“The Princess and the Trolls” by John Bauer

“The Princess and the Trolls”

And now, to the magical forests of Sweden.

“The Princess and the Trolls” is a watercolor on paper painting from 1913 by the Swedish artist and illustrator, John Bauer. This illustration was commissioned for the 1913 publication of Among Gnomes and Trolls, from Volume 7. The story represented here is “The Changeling” by Helena Nyblom, and the image was captioned with “One evening around midsummer, they went with Bianca Maria deep into the forest.”

In this piece, a young princess is escorted through a deep forest by the trolls that raised her. She glows, radiating light, making a striking contrast with the dark earthy browns in the rest of the painting. The figures in the foreground are detailed. The trolls wear baubles and earrings against fur wrapped clothing, while the young princess walks in sandals and a long white dress reminiscent of an ancient Grecian robe. The princess is very pale, with long blond curly hair. The background of the piece is relatively simple, with tall and straight tree trunks amongst the hillocks. The very back of the painting behind the trees is dark, making the forest seem denser.

In the story of “The Changeling”, an ancient troll happens upon a young baby princess. He becomes so infatuated with her that he steals her from a carriage as she passes through the forest, placing his own child into the carriage instead. He then takes her home, and he and his partner raise the child as their own. She is named Bianca Maria.

The changeling is an age-old superstition, in which you must take care or else your child will be switched with that of a troll or other magical creature, otherwise known as a changeling. To prevent this occurrence in Sweden, if a child is not yet christened, one must not let the fire extinguish during the night, or throw out the baby’s bathwater, or one should attach an item of iron to the human baby’s clothing as trolls are afraid of iron. Christening the child prevents a switch with a changeling. Indicators that your child has been replaced by a changeling include the child having a large appetite, being unusually wise, or caught dancing and playing instruments when left alone. If one suspects that their child has been replaced with a changeling, there are a number of tests they can do on the child, none of which are really pleasant.

Bauer found the inspiration for his work in the deep forests of Småland in southern Sweden. He was taken with the way the sunbeams broke into the dense forests, casting long sunbeams into an otherwise dark area. These forests inspired much of his work.

“The Princess and the Trolls” is currently in the collections of the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm, Sweden.

For more on John Bauer, please visit his short biography here.

You can find more artists to learn about here.