David Rickard Jette Klingberg born June 9, 1883 Mosstorpet, Midskog, Gullspång died November 26, 1958 of pneumonia at Mariestads lasarett, was a Swedish painter and inventor.
He was the son of the farmer and blacksmith Sven Persson and Lovisa Johansdotter Jette. His father later took the name Klingberg and David chose as an adult to add the name Jette which was in the family on his mother's side. He was born as number nine in a sibling group of eleven children and he was the uncle of the artist Åke Klingberg.
Jette first studied art in Lindesberg with a local artist, then continued at Caleb Althin's painting school in Stockholm in 1905. He made his debut with a solo exhibition in Hova in 1910 and his breakthrough as an artist came with the exhibition at Konstnärshuset in Stockholm in 1913. He set up his studio in his parents' home, Mosstorpet, in 1918, which is still preserved.
Together with his brother Frans, he tried to solve the riddle of the perpetual motion machine. The device consisted of a one-meter-high wheel that, with the help of springs and lead weights, would be kept in motion by its own power. Today, the machine is preserved in the local history society's Hamnmagasin in Lyrestad. In 1914, he began his attempts to construct an airplane that, even if the engine failed, could slowly descend to the ground with the help of a carrier plane equipped with large rotor blades. In 1925, he was granted patents for his design in Sweden, the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, France, Finland and Denmark. The whole design resembled an autogyro. Financially, Jette lacked the means to build his aircraft, but with the help of the art historian Sixten Rönnow and the jack-of-all-trades Carl August Berglund, Svenska Aktiebolaget Turbinplan was founded in 1931 to arrange financing for the manufacture of Jette's design. Large parts of the aircraft were built at Kvarnmaskiner C.W. Sundén in Lindesberg and it was completed in the spring of 1933. The pilot Anders Werner Nordwaeger (Grundin) (1905 - 1969) from the air corps in Västerås was hired as a test pilot. At the flight test in Lindesberg on August 15, 1933, the aircraft could not take off because the engine was too small for the aircraft's 1500-kilogram body.
“Most people who met him considered him a charming personality with a slightly irresponsible side, in the eyes of others he was a coward who was unconcerned about what others thought of him, he was a bit of a bohemian drifter and over time became a local profile in Lindesberg, where he walked around with his pipe, backpack and cape often without shoes on his feet.”
Alongside his art, he used to sing to his own lute playing. In his youth, he toured the country with his brothers and gave concerts. The Klingberg brothers were good quartet singers and played various instruments.
Jette's art consists of portraits, figures and landscape paintings, often with romantic mists and dark moonlight.
His public works include a background painting of Jesus in Gethsemane for Gullspång's mission house and murals at Kåfalla Manor outside Lindesberg.
He is probably represented at the Västergötland Museum with a landscape painting, the painting was purchased at auction in 1935 for SEK 2000. It is unsigned but according to written documents the author is Jette. And at Örebro County Museum in Örebro with a portrait of Hugo Hedberg.
