Edward Friström

Native woman with spear 1893

Edward Friström emigrated to Australia from Sweden in 1888, settling with his brother Oscar at Manly on Brisbane’s Moreton Bay. Both brothers were largely self-taught artists and were instrumental in establishing the Queensland Art Society. Edward worked as a photography tinter until this role diminished in the late 1890s.

Friström took up Australian citizenship, but moved to New Zealand in 1903. He travelled extensively throughout both islands, painting mostly en plein air; the majority of his works from New Zealand are small in scale and explore the decorative possibilities of the landscape. He was also interested in portrait studies of the Māori people, as he had been of Indigenous Australians.

Friström moved to California in 1915, and although few details are known of his early years there, in 1939 he helped establish the San Francisco chapter of the National Society for Sanity in Art — ‘founded to encourage rationalism in art and the expression of true beauty’.