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 <strong>Picture</strong> 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. <strong>Picture</strong> 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 <strong>Picture</strong> 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 continued.......
This is, I believe a portrait of the artist himself KC-Kort card Published by Nordisk Konst of Stockholm Cat design from Nordisk Konst <strong>Picture</strong> Postcard Monthly July 2010 33
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