“The holy grove” or “The sun panel” as it is also called, is much more than just a panel, according to Mats Leiderstam, who has studied the panel's history before his exhibition “The sun panel”.
The altarpiece is like a window you can look out through in the otherwise so dark church. During the summer half of the year, the sunlight creates beautiful sunbeams and the shadows from the church window's grid wander over the painting, he says.
After the move, the sunlight on the panel will be completely changed because the church is turned 180 degrees.
The light will then come from a different direction, he says.
Motif from Florence
The panel, which is five meters long and almost four meters high, is unique in several ways – it lacks Christian symbols, for example.
Instead, the landscape becomes a carrier of a spiritual feeling. Even if Prince Eugen was not particularly religious, the grove must have been a strongly spiritual experience since he took it up in his art 13 years later.
The motif for the altarpiece probably comes from Florence, where the prince traveled in 1897, but has been reworked after a southern Swedish landscape in 1911.
Never shown
In 100 years, the landscape outside the church may resemble the southern Swedish one in the panel more. Climate change is changing the mountain landscape, notes Matts Leiderstam.
The sketch the prince made for the real altarpiece, the so-called cartoon, has been rolled up at Waldemarsudde for many years. It is painted on canvas in natural size and has never been shown before.
Prince Eugen made this sketch to test if his composition would fit into the church. What is special is that the upper part is missing and no one knows if it was ever executed.
This gave Leiderstam the idea to make a new painting as a replacement for the missing part.
In the exhibition, we will present my and Eugen's cartoon together as a large installation.
The move is filmed
In addition to the large cartoon sketch, paintings by Matts Leiderstam are also shown.
I have made a series of paintings that play with the panel as such, but in an abstract way, he says.
The exhibition also includes a vitrine with text, sketches, and photographs that tell the history of "The sun panel" and a filmed surveillance of the church's move from the old location to the new one.
From one of the museum's windows, you can see the new location of the church and we plan to stream the view to a screen in the exhibition, says Matts Leiderstam.
The church move takes place on August 19 and 20, 2025.
In addition to the 600-ton church, Prince Eugen's famous altarpiece "The holy grove" or "The sun panel", as it is also called, will be moved.
The exhibition about "The sun panel" is shown at Kin museum in Kiruna 16/8–18/10.
In a series of new paintings and a larger installation for the lobby, the artist and researcher Matts Leiderstam has delved into the painting's history of creation.
The exhibition is a collaboration with Prince Eugen's Waldemarsudde in Stockholm, where it will be shown from November 15, 2025, to March 15, 2026.
Prince Eugen (1865–1947) was the youngest son of King Oscar II and Queen Sophia. He received the assignment to execute the altarpiece from his friend and mining manager Hjalmar Lundbohm.
