James O'Brien

Even though I’ve visited Stockholm twice before, I haven’t visited all of the obvious tourist attractions. One notable omission has been home/gallery/museum of Prins Eugins Waldemasudde, located on Djurgården.

I don’t know why I haven’t been there before. Maybe I figured it was just going to a bit of a boring old house, and there was too much else to see in Stockholm in the middle of summer? If so, I was completely wrong.

The house itself is completely charming. Prins Eugins obviously had an eye for good design, as the house enjoys wonderful views and seems completely in touch with its environment. It’s very much an open, airy kind of space.

Outside also, there are lots of wonderful places to sit and enjoy the sunshine and completely relax, which I did for much of the day.

Prins Eugins was also, an artist and, thus, the house is full of many of his own works, as well as those of many other Swedish and European artists. His paintings are okay, I guess. Nothing really special in my opinion. It seems like he was a better collector than he was an artist, in my view.

However I did like his taste in books, which I thought, reflected an obviously worldly man with broad interests.

He died without heir – yeah, you guessed right – and so now his house is a gallery/museum space with a couple of current exhibitions. One features a lot of 19th century Italian works which held little interest for me.

I was more interested in the exhibition of works by Swedish designer, Lars Wallin. Not being much of a fashionista myself, I’d never heard of Lars Wallin until I walked into the exhibition.

I discovered, quickly, however, I was VERY familiar with a lot of his work, as he has designed stage costumes for some very well known Swedish pop stars, including Nanne Grönvall and Peter Jöback. It was fascinating to see so many of the costumes up close.

And although dresses aren’t really “my thing” I was completely taken by the beauty of some of his work. There’s a series of red dresses, in particular, which I thought were just amazing.

Overall, a really great space, and a great way to spend a lovely sunny day in Stockholm.