When the magnificent apartments of the banker Ernest Thiel on Strandvagen started to overflow with his comprehensive collection of Nordic art from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, he commissioned the architect Ferdinand Boberg to design a dignified villa on Djurgarden.

However, during World War I Thiel lost most of his fortune. His collection was bought by the State, which opened Thielska Galleriet in his villa in 1926.

Thiel was regarded as something of a rebel in the banking world. He was particularly fond of works by painters belonging to the Artists; Union, which has been formed in 1886 to counter the influence of the traditionalist Royal Academy of the Arts.

There are paintings by all major Swedish artists who formed an artist’ colony at Grez-sur-Loing, south of Paris, including Carl Larsson, Bruno Liljefors, Karl Nordstrom and August Strindberg.