Thielska galleriet, Stockholm

Thielska galleriet is the art museum housed in Villa Eolskulle, created as Ernest Thiel’s home and gallery. The building was designed by Ferdinand Boberg in the Art Nouveau style, with white façades, and it was completed in 1907. Its story begins with a collector whose growing passion outstripped his city home: Ernest Thiel gathered Scandinavian art made by his contemporaries, including Bruno Liljefors, Anders Zorn, Eugène Jansson and Edvard Munch.

The collection still gives this place its particular force. Artists associated with the Artists Association around the early 1900s are strongly represented, and the museum holds one of the world’s largest collections of Edvard Munch’s work. Thiel’s finances collapsed by 1922, compelling him to sell the villa, its contents and the collection.

The state acquired them in 1924, and the gallery opened to the public in 1925. Look at the building’s pale façade and its ornamental lines: they belong to the house Boberg shaped for a collector who wanted his home filled with art. Inside, the collection includes more than 300 paintings, along with roughly as many sketches and drawings, plus a smaller group of sculptures.