The Luminous Landscapes of Per Wickenberg Born in the coastal city of Malmö, Sweden, in 1812, Petter Gabriel Wickenberg—known more intimately to the art world as Per—was a painter whose brief life left an indelible mark on the Swedish landscape tradition. The son of an army officer, Wickenberg displayed a precocious talent for the visual arts, beginning formal private lessons at the tender age of thirteen. His early years were marked by a rugged determination; following his secondary education in 1830, he worked alongside the barges of Malmö to support his family, a period of labor that like…