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Abstract
This article addresses whether or not the artists present at the Fleskum Colony of 1886 (Erik Werenskiold, Christian Skredsvig, Harriet Backer, Kitty Kielland, Gerhard Munthe, and Eilif Peterssen) were responsible for creating a new style of landscape art during an important period in Norwegian history when what it meant to be Norwegian, as opposed to Swedish-Norwegian, was a point of growing contention. More specifically, it addresses the extent to which the lingering light of a typical Norwegian summer night was represented in painted portrayals of the surrounding landscape of Bærum, just outside Kristiania (Oslo), whilst the artists were resident at Christian and Maggie Skredsvig’s Fleskum Farm. The article addresses the context within which these artists were working and would later exhibit, and questions whether the style of painting could be deemed exemplary of French Naturalism or an emergent style of Neo-Romanticism. Of specific interest is the technique and legacy of Kitty Kielland.
Notes
NBO—National Library of Norway, Oslo (Nasjonalbiblioteket). The National Gallery, Oslo, is now included in the National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, shortened to the National Museum of Art, Oslo in the Notes.
1 K. Varnedoe (ed.), Northern Light. Realism and Symbolism in Scandinavian Painting 1880–1910, catalog (The Brooklyn Museum, New York, 1982). The exhibition was also shown at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. and Minneapolis Institute of Arts, as well as the Gothenburg Museum of Art (1983), as part of the project “Scandinavia Today.” K. Varnedoe, Nordisk gullalderkunst (Northern Light) (Oslo, 1987). R. Nasgaard, The Mystic North. Symbolist Landscape Painting in Northern Europe and North America 1890–1940 (Toronto, 1984), exhibition shown in the Art Gallery of Ontario and Cincinnati Art Museum. L. Ahtola-Moorhouse, C.T. Edam, and B. Schreiber (eds), Dreams of a Summer Night. Scandinavian Painting at the Turn of the Century, catalog (Hayward Gallery, London, 1986). The exhibition was also shown in Kunstmusem, Düsseldorf, Musée du Petit Palais, Paris and National Gallery, Oslo (E. Brodersen, G. Brusch, H. Møller and I.V. Raaschou-Nielsen [eds], “Nordiske stemninger,” catalog, 1987). On the other hand, the summer night as a motif was not a focus of particular interest in connection with the exhibition 1880-årene i nordisk maleri at the National Museum of Art, Oslo, 1985 (P. Grate and N.-G. Hökby [eds], catalog); the exhibition was also shown in Stockholm, Helsinki and Copenhagen).
2 J. Thiis, Edvard Munch og hans Samtid (Oslo: Gyldendal, 1933), 128. The Norwegian concept of “stemningsmaleri” deriving from German “Stimmung” has no exact counterpart in English. In the present text it is mainly translated as “mood” painting, a more imprecise term.
3 Published version of the dissertation: L. Østby, Fra naturalisme til nyromantikk. En studie i norsk malerkunst i tiden ca. 1888–1895 [From Naturalism to Neo-Romanticism. A study of Norwegian painting during the period 1888–1895] (Oslo: Gyldendal, 1934), 65–74. E. Lone, Harriet Backer (Kristiania, 1924), 99–100; and A. Aubert, “Kunstnernes 5te Høstutstilling. 1-VI,” Morgenbladet (evening no.) (November 2, 4, 9, 13 and 20, 1886) (also published as an offprint).
4 E.C. Kielland, Harriet Backer 1845–1932 (Oslo: Aschehoug, 1958), 131–6; H. Aars, “På Fleskum i Bærum 1886. Fra sommernatten til folkevisen” [At Fleskum in Bærum 1886. From the summer night to the folk ballad], Kunst og Kultur (1924): 93–110; F. Bull, “Christian Skredsvig og Fleskum-kolonien,” Kunst og Kultur (1965): 91–102; and Fleskum-malerne, catalog (Oslo: Kunstnerforbundet, 1965), 72 nos.
5 M.I. Lange, “Fra den hellige lund til Fleskum. Kitty L. Kielland og den nordiske sommernatt” [From the sacred grove to Fleskum. Kitty L. Kielland and the Nordic summer night], Kunst og Kultur (1977): 69–92; I. Thomsen, “Christian Skredsvig (1854–1924). Liv og verk med hovedvekt på Menneskens Søn og det religiøse maleri” [Christian Skredsvig (1854–1924). Life and work focusing on The Son of Man and religious painting], Magister degree dissertation in art history (University of Oslo, 1986), vol. 1, 136–47; and M. Werenskiold, “Fleskum-malerne sommeren 1886,” Asker og Bærum Historielag (1986): 277–97. See also A.B. Kolberg’s interview with the author in Aftenposten (evening no.) (July 24, 1986).
6 Erik died in Sandvika in January 1887. The oldest of the Fleskum painters was Kitty Kielland (age 43), whilst Erik Werenskiold was the youngest (age 31). Sofie Werenskiold (née Stoltenberg Thomesen) trained as an artist in Munich, but was no longer active as a painter. See also Norsk kunstnerleksikon 1–4 (1982–6). Maggie Skredsvig (1863–1955, née Plahte) had studied singing in London and Paris. Peterssen left Fleskum in August already in order to go up to the mountains (Letter from Peterssen to his mother, A.M. Peterssen, August 15, 1886, NBO.
