Alexander Lauréus painted several works depicting the gentry’s lifestyle in which he engaged with phenomena of high society life, often with humorous methods typical for his time. In his works, people dancing, conversing, drinking and enjoying themselves and the snapshots his art provides are flashes of society life which defined the European elite’s life from cradle to grave.
Society life was not just a method of pacing social interactions but also a way to maintain and develop relationships, make matches, forge economic and political relations and exchange information and gossip. However, very visual sources of the elite’s vital society life have been preserved in Finland and Sweden, which makes Lauréus a particularly interesting artist from the perspective of society life history.
Topi Artukka, PhD, is a researcher of Finnish history at the University of Turku. He is particularly interested in researching Finnish society life and the elite’s cultural history. Artukka defended his doctoral dissertation at Turku in 2021 on the topic “The dancing town. The high society of Turku as a social scene in the 1810’s”.