Tímarit Þjóðræknisfélags Íslendinga - 01.01.1962, Blaðsíða 71
VILHJÁLMUR BJARNAR M.A.
Einar Jónsson: An Artist In
The Service Of Life
To listen for the celestial music and to crystallize in one’s own per-
sonal form those víbrations and echoes which come through one’s own
self—that, to me, is art.1
Einar Jónsson
Einar Jónsson, Iceland’s first great
sculptor, was born on May 11, 1874,
at Galtafell, a farm in Southern Ice-
land. One of seven children, he was
descended from a long line of farm-
ers. There seems to have been an
artistic strain in his family, for his
mother was adroit at all kinds of
needlework and embroidery, and his
father and his brothers were good
craftsmen in iron and wood. Jóns-
son himself showed early signs of
artistic sensitivity. As a young boy
he was deeply touched by the
beauty of nature in his home dis-
trict and felt later in life that the
“soul of nature” had quickened the
“seed of art” in him.2 In his imag-
ination he would clothe each ob-
ject of his immediate surroundings
with a subjective quality of its
own, and he would see pictures
everywhere: in the knots and
scratches of the woodwork of the
farm house as well as in the land-
scape, especially in rocks and
mountains. But he was not satis-
fied with such “pictures” alone.
Quite early in life he developed a
veritable passion for collecting all
kinds of pictures. Only, they had to
be finely and beautifully executed;
for otherwise he would not have
them.3
Jónsson’s first artistic expression
took place when he was called
upon to learn how to write, a task
most unpleasant to him. He soon
discovered, however, that pen, ink,
and paper could serve a useful pur-
pose, and many a time he was
caught drawing pictures when he
should have been practicing his pen-
manship.4 Another early avenue
1. Skodanir, p. 181.
2. Ibid., p. 9.
3. Minningar, p. 75.
4. Ibid., p. 58-59.