7 There has been some uncertainty as to who took the initiative for the formation of the Fleskum colony. In the manuscript “Optegnelser Skredsvig” [Skredsvig Notes] (1932–6, found by the author in 1985), Erik Werenskiold writes: “During the summer of 1886 we were at Fleskum above Sandvika; Skredsvig had decided that we all […] should rent the farm for the summer and work there.” In a letter to Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson, dated Kristiania April 7, 1886 (also found in 1985) Werenskiold writes: “we [Erik and Sofie] and the Skredsvigs will perhaps live together in the country this summer; we’re thinking of a place out in Bærum—”. In Paris, Kitty Kielland heard of this and on April 15, 1886 wrote to Werenskiold and asked whether she and Harriet Backer could join them. See Kielland, Harriet Backer, 130–1; M. Lange, “Fra den hellige lund,” 80; and Thomsen, “Christian Skredsvig,” 136–7. Fleskum was bought in Maggie Skredsvig’s name in the summer of 1888 according to Thomsen, “Christian Skredsvig,” 135. A letter from Arne Garborg to Kitty Kielland dated January 6, 1890, suggests that the purchase occurred at a later date: “So Skredsvig has bought Fleskum! That’s funny.” Arne Garborg. Mogning og manndom. Brev [Arne Garborg, maturity and manhood. Letters], J. Dale and R. Thesen (eds), vol. 2 (Oslo: Aschehoug, 1954), 235.
8 Information about the painters coming together again at Fleskum in the summer of 1887 originates from Lone, Harriet Backer, 96, and is repeated by, among others, Lange “Fra den hellige lund,” 70; and K. Berg, Norges kunsthistorie, vol. 5 (Oslo: Aschehoug, 1981), 210. In the spring of 1887 Kitty Kielland tried to resurrect the colony (letter to Sofie Werenskiold, Paris, May, 8 1887, NBO), but the plan collapsed due to Erik Werenskiold’s illness and treatment in Sweden.
9 Thomsen, “Christian Skredsvig,” vol. 1, 142. Midsummer’s Eve measures. 61.4 × 114.5 in. (156 × 291 cm), Kielland’s Summer Night 39.6 × 53.3 in. (100.5 × 135.5 cm), and Peterssen’s Summer Night 53 × 59.4 in. (133 × 151 cm). There is a privately owned (Askim, signed and dated 1886), small-scale study (?) 16.9 × 19.6 in. (43 × 50 cm) of Peterssen’s picture, which is confusingly similar (catalog Fleskum-malerne [1965], nr 26, reproduced in Lange, “Fra den hellige lund,” 77). A 14.9 × 18.1 in. (38 × 46 cm) study for Kielland’s picture has ended up in the National Museum of Art, Oslo. Harriet Backer 1845–1932. Kitty Kielland 1843–1914, M. Lange (ed.), catalog (Åmot, Haugfoss: The Modum Blaafarveværk Foundation, 1983), 60, no. 61.
10 Exposition des Beaux-Arts. Salon de 1887, catalog (Paris, 1887), no. 1318 (Kielland, Nuit claire de Norvège), no. 1877 (Peterssen, Nuit d’été en Norvège) and no. 2212 (Skredsvig, Soir de la Saint-Jean en Norvège). See Exposition Universelle Internationale de 1889 à Paris, catalog (Lille, 1889), nos 46, 76, and 89.
11 Letter from E. Werenskiold to J. Lie, Fleskum, June 21, 1886, NBO; Werenskiold, “Fleskum-malerne,” 280; and Thomsen, “Christian Skredsvig,” 137–8.
12 Ibid.
13 (Original emphasis.) Letter from E. Werenskiold to J. Lie, Fleskum, June 21, 1886, NBO; Werenskiold, “Fleskum-malerne,” 288; and Thomsen, “Christian Skredsvig,” 138.
14 Katalog over Kunstutstillingen 1886 (1886): nos 172 and 161. Reviewed in Aftenposten (October 20, 23, and 27 and November 1, 5, and 12, 1886) (“S.S.”); Dagbladet (October 23, 24, 28, and 30 and November 11 and 13, 1886) (“I.H.”); Morgenbladet (October 24, 28, and 31 and November 4, 7, and 14, 1886) (“U.E.P”); Dagen (October 28 and November 4, 11, 23, and 30, 1886) (Henrik Jæger); Christiania Intelligenssedler (October 21, 25, and 27, 1886) (“H.S.”). See Aubert, “Kunstnernes 5te Høstutstilling.” The first time the Fleskum painters are mentioned as a “kunstnerkoloni” (artists’ colony) is in “Den femte Høstudstilling. (Statens 3dje aarlige Kunstudstilling.) III,” Dagbladet (October, 28 1886).
15 Thiis, Edvard Munch, 128 and 132–8. See also A. Eggum, Edvard Munch og fotografi (Oslo: Gyldendal, 1987), 41–2.
16 Hans Jæger, “Udstillingen. 1. Første værelse” [Exhibition. 1. First room], Dagen (October 20, 1886) (refused acceptance by Dagbladet). See Arne Brenna, “Hans Jæger og Edvard Munch. 1. Vennskapet,” Nordisk Tidskrift 52 (1976), 95.
