Framed Drypoint, Portrait du peintre Fernand Léger, by Harald Sallberg, 1929

Frame dimensions approx. 52 x 42 cm
Plate dimensions approx. 32 x 25 cm.
 
Harald Sallberg
Portrait du peintre Fernand Léger, Paris, 1929
Drypoint, signed in pencil
 
This drypoint portrait was made in Paris in 1929, at a moment when the city remained the gravitational centre of European modernism. The sitter, Fernand Léger, was already a commanding presence in avant-garde art, known for his monumental figures and industrial forms. Sallberg depicts him seated and solid, with one of Léger’s own sculptural, tubular figures rising behind him, a acknowledgement of the painter’s visual language without imitation.
Harald Sallberg, a Swedish artist who spent formative years in Paris, worked across painting, drawing and printmaking. Though less widely known today, his Paris-period works demonstrate a disciplined engagement with modernism and a seriousness of intent that resists stylistic pastiche. This portrait is not theatrical or myth-making; Léger appears thoughtful, almost guarded, rendered with a restrained gravity that suits the drypoint medium.
Artist-to-artist portraits from this period often emerged from shared studios, academies, or social networks rather than formal commissions. While no written correspondence survives to document the relationship between Sallberg and Léger, the specificity and assurance of the image suggest direct observation and access. It belongs to a wider culture of exchange in which proximity, rather than fame, shaped artistic encounters.
Printed with a rich burr that gives texture and weight to the face, the work balances intimacy with authority. It stands as a quiet record of modernism as it was lived, not proclaimed, and offers a rare, human view of a major figure seen through the eyes of a perceptive contemporary.