Mårten Eskil Winge

Mårten Eskil Winge (21 September 1825 – 22 April 1896) was a Swedish artist especially known for his Norse mythology paintings. He was a professor at the Royal Swedish Academy of Arts. He was a friend of August Malmström and was influenced by Nils Blommér and Carl Wahlbom. He is associated with the Düsseldorf school of painting.

Born in , Mårten Eskil Winge was the son of the rector and vicar Isaac Martin Winge and Andrietta Sophia Rothman. Winge was educated at the Cathedral School in Uppsala, passing his studentexamen in 1846, after which he became an apprentice in painting with P. E. Wallander in . The following year, he enrolled in the Academy of Arts. While studying there, he worked at the post office and painted portraits for additional income. He had become interested in the Old Norse sagas while growing up, and during his studies his elaborate drawings on Norse topics attracted attention. Among other things, he illustrated Adam Oehlenschläger's book Nordic Gods and Crown Prince Charles's poems "The Foster Brothers". He was attracted to Gothicismus, the movement in Sweden under the influence of national romanticism to reclaim the Norsemen as heroic ancestors; together with his fellow student and friend, August Malmström, he revived motifs from Norse history and legends.

In 1856 Winge became a student of Johan Christoffer Boklund in the newly established school of painting at the Academy of Arts. The following year he received a Royal Medal for his painting of Charles X at Axel Oxenstierna's deathbed and received a three-year stipend that enabled him to take a field trip by way of Düsseldorf to Paris, where he visited the Louvre and copied Peter Paul Rubens' The Wise Men in Bethlehem. The stipend was extended for a further three years, and in 1859 he made a trip to Rome before returning to Sweden in 1863.

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