17 Thomsen, “Christian Skredsvig,” 145–7.
18 Katalog over Kunstutstillingen 1886 (1886): nos 104–7 and 278. Autumn Morning (22.4 × 36.2 in./57 × 92 cm, private collection) is reproduced in Lange, “Fra den hellige lund,” 87, with the title Autumn Afternoon (Høstettermiddag); see catalog, Harriet Backer 1845–1932, 60, no. 62. Summer’s Day and In October are unknown.
19 Katalog over Kunstutstillingen 1886 (1886): nos 219–23. Herreportrettet (“Portræt af Herr C.T.”/Portrait of a man) probably portrays Werenskiold’s brother-in-law, Claus Thomesen (information supplied by Leif Østby). The flower paintings (“Decorative still life. Ditto”) depict a clump of dark blue monkshood and pale violet thistles,” as well as a “couple of huge stems of dock amongst yellow and violet clusters of flowers” according to Aubert (November 4, 1886). Like Stabbur, these paintings are also unknown. Ditch-Digging (National Gallery of Denmark) measures 43.7 × 36.9 in. (111 × 93.8 cm).
20 Katalog over Kunstutstillingen 1886 (1886): nos 130–3. Apart from Evening (The Apple Tree), 61 × 49.6 in. (155 × 126 cm), all are unknown. At Fleskum, Munthe also painted From Bærum (Fra Bærum), 13.3 × 19.3 in. (34 × 49 cm), National Museum of Art, Oslo; reproduced in H. Bakken, Gerhard Munthe. En biografisk studie (Oslo: Gyldendal, 1952), 111.
21 Katalog for Statens Kunstutstilling 1886 Bergen (1886): no. 91. The other Fleskum painters also participated in the Bergen exhibition, in part with older paintings. See “Høstutstillingen i Bergen,” Dagbladet (September 2 and 12, 1886) (“I.H.”): n.33.
22 Katalog over Kunstutstillingen 1886 (1886): nos 247–8 and 290.
23 According to the catalog, E. Diriks, H. Jensen, K. Jensen, E. Munch, J. Sørensen, T.Torgersen, and T. Stadskleiv all contributed with evening moods (ibid., nos 43, 93, 95, 126, 185,199, 292) while A.E. Andersen and A. Askevold exhibited “forest tarns” (nos 2–12).
24 Ved Kristianiafjorden (Kristiania fjord), no 47. See A. Wichstrøm, Kvinner ved staffeliet. Kvinnelige malere i Norge før 1900 [Women at the easel. Women painters in Norway before 1900] (Oslo: Gyldendal, 1983), 85 and 121; and Kvinnelige kunstnere på Skagen. Anna Ancher, Oda Krohg, Marie Krøyer, catalog, H. Lassen, E.Westergaard and A.Wichstrøm (eds), Galleri F 15 (Moss: Galleri F 15, 1987) (reproduced in color). The painting shows a white-dressed woman sitting dreamily in a doorway beneath a Japanese lantern looking out over a calm, moonlit sea (pastel, National Gallery Oslo, Oslo). Østby, Fra naturalisme til nyromantikk, 55 and 61, confuses this picture with Kinesisk lykt (Chinese lantern), 1889 (also in the National Museum of Art, Oslo).
25 Aubert (November 2, 1886): “I have [earlier] expressed the hope that the singular emotive depth of our summer nights should more and more be a source of inspiration for our painters. No beauty speaks more powerfully to the mind than the lingering peace of the evening hours; nothing is easier to understand, and by everyone. It is in his depictions of it that Daubigny expressed the deepest feelings that modern landscape can possibly convey. And he had at his disposal for his study, only middle Europe’s short twilight, while the dusk of the north at midsummer permits hour-long studies out in the open.” See Thomsen, “Christian Skredsvig,” I 164; and note 80 later.
26 Aubert (November 13, 1886): “The small landscape—a stream—is infused with Romanticism; that is to say that it is carried by a passionate mind’s absorption in a lonely and gloomy nature.” Aubert is here polemicizing against Professor L. Dietrichson’s “false” evaluation of “the founder of Realism.”
27 Wichstrøm, Kvinner ved staffeliet, 118–23. A long list of painters who did not take part was printed in Morgenbladet (October 24, 1886) (Kunstutstillingen, I, signed “U.E.P”). The individual artists who left the strongest mark on the exhibition were Hans Heyerdahl and Fredrik Kolstø. In 1886 Heyerdahl ran a school of painting together with Christian Krohg and Erik Werenskiold (announcement in Aftenposten [October 6, 1886]: 1). See O. Schmedling, “Høstutstillingen. Bildende Kunstneres Styre. Forutsetninger” [Autumn Exhibition. Visual Arts Committee. Conditions], Magister degree dissertation in art history (University of Oslo, 1980), 256–68; and Hans Heyerdahl 1857–1913, catalog by Trond Aslaksby (Åmot, Haugfoss: The Modum Blaafarveværk Foundation, 1981), 20–1.
