Essay by Catherine Carter Goebel, Editor

Olof Grafström arrived in the United States in 1886 at the age of thirty-one. Trained at the Swedish Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm, Grafström studied landscape painting under Per Daniel Holm (1835-1903) who was sympathetic to Romanticism and schooled in the Barbizon and Düsseldorf traditions (Kirn and Maurer 22). It is therefore not surprising that once Grafström settled in the Midwest, he would link his Swedish landscape training with the robust Romantic landscape tradition already established in the United States.

Grafström taught at Augustana College from 1897-1926. As Professor of Painting and Drawing, he educated in a large classroom on the third floor of Old Main. The windows offered a commanding view of the Mississippi River. Autumn Afternoon on the Mississippi presents a sweeping panoramic view of the river and the warm, autumnal landscape surrounding it. This painting relates to the season and coloring of the American Hudson River School. The composition is nearly half water and half sky, looking toward the bend in the river that defines the Quad Cities. A paddleboat in the distance helps delineate the scale and perspective and serves as a reminder of technological progress in the heartland. The figure establishes scale and seemingly invites viewers to search beyond to the distant vista, reminiscent of American Luminist compositions with their calm, mirror-like water surfaces fading, via atmospheric perspective, into the distant horizon.

This painting, nearing its own centenary, seems appropriate following the 2010 sesquicentennial commemoration of the founding of Augustana College along the Mississippi River. Landscape painting has a long and distinguished history both in the United States and at Augustana College in particular. From the nineteenth through the twentieth centuries, it served as an emblem of the unspoiled paradise offered in America in comparison to the more developed and historical landscape of Europe. The area along the Mississippi was rapidly transitioning and the figure amidst this natural beauty might also serve to remind us of the profound Romantic belief in man's spiritual relationship with nature.