Grace Harwar, English-built full rigger of a later generation, immortalized in the work of the late Alan Villiers, stands off before a rising wind and sea with a kind of weathered majesty, and airofuttercapability.
(Pilots' Street) and the Stadsgarden-the long quay on the southern waterfront. All this time he was drawing ships in his spare time, since they had already ensnared his soul. He wanted to go to sea himself, but that was not to be. Instead, he found himself employed in the local silversmith's and, by that time, married to Maggie-a strange name, one might think for a Swede, but in her case it is a diminutive of Magnhild, an old Norse name of great antiquity. When Handel's job came to an end, they launched out to become, perhaps, the most remarkable married couple in the sphere of marine art today. Most marine artists' wives know little of ships, but with the Fribergs it is different. When in hospital once, Handel Friberg had seen some magazines containing pictures by the German marine artist, Adolf Bock, which had stirred him . About this time he met Bock himself, who had settled in Sweden after his miraculous rescue from the ghastly Wilhelm Gust/off disaster during the war and who was left-handed, like Friberg. Bock gave him great encouragement, but Friberg never received any formal artistic training . In this age when there is so much excellence in marine painting, no one can say that this or that artist is "the best," but it can be said truly of Handel Friberg that he is unique . Over the years he has painted a multiplicity of marine subjects, ranging from Viking ships to his local jakts and galleases, schoone.rs and Americanbuilt clippers (in which he has a particular interest) and through to the last big square-riggers, steamers and warships, and so much else besides. His paintings, seldom large, are only undertaken after he has done an immense amount of research and is steeped in SEA HISTORY, WINTER 1982/83
Falken, a modern sail training schooner, breasts the Baltic with strong steel bows, keeping alive the hard learning of sail under the Swedish flag; she is pursued by her predecessor the old Falken.
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