28 Aubert (November 2, 1886); Lone, Harriet Backer, 99. See also Eggum, Edvard Munch og fotografi, 42 and 198, n.3. Before he came to Fleskum, Peterssen had mounted his huge altarpiece, Kristus i Emmaus, in Kristiansand Cathedral (letter from E. Werenskiold to B. Bjørnson, April 7, 1886 [see. n.7]).
29 Aubert (November 2, 1886).
30 Hans Jæger, “Udstillingen. 1. Første værelse” [Exhibition. 1. First room], Dagen, October 20, 1886. Undeniably the motif with the rowing boat and the glassy surface of the water bears a certain similarity to Tidemand and Gudes Brudeferden i Hardanger (Bridal Journey in Hardanger) (1848, National Museum of Art, Oslo). In the 1880s, Hans Dahl (1849–1937) painted some high Romantic evening scenes such as Evening by the fjord (Kveld ved fjorden) (1880, private collection) where a full moon mirrored in water, a lonely rower, and a contemplative figure in the foreground anticipate both the Fleskum painters’ “evening moods” and not least Edvard Munch’s night paintings from Åsgardstrand in the 1890s. See the reproduction in J. Wilberg, I. Ydstie and H. Holm-Johnsen, Konfrontasjon. Striden om Kunstforeningen 1875–1885 [Confrontation. The Battle of the Art Society 1875–1885], catalog, M. Lange (ed.) (Oslo: Oslo Kunstforening, 1986), 63.
31 Aubert (November 2, 1886) quoted from A. Aubert, “Fra Kunstnernes Udstilling. IIm,” Aftenposten (October 25, 1884). Skredvig’s Summer Night (private collection) was a great success at the Autumn Exhibition 1884. The picture shows a reflecting lake in a spruce forest under a full moon and dark blue hill. According to Aubert, the picture “had nothing particularly French in either execution or tone” and more resembled L. Skramstad and Danish art. See Thomsen, “Christian Skredsvig,” 124,128, and 141; as well as note 81 later. See V. Poulsen, Fra München til Paris, text accompanying slide collection 9 in the series Norsk kunst fra reformasjonen til idag [Norwegian art from the Reformation till today] (Oslo: Statens Filmsentral, 1985), 19, no. 29.
32 Aubert (November 4, 1886); and Werenskiold, “Fleskum-malerne,” 291–2. Bakken, Gerhard Munthe, 110–11, summarizes Aubert’s discussion of the picture, without recognizing it as The Apple Tree.
33 In 1886 Sigrun Sandberg’s mother, Jenny, married the much younger Bjørn Bjørnson and later became the powerful boarding house landlady, Jenny Bjørnson at Bjørnegård, near Sandvika. Sigrun was not yet 18 when she married the 20-year-older Munthe. Kitty Kielland disapproved of the huge difference in age. As she wrote to Erik Werenskiold: “If only Munthe’s fiancée were not such a young girl. I don’t like it when nearly forty-year old, totally experienced men marry children” (letter, April 15, 1886, NBO). Sigrun left Munthe in 1919 and the same year married Fridtjof Nansen. Bakken confuses Ved skogstien (The path by the wood) (31.4 × 39.3 in./80 × 100 cm, private collection) with På Spaserturen (The walk) (Gerhard Munthe, 111 and 115) and calls the picture Idyll (ibid., 116 and 131). Ved skogstien was bought by Bergens Kunstforening and was reviewed in Dagbladet (september 12, 1886): n.21: “one rejoices in the poetry that Munthe has evoked from the Sandvika area, which he was so dissatisfied with earlier this summer. ‘It’s a landscape just like at Bygdøy (Ladegaardsøen), with green grass and trees down to the ground’, he said.”
34 Bergen Art Museum—Rasmus Meyer’s Collections, Bergen. See No. 62, illus. 185 in the catalog Northern Light (1982).
35 Aubert (November 4, 1886). See Lange, “Fra den hellige lund,” 70.
36 “[…] a largish landscape by Kitty Kielland, which is fresh and well executed. To the right a summer cottage peeps out among some apple trees, where two girls are harvesting fruit. To the left the view over the fields is bounded by some high leafy trees, which stand in colorful autumnal glory of yellow and green.” Aftenposten (November 1, 1886), “Fra Kunstudstillingen, 1 V” (“S.S”). The picture is today in a private collection.
37 Aubert (November 4, 1886). The motif is, as in Peterssen’s Summer Night, painted at very close range: “which is why the ditch rises steeply up the canvas, with the blue of the sky reflected in the seeping water, and why we look down on the back of the ditch digger in his white shirt in the foreground. Apart from the brown-black soil of the bog, which is rendered with striking illusion, all we see are some spruce trunks and a wooden fence. The color of the green ground cover is unusually fresh and beautiful, but is not strongly enough characterized in its manifold diversity.”
38 Leif Østby maintains that Werenskiold was working on illustrations to “Følgesvennen” (The companion) for the whole of the 1886 Fleskum summer, but this is not documented. L. Østby, Erik Werenskiold (Oslo: Dreyer, 1977), 73. After moving to Birkheim in Sandvika he started on “De tre kongsdøtre i berget det blå” (The three princesses in the mountain-in-the-blue), as stated in a series of letters to Moltke Moe (November 6, 9, 20, and 24, 1886, etc., NBO).
