Drawing of the Church of Saint Jacob in Hudiksvall

Drawing in pencil by Arthur Evans of the seventeenth-century Church of Saint Jacob in Hudiksvall.

Artist: Arthur John Evans
Date of drawing: 10 August 1873
Continent: Europe
Geographical area: Northern Europe
Country: Sweden
Region/Place: Hälsingland; Hudiksvall
Cultural group: European Swedish
Format: Drawing (mounted on card)
Size: 74 x 111 mm; 173 x 245 mm (with mount)
Acquisition: Joan Evan. Donated August 1941

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Primary documentation: ‘[p.588] Dr. JOAN EVANS, from the property of the late SIR ARTHUR EVANS, Youlbury, Boars Hill, Oxford. [List of items follows]’; ‘[p.590] 5 original pencil sketches of Sweden. Made on journey in 1873. Mounted’: Pitt Rivers Museum accession records (Donations X, 1937–1941), pp.588, 590. Annotations on drawing: ‘Hudik[svall]’ (written in black ink below drawing). Annotations on mount: ‘Church & wooden houses. Hudiksvall./ Helsingland. SWEDEN’ (written on mount in brown ink).

Research notes: It has been established by Philip Grover that this drawing was made by Arthur Evans on 10 August 1873, when his travelling party was at Hudiksvall. Evans wrote in his journal of the voyage to Finnish Lapland: ‘About 4 we reached the Huddiksvall [Hudiksvall] where we got two hours on shore - a little town which like the others somehow recalls Austria strongly - the church spire was bulbous & the church Jesuitical as any by the Danube (the spire however was covered with shingle not metal) & the main streets were as usual a kind of compromise with French ones - as far as painted wood can be - & these with their tributary alleys of plain wooden chalets much recalled some little Salzburg towns; however there are some features distinctly Swedish - houses & church have great ladders fixed against them - in case of fire we suppose but how people are to get on to these is another questions for they are nearly always inaccessible from the windows!’ (entry dated 10 August 1873): Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology, Sir Arthur Evans Archive, B/2/1, Box 1, Notebook 1, pp.35–36. For more information on Arthur Evans’ voyage to Finnish Lapland in 1873, see Joan Evans, Time and Chance: The Story of Arthur Evans and His Forebears (London, 1943), pp.172–176; Ann Brown, Before Knossos...: Arthur Evans’s Travels in the Balkans and Crete (Oxford, 1993), pp.14–16, 90; and Tony Lurcock, No Particular Hurry: British Travellers in Finland, 1830-1917 (London, 2013), pp.123–134, 250.