Gunnar Bjareby 

(1895-1967) 

Eventually all passionate collectors will encounter a dealer who has uncovered an interesting estate. In 2002, one of the numerous private dealers I’d come to know unearthed an interesting body of work by a Swedish-born artist who was also a world-class gemologist with a rare gemstone named after him… but that’s a different interest. Gunnar Bjareby painted numerous works depicting the life of Cape Ann’s fishermen and lobstermen. Most of his work seems to have spanned the 1930s to the 1950s. I acquired two pieces in 2002, the first a painterly image of a typical rowboat and a dory drawn up on a beach. The second is truly a unique concept. Rockport is the home of the famous red lobster- men’s shack known as Motif #1, widely accepted as the most frequently painted building in the country. However, all the thousands of views of this icon depict the outside of the structure. Only Gunnar Bjareby thought of painting the inside of Motif #1, with debris scattered about, and traces of the red paint used on the outside of the building. When an artist truly finds a totally new way of viewing something that hundreds of other artists have already painted… that’s a painting worth owning.