gielgud, Greta Garbo,
Ingrid Bergman, Clark
Gable, Alfred Hitchcock).
The book is called Caught in
the Act and was published
in 1976 by Harrap, London.
It is still quite easy to find
The great stage actress
Eleonora Duse (1858-1924),
whom Nerman sketched in
1914. Postcard published by
Paul Heckscher
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