Ivar Arosenius

Ivar Axel Henrik Arosenius (8 October 1878, Gothenburg – 2 January 1909, Älvängen) was a Swedish painter and picture book illustrator.

Biography His father Henrik (1841–1901) was a railway engineer and Captain of the Road and Water Engineering Corps.

He began by studying for the real estate trade then, in 1895, he received his first artistic training from an amateur watercolorist. The following year, he began formal studies at the Valand Academy, where he became friends with the sculptor, Gerhard Henning. He also took lessons at the School of Design and Crafts, in the department of decorative painting.

He eventually went to Stockholm and had a major showing at the Konstnärshuset. Soon after, he married Ida Adler and they settled in Åby, a small village near Kolmården Forest. They had a daughter that same year. It was then that he began contributing cartoons and drawings to and Söndags-Nisse, both humor magazines. Hasse Zetterström, the editor of Söndags-Nisse, devoted an entire issue to his work in April 1907.

Later, he decided to move his family to Älvängen, where his mother-in-law owned a small property with a view of the Göta River. They lived in a four-room cabin with a studio. In 1908, he made a major breakthrough at Lund University, where he held an exhibition, together with Henning and .

That winter, he contracted a throat infection, which was not considered serious. The day after New Year's, his wife was awoken by a strange noise and found him sitting in a chair. When he tried to get up, he fell over and died. A blood vessel had broken while he was coughing and the blood had choked him to death. He was buried in Gothenburg, at the Östra kyrkogården.

The high school in Älvängen is named after him as is the "Aroseniusvägen", a street in Södra Ängby, Stockholm. Another street in Gothenburg, the "Aroseniusgatan" was named after him in 1944.

Selected works