39 See Maleren og tegneren Erik Werenskiold, catalog, Leif Østby (ed.) (Åmot, Haugfoss: Modums Blaafarveværk Foundation 1985), 40–2. In a letter to Sofie Werenskiold (May 8, 1887), Kitty Kielland asks whether Erik has thought “to finish painting […] his picture from Fleskum” (NBO). The Yard at Fleskum (Lillehammer Art Museum) measures 59.8 × 100.3 in. (152 × 255 cm).
40 Aubert (November 20, 1886); cf. Kielland, Harriet Backer, 131–4 and catalog, Harriet Backer 1845–1932, no. 14 (private collection) The sketch is reproduced in color in Berg, Norges kunsthistorie, 220. Backer wrote to Eilif Peterssen (February 8, 1887): “I grew so thoroughly sick of my wheelwrights when I saw them at the Autumn Exhibition, and I would be reluctant to see them again here in the Paris Salon” (NBO).
41 Kielland Harriet Backer, 135–6, reproduced in color in Harriet Backer 1845–1932, 29, no. 15 (Bergen Billedgalleri). The picture shows Maggie Skredsvig (?) and two servant girls spreading out a cloth for bleaching on the grass behind the barn at Fleskum. In the lettter to Sofie Werenskiold (May 8, 1887), Kitty Kielland wrote: “Harriet has her almost finished painting from the garden up there, so of course we would like to be somewhere close to you” (NBO). During her stay at Skotta during the summer and autumn of 1887, Backer painted Bygdeskomakere (The shoemakers) (National Museum Stockholm) at Knabberud and Bondeinteriør (Peasant interior) (National Museum of Art, Oslo). See Kielland, Harriet Backer, 140–2; and Werenskiold, “Fleskum-malerne,” 285–7.
42 Letter from E. Werenskiold to J. Lie, October 18, 1886: “Harriet is working so hard that she is almost ill from tiredness; she’s doing the most interesting things here at Fleskum, but it is doubtful whether she will be able to finish one in time […]. It is strange that her art does not have more of an impact, given how much she studies and how much she knows. I think it must be because of a certain homelessness in her art. Just to look for the painterly effect and not at anything else, has for me something abstract about it; one does not feel enough of the life that is lived around her, and which she herself is involved in, and the people—I really mean that paintings must convery the individual character of people, and that one must not make use of them as one wants.” (NBO, finished in Sandvika, October 20, 1886. See Werenskiold, “Fleskum-malerne,” 284.
43 See Christiania Intelligenssedler (October 21, 1886): “Once we had a Romantic art that was uniquely ours. We have for a while been living in the transitional period’s difficult time, in the awkward age of the new. What we are now in the process of creating […] is a completely modern, realistic art, which in its content, in its resonance is ours” (original emphasis). “Fra Kunstudstillingen. I,” signed “H.S.”.
44 Aubert (November 20, 1886).
45 J. Lange, “Den svenske og norske Kunst paa den nordiske Udstilling i København 1872,” in Nutids-Kunst. Skildringer og Karakteristiker, [Swedish and Norwegian Art at the Nordic Exhibition in Copenhagen 1872. Contemporary art. Descriptions and characterizations] (Copenhagen: Philipsen, 1873), 377–82. The article must certainly have been “compulsory reading” for young Norwegian artists in the Munich period of the 1870s, not least for the future Fleskum painters. Aubert also refers to J. Lange’s book, Billedkunst [Visual art] (Copenhagen: Philipsen, 1884), concerning “the green sickness.” See “Fra den nordiske Kunstudstilling 1883,” 530.
46 Werenskiold, “Stop lidt igjen!,” Aftenposten (November 8, 1886); reprinted in E. Werenskiold, Kunst, kamp, kultur gjennom 40 aar [Art, struggle, culture over 40 years] (Kristiania: Albert Cammermeyer, 1917), 51–6. His attack is directed particularly against the anonymous critic’s article “Fra Kunstudstillingen. III” in Aftenposten (October 27, 1886). Here “S.S” pointed inter alia at “the extreme vulgarity” of the subject in Krohg’s sea-picture På lo baug (On the windward bow) and regretted that “that sort of roughly executed stuff (as in Munch’s The Sick Child) by being admitted to an art exhibition was certified as art”. Werenskiold delivers a warm defense of Krohg, but does not mention Munch. Werenskiold himself had been highly praised by “S.S.” for his ditch-digger, though according to Jens Thiis, “S.S.” was “a consortium of critics” consisting of 10 persons with Stephan Sinding at the top. Thiis, Edvard Munch, 135–6 and 154. On Peterssen, see note 50. The title “Stop lidt igjen!” plays on Werenskiold’s article “Stop lidt” in Morgenbladet (September 24, 1886), where in harsh terms he protests against the enthusiasm for the Hungarian Michael von Munkácsy’s painting Die Kreuzigung Christi (The crucifixion of Christ) which was exhibited in Kristiania (reproduced in Kunst og Kultur [1987]: 210).
47 Werenskiold (November 8, 1886): “It is the love of nature that has brought Naturalism into the world. […] And love of nature must of necessity lead to the artists returning home to their own country, for they can never understand what is foreign, and consequently not love it to the same degree as they do what is their own.” Lange had emphasized the fact that a foreign public could not meet the Norwegian artists’ painting of their home country with same intimate understanding as the Norwegians themselves. Lange, Nutids-Kunst, 381. See the Swedish French-schooled Naturalists in the newly formed “Konstnärsförbundet,” which in its first exhibition in Stockholm in the autumn of 1886 emphasized its “national” attitude in relation to the home public, by “only exhibiting works with Swedish motifs in the center of the gallery, and here and there placing shields with Stockholm’s coat-of-arms, framed by blue and yellow flags, thereby highlighting the exhibition’s national character, something that was deeply appreciated by the public.” S. Strömbom, Konstnärsförbundets historia [The history of the Artists’Association], vol. 1 (Stockholm: Bonniers, 1945), 242.
48 Werenskiold (November 8, 1886): “Everything here at home is just a beginning, which has to do with the fact that the artists live very close to each other, something that is still perhaps necessary because we need to learn from each other how to paint and clarify our ideas. But it won’t be many years before they spread out over the country and live permanently in one place, in the way that so many Frenchmen have done following Millet’s example. Not until every single individual steps into the most intimate relationship with the life he wants to paint, will we be able to say that we have a national art, i.e. a Norwegian expression for Norwegian nature and feeling.” See Werenskiold, Kunst, kamp, kultur, 52.
49 Werenskiold (November 8, 1886); and Werenskiold, Kunst, kamp, kultur, 53. Werenskiold’s evaluation of French artists seems influenced by Lange’s article “Franske Kunstnere paa Verdensudstillingen i Paris 1867” in Nutids-Kunst, 291–360. Here Lange regards the Barbizon painters Rousseau and Daubigny, among others, as “Naturalists”. Ibid., 350 and 352.
50 Aftenposten (October 27, 1886) (“S.S.”): “Eilif Peterssen’s large landscape Summer Night is a rather strange picture. It does not belong to any specific school and has little in common with the other landscapes in the exhibition […]. It is presumably painted from nature, but if the artist has tried to be a Naturalist of the modern taste, it has to be said that the attempt—fortunately— has not succeeded. There is still too much of the old academic, rule-bound Eilif Peterssen in it for that. The painting is beautifully executed, and the Impressionists will hardly find much to enjoy in it, because there are few traces of “the spontaneous”, their Alfa and Omega, in it. In other words, the artist has not painted his picture as he saw it, but as he wanted to see it.” (Original emphasis.)
51 Werenskiold (November 8, 1886; and Werenskiold,Kunst, kamp, kultur, 53–4. SeeM. Malmanger, “‘Impressionismen’ og Impressionisten. Chr. Krohg og det moderne gjennombrudd i 1880-årene,” in O.Thue and I. Wikborg (eds), Christian Krohg, catalog (National Museum of Art, Oslo, 1987), 42.
52 Letter from H. Gude to E. Peterssen, Berlin, January 2, 1887, NBO; and Aars, “På Fleskum i Bærum 1886,” 99–100. Gude is referring to the great Jubilee Exhibition in Berlin 1886, where Peterssen and several other Fleskum-painters were represented. See “Kristiania. Skandinaverne paa Berlinerudstillingen,” Aftenposten (August 16, 1886).
53 Ibid.: “Because I have been so engaged with reflections in water, I too have been led to paint a number of pictures with the horizon up by the frame, because the effect is so far down, but the disadvantage is that neither in an exhibition nor privately can the paintings be hung so low that they do not look wrong.” See Lange, “Fra den hellige lund,” 88 and 92. Gude further comments that “both the birch and the entire foreground seem to be superbly painted; it looks as if photographed from nature.” Eggum (Edvard Munch og fotografi, 42) points to interesting features shared by both Summer Night and the English photographer P.H. Emerson’s acclaimed picture Gathering Water Lilies from 1886, especially the reflections in the still water and the very high horizon. On Gude and photography, see Eggum, Edvard Munch og fotografi, 197, n.12.
54 See note 28; Østby, Fra naturalisme til nyromantikk, 70. Aubert’s comments could have been inspired by the German Romantic C.D. Friedrich’s blue-toned night paintings with figures turning their backs to the viewer in the foreground. Aubert later published several articles on Friedrich in, among other places, Kunst und Künstler (Berlin, 1905–6). The subject also leads one to think of Arnold Böcklin’s mythological fantasies, which were of current interest to the Kristiania milieu after Hans Heyerdahl’s return home in 1884 after two years of being with Böcklin in Florence. See Østby, Fra naturalisme til nyromantikk, 118; and exhibition catalog, Hans Heyerdahl 1857–1913, 17 and 19. Nocturne was exhibited at the Autumn Exhibition in Kristiania 1887 (no. 137) and again at the great Nordic exhibition in Copenhagen in 1888 (note 87 later).
55 “Kunstudstillingen. III,” Morgenbladet (October 31, 1886) (morning number, signed “U.E.P.”) Peterssen completed Nocturne after having visited the Salon in Paris in the spring of 1887, where Summer Night was exhibited. To his mother he wrote (May 4, 1887): “it is very educational to see one’s works together with so many others—for me it is doubly useful now that I am in a way repeating the same picture” (NBO).
