A Picture Postcard

Carl Larsson was a Swedish painter, an important watercolorist working at the turn of the twentieth century.

Carl Larsson — Model Writing a Picture Postcard — 1906

This is what Larsson wrote in the 1911 magazine Kunst:

". . . it would be enough reward if only men, through my art, understood how beautiful a flower on the side of a path is; how charming are the plaits around a young girl's small round neck, and the touch of the sun on a little nose; how splendid the nude figure of a woman is . . . but one must produce these images in the best possible way, with joy and enthusiasm, with hard work and pain, and the final result must be a victory, not giving the impression of confusion or fatigue, but illuminating the onlooker in a liberating way . . . Following this way of life, painters executed study after study, without being pleased or satisfied with their work, striving to reach that perfection which always seemed further away with each work that they were painting."

Carl Larsson — Girl Crouching — 1911

This drawing is a bit surprising, for the times, with a naturalistic style and the seemingly spontaneous smile—rather like a modern photo you might see on Tumblr or such.