You seem to be wondering where the older children sleep. Look at the gable-end of the cottage and you'll see a small added-on wing. It used to be a wood-shed, but since we had two of them I converted one into two bedrooms. It only took a couple of days. Simple wood sheeting and plank-beds fastened to the walls
Executed in 1898, the present work is set upstairs at the Larssons' celebrated home Lilla Hyttnäs in Sundborn, in the bedroom shared by the artist's wife Karin and their children. Karin had a curtain dividing her bed from the rest of the room, while Carl slept in a smaller adjoining room. In the present work, one of their daughters - given her age most likely Lisbeth or Brita - lies on the green-painted bed, slowly rising from her slumber as the bird at her window announces the new day. The informality of the scene, as the girl reclines surrounded by bedsheets and discarded clothes, hints at the casual, relaxed atmosphere in which the Larssons lived, and especially in this room, with its toys and movable furniture.
Like the house as a whole, the large bedroom had undergone significant remodelling following the Larssons' acquisition of Lilla Hyttnäs in 1888. The ceiling was removed, exposing the roof timbers, and the window at the gable end was made smaller. The walls were also decorated in 1894, a gift for Karin's name day. The same room is also the setting for one of the famous compositions in Ett hem, in which the bed visible here is seen to the left. The same view over urban rooftops, with their smoking chimneys, hangs on the wall by the bed in both scenes, perhaps serving to remind the Larssons of the world they had escaped in favour of their rural idyll in Sundborn, where they moved definitively in 1901.
These changes in this room were not appreciated by all, however, as the artist noted in Ett hem:
Aunt Emmy once made a remark about this room after I had chopped down the nice flat ceiling (to get more air) and added a side window, installed smaller window-panes in the gable-wall and gone over the almost-new wallpaper with white paint, and said she, at least wouldn't like to sleep in a prison like that. No, Aunty, don't say that again!
A sign of its importance to the artist, he chose to reproduce the present work in the book Larssons in 1902. This series of 32 prints, all approximately the same format as the present work, followed the publication of Ett hem (A Home), which was begun in 1890 and published in 1899. All of the original watercolours used in Ett hem, measuring c. 32 by 43cm., were acquired by the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm in 1900.
The same corner of this room is also seen in The Home's Good Angel (1909), which was itself reproduced in Åt solsidan in 1910. While the room retains the painted ribboned garland in that composition, around 1900 the green pine-top motifs gave way to plain white walls, part of the move towards greater simplification in the interiors at Lilla Hyttnäs.