56 The author thanks Leif Østby for the loan of the photograph. In Norsk kunstnerleksikon 3 (1986): 203, Østby dates Diana to 1875, on the basis of a certain resemblance of the motif to Hunting Nymph (Jaktnymfe) (1875; see Kronberg, note 93 below). See also L. Østby in Norske mesterverker i Nasjonalgalleriet [Norwegian Masterpieces in the National Gallery] (Oslo: J.M. Stenersens forlag, 1981), 79. Diana (49.6 × 44 in./126 × 112 cm) was sold at Bukowski Auctions in Stockholm in 1971 (catalog no. 389/235) with the title Wood Nymph (Skoghuldra). See Camille Corot, Diana bathing (Dianas bad), which also shows a standing nude in a forest landscape with water and moonlight. Gosudarstvennyj Muzej Izobrazitel’nych Iskusstv imeni A.S. Puškina. Katalog kartinnoj galerei (Moscow, 1986), 97; and F. Fosca, Corot (Paris: Floury, 1930), illus. 95.
57 Nocturne (National Museum, Stockholm) measures 78.7 × 98.4 in. (200 × 250 cm). One of the variants (catalog Nordiske stemninger [Nordic moods], no. 80 [National Museum of Art, Oslo, 1987]) presents the same elements in square format 32 × 32 in. (81.5 × 81.5 cm), while the other is a vertical section, with the figure and tree trunk as the main motif (31.8 × 17 in./81 × 43.5 cm) (Stavanger Permanent Gallery). The study of the landscape motif without the figure or tree trunk (25.6 × 35.8 in./65 × 91 cm unsigned, private collection, Oslo) shows that the alder trunk in Summer Night (1886) must have been “composed” into the picture.
58 Marit Lange considered the yellow flag irises as “fleur rares,” an un-Norwegian element in the picture and associated them with the stylized flowers in Puvis de Chavannes’ Le bois sacré (Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lyon). Lange, “Fra den hellige lund,” 86. Yellow irises are also an attribute in J.A.D. Ingres’ La source (1856, Louvre, Paris). E. Radius, L’opera complete di Ingres (Milan: Rizzoli, 1968), pl. LIII-LIV. See also note 64.
59 In the catalog Northern Light (1982), 204, Rosemary Hoffmann and Oscar Thue point out that the cropped tree-trunk in Summer Night may be influenced by Japanese art. Irises are a typical “Japanese” motif. See “The Art Nouveau Iris” in S. Wichmann, Japonisme. The Japanese Influence on Western Art in the 19th and 20th Centuries (New York: Harmony Books, 1985), 86–9. In W. Anderson’s deluxe work The Pictorial Arts of Japan [(London: Sampson Low & Co., 1886), 86, 132 and 201), irises are used both as a frontispiece and as vignettes; cropped tree-trunks in the foreground of a landscape motif, and moonlight moods over water (Chinese) (ibid., 114 and 211). Foliage that resembles Peterssen’s in the Nocturne variant, Plate 52 (NBO).
60 See note 53 and Gude’s painting Sandviksfjorden (1879, National Museum, Stockholm). “Japanese” perspective with water rising steeply to a horizon high up can also be seen in Anders Zorn’s marine paintings from the Dalarö summer 1886. See T. Brunius and O. Reutersvärd, Samtal om Zorn [Conversations about Zorn] (Stockholm: Trevi, 1979), no. 34; and P. Grate in the catalog 1880-årene i nordisk maleri, 282. The unusual perspective in Werenskiold’s Ditch Digging (1886) can also be regarded as “Japanese.”
61 K. Madsen, Japansk Malerkunst (Copenhagen: P.G. Philipsens forlag, 1885) (see 26): “[…] Yedo’s inhabitants wander along the banks of their river to admire the irises, which in various colors and forms grow in profusion in the swamps close by”; arranging a bouquet of irises, illus. 27. Reviewed by E. Hannover in Tilskueren (March 1886): 269–72; and by J. Lange in 1886 (“Japan–Europa”), reprinted in Udvalgte Skrifter af Julius Lange [Selected writings of Julius Lange], G. Brandes and P. Købke (eds), vol. 3 (Copenhagen: Det Nordiske Forlag, 1903), 183–91. On his way to Paris in December 1886, Christian Skredsvig visited Karl Madsen in Lyngby and saw his Japanese collection: “He is amazing. His Japanese exhibition was finished, but he owns several things—drawings and printed illustrations from Japan.” Letter from Chr. Skredsvig to E. and S. Werenskiold, Paris, December 11, 1886, NBO. In Skredsvig’s exhibition in Fritzner’s Pavilion in October 1886, Andreas Aubert found “a number of fine flower motifs, partly following Japanese taste […] water-lilies, floating on the pond”. Morgenbladet (October 12, 1886), quoted from Thomsen, “Christian Skredsvig,” 146, see 159–60. Skredsvig—and Eilif Peterssen—had known Madsen since their joint student days in Copenhagen in the early 1870s. Thomsen, “Christian Skredsvig,” 33. In 1886 Madsen published a very favorable article about Erik Werenskiold. K. Madsen, Illustreret Tidende no. 26 (1886): 318–20. See also Kunstbladet (1888), 6–10 and 119–21. Madsen was a key member of the artists’ colony at Skagen, see notes 69–70.
62 H. Westergaard in the catalog 1880-årene i nordisk maleri (1985), 162. Østby (Fra naturalisme til nyromantikk, 53–4) emphasizes Whistler’s musical night moods as the source of the Norwegian “blue painting” of the 1880s and tells that Skredsvig “recalls him with great respect from the period around 1884.” Christian Skredsvig, Møllerens søn (Kristiania: Gyldendal, 1912, new edition 1944), 72); see Nocturne in Blue and Silver: The Lagoon, Venice, 1879–80.
63 Lange, “Fra den hellige lund,” 84–6. Her theory is accepted by, among others, Knut Berg (Norges kunsthistorie, 213), but is opposed by Sverre Krüger and Arne Eggum. Sverre Krüger, “Maleri og musikk,” Dissertation in art history (University of Bergen, 1985); and Eggum, Edvard Munch og fotografi, 198, n.3. Eggum regards Peterssen’s Summer Night as a “naturalistic work in the tradition of Gustave Courbet,” which stands in contrast to Puvis’s idealistic decorations. Krüger, “Maleri og musikk,” 77–8, refutes Lange’s claim that Aubert’s use of musical metaphors means that he places Summer Night outside the naturalist tradition. Lange, “Fra den hellige lund,” 85. The fact that Aubert does not even mention Puvis de Chavannes in his series of articles about the autumn Exhibition 1886 also contradicts Lange’s theory, even though Aubert both knew and appreciated his art. See Lange, “Fra den hellige lund,” 82–3. See also Thomsen, “Christian Skredsvig,” 166–7; and note 81 later.
64 Lange, “Fra den hellige lund,” 86. See R.J. Wattenmaker (ed.), Puvis de Chavannes and the Modern Tradition, catalog (Toronto: Art Gallery of Ontario, 1975), illus. 45. The nude with her back toward us in Puvis’s painting is part of an allegorical composition (L’Automne, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lyon) and leans her shoulder heavily against a (draped) tree backdrop, while holding up an overflowing basket of fruit with both hands. The crossed feet are also quite unlike those of Peterssen’s nymph, who adopts a classical academic pose based on ancient representations of Venus and Kresilas’s Sciarra Amazon (Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen). See Chr. Blinkenberg, Knidia, Beiträge zur Kenntnis der praxitelischen Aphrodite [Contributions toward an understanding of the Knidian Aphrodite by Praxiteles] (Copenhagen: Levin and Munksgaard, 1933), pl.2 (Vatican, cf. the back and lower body); and W. Fuchs, Die Skulptur der Griechen [Greek sculpture] (Munich: Hirmer, 1983), 217 and 199 (raised right arm and lowered head). The pose also resembles Ingres’ painting La source (1856, see note 58) and the figure with its back turned in Thorvaldsen’s grave relief for the painter Andrea Appiani (The Graces listening to Amor’s song, 1821, Thorvaldsen’s Museum Copenhagen). See Bertel Thorvaldsen, Untersuchungen zu seinem Werk und zur Kunst seiner Zeit [Bertel Thorvaldsen: an investigation into his work and his times], catalog (Cologne: City of Cologne Museum, 1977), 47, 181 and 198.
65 E.Werenskiold, “Lidt om Parisersalonen,” Dagbladet (May 25, 1884): “Puvis de Chavannes … has a decorative mural, highly stylized, with quite a strange impact. It is called ‘Le bois sacré, cher aux Arts et aux Muses’ and shows a large landscape with various groups of figures in the foreground; further back, water, in which the pale yellow evening sky is reflected ….” The picture occupied nearly a whole wall in one of the Salon’s huge corner rooms. In an article written at Fleskum (Morgenbladet [September 24, 1886]), Werenskiold mentions Puvis de Chavannes among the painters who create “real art” (as opposed to the Hungarian Munkácsy). See Thomsen, “Christian Skredsvig,” vol, 2, 215; and note 46 earlier.
66 H. Westergaard, catalog 1880-årene i norsk maleri (1985), 174–5.
67 Werenskiold (May 25, 1884). According to Voss, Krøyer’s source of inspiration for the white nights as a subject was probably Holger Drachmann’s descriptions of Skagen in the book about the lifesaver Lars Kruse (1879). K. Voss, Skagensmalerne (Oslo: Dreyer, 1987), 28–9.
68 During the summer of 1880 Peterssen lived with Krøyer at Sora in the Sabine Hills, where he painted Siesta in an Osteria (Siesta i et osteri, National Museum of Art, Oslo), which shows clear influence from Krøyer’s Naturalism. See L. Østby, Norges billedkunst i det nittende og tyvende århundre [Visual arts in Norway in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries], vol. 1 (Oslo: Gyldendal, 1951), 224–5; and K. Berg, catalog 1880-årene i nordisk maleri (1985) 221–2.
69 Summer Evening at Skagen/Black and White Cow in the Moonlight (Sommeraften på Skagen/Sortbroket ku in måneskinn), 1883, illus. 31 in W. Schwartz, Skagen i nordisk kunst [Skagen in Nordic art] (Oslo: Gyldendal, 1952) (variant in private collection, Askim, 23 × 29 in./59 