(Alfred) Gunnar Bjareby

Painter, sculptor, and illustrator Alfred Gunnar Bjareby (1899-1967) was born in Sweden and emigrated to the United States in 1923, settling in the Boston area. He studied with Gustav Boulanger at the Academie Julian in Paris, exhibiting at the 1933 Salon. In Boston he studied at the Boston Museum School. He spent time in Rockport and Gloucester where he painted brightly-colored plein-air marine scenes featuring boats and fishermen. Many of these latter works were the basis for larger studio paintings which he exhibited in Boston, Cape Ann, and Ogunquit, Maine. Bjareby also painted murals in Boston's Parker House Hotel and at St. Joseph's Cathedral in New Hampshire, and was a book illustrator. Bjareby was a member of Gloucester's North Shore Art Association, wining medals in 1942, 1951, and 1955. He also exhibited in Chicago. In addition to his career as an artist, Bjareby was a serious student of mineralogy. As a boy, he bicycled to quarries and outcrops to collect rock specimens and to look for gold. After his arrival in America, he spent much of his time studying minerals at the Harvard Mineralogical Museum and the New England Museum of Natural History. In 1937 he joined the Boston Mineral Club where he associated with the great mineralogists of his day. Bjareby was called one of the 20th-century's most outstanding amateur mineralogists. He collected one of the finest mineral collections in New England, and a species of microcrystal, bjarebyite, was named for him.

Biography courtesy of Roger King Gallery of Fine Art, www.antiquesandfineart.com/rking