The deepest experience of nature, a sure sense of style and an eye for the essential, the archetypal, come together in John Bauer's fairytale pictures and make them a profound experience of their own for the young and the older viewer. They remain unforgettable because you recognise in them what your inner eye has always been able to see: the great forest of fairytales with its eerie figures, the delicate beauty of a princess ... In his atmospheric Art Nouveau illustrations, John Bauer created a fairytale world in the short period between 1907 and 1915 , the magic of which no generation of children in Sweden has been able to escape since then. His chunky trolls, grown out of tree stumps, mossy stones and coniferous trees, often stupidly cunning and coarse, sometimes friendly, but always curious about the world of mankind, his tender princesses, his bold, brave boys, driven into the world by the thirst for adventure, his kings or princes, who wear their crown with dignity and humility ... The fairy tales were written by Swedish storytellers such as Elsa Beskow, Helena Nyblom, Anna Wahlenberg, Alfred Smedberg and many others who, around 1900, were committedto a new children's literature that would also reach broad, middle-class circles.