John Albert Bauer (4 June 1882 – 20 November 1918) was a Swedish painter and illustrator. His paintings dealt with Swedish nature, mythical creatures, and magical places; he also composed portraits.

He is best known for his illustrations in the early releases of Bland tomtar och troll (Among Gnomes and Trolls)

[P]ublisher Carl Adam Victor Lundholm decided to publish a new illustrated book on Lappland. Lundholm asked Bauer to participate in illustrating the book, but to ensure he had made the right decision he sent Bauer to do some test drawings of Sami people at Skansen.

On 15 July 1904, Bauer left for Lappland, where he stayed for a month. Coming from the dense, dark forests of Småland he was overwhelmed by the open vistas and colorful landscapes.

He took many photos, sketched and made notes of all the tools, costumes and objects he saw, but he had difficulty becoming close to the Sami. Details from the Sami culture, such as the bent knives, shoes, spears, pots and belts, became important elements in the clothes and ornamentations of Bauer’s trolls.

Kind of sadly, Bauer was always quite deprecating about his fantastical works, calling it “a nice pat on the head for making funny pictures for children”. For his entire life he dreamed of working instead on the more respectable oil paintings he had been trained on.

Despite this, his friend Ove Eklund was quite certain that Bauer always harbored a belief that the strange peoples of wilds he drew were perhaps not as mythical as many believed.

On November 19, 1918, Bauer, his wife Ester, and their two year old son died in what became an infamous ship disaster. The overloaded steamer they were traveling in capsized in a storm on route to Stockholm, killing all 24 people on board, most while trapped in their cabins.

The papers added fuel to the fire, suggesting that the creatures of the forests had claimed Bauer by sinking the ship, a grisly analog to the tale of the Sea King who lures a maiden into the depths.

Illustrator John Bauer via Wikipedia.