18th century wall painting in Hälsingland
Kerstin Sinha, Ljusdalsbygdens Museum

The gable decoration pictured below is painted in the most common colour scheme of the time, in distemper on weave. The painting can now be viewed at the Ljusdal Museum, but was originally part of a whole room's interior in a festival cottage at a farm in Storhaga, a village just outside Ljusdal. The very top triangle is missing – the part which went all the way up to the beams – so the painting decorated a room without an interior ceiling.

The strip tells us of "ye three wise men who comme of the East Lande to Jerusalem and said /where is ye newborne Jewe King, we have seene his star in the East Lande and…" The text then continues onto the side wall and round the whole room, past various scenes, probably mostly illustrations of episodes from the Bible. That stately horses could also be admired on the walls was probably a source of satisfaction to the Ljusdal farmers, who have always been known as fine horsemen.

There is a Reuter interior in the "Västeräng building" at the Delsbo farm of Skansen Open Air Museum in Stockholm. It was originally painted by Gustaf Reuter on the walls of a farm in Tjärnmyra village, back home in Delsbo. That was in 1747, and the room reached all the way up to the roof ridge. When a three-part ceiling was put in some thirty years later, Reuter was asked to come and paint that too. The whole interior is now at Skansen. The long table behind the turn-back bench in the foreground is also painted with figures similar to Reuters', but we do not know if they are his.

Like so many other Hälsingland paintings, the master painter of this one, from the early 18th century is still unknown. But we do know the names of a few from the middle of the century onwards, among them the corporal of Delsbo Company, Gustaf Reuter (1699-1783) and the "Snickar painter" Erik Ersson (1730-1800) from Snickars in the village of Källeräng in Delsbo. Once, Erik was hauled to court for painting: because he had the time to paint his neighbours´ rooms the powers-that-be considered him not gainfully employed at his father's farm, which made him a vagabond. As such, he could be forced into the army. This threat was staved off, but we can read in the court records that he at least sometimes painted together with his brother-in-law Carl. He was the son of Gustaf Reuter, a soldier like his father and killed in 1758 during the Pommern Campaign.

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