In autumn 2025, the celebration of the Thiel Gallery's 100th anniversary continues with a thematic exhibition focusing on various forms of entertainment in early 20th-century art. How were carnivals, parties and masquerades, nightlife in cafés, variety shows, horse races, circuses, and dancing portrayed? Society was marked by unrest, and art sometimes offered an escape from the worries of everyday life. Artists such as Otte Sköld, Axel Törneman, and Gösta von Hennigs depicted cancan dancers and variety performances—motifs that, in unexpected ways, can also resonate with the tumultuous 2020s.

One evening in mid-March 1907, Ernest and Signe Maria Thiel inaugurated their home with the legendary Rose Masquerade: the walls were adorned with fresh roses between the paintings, and from the mezzanine level, the porter showered the guests with rose petals. The Thiels’ lavish parties, known for their intriguing guests, had long been the talk of the town. But as their relationship and finances declined, so too did the number of festivities. In an emblematic group photograph from another masquerade ball, actors like Anders de Wahl and Harriet Bosse appear in white harlequin costumes; on the fringes, one can glimpse writers such as Hjalmar Söderberg and artists like Eugène Jansson and Axel Törneman. The architect Ragnar Östberg is seated among paper streamers on the floor near the host’s daughter, Carin Thiel-Lidman, his future wife. The intense social life made Thielska Galleriet an important gathering place for artists and writers in the early 1900s.

The exhibition The Sweet Life highlights several works from the museum’s collection related to nightlife and entertainment. Dance, movement, and light are central to the grand figure paintings by Eugène Jansson and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, portraying scenes from circuses, ballets, and sailors' balls. Bohemian card players and inebriated cocottes in smoke-filled night cafés play a key role in the works of Axel Törneman and Edvard Munch. The exhibition also reintroduces now-forgotten artists such as Gösta von Hennigs, offering audiences a chance to rediscover significant but overlooked artistic voices. The show is complemented by loans of modernists such as Otte Sköld and Vera Nilsson. The selection spans up to 1925, the year the state foundation the Thiel Gallery officially opened to the art-loving public.

The aim of the exhibition is to highlight the Thiel Gallery’s important role as a meeting place for the arts and cultural life—both then and now. The Sweet Life reflects on the museum’s collections through the lens of festivity in art, while also emphasizing that art itself is a celebration worth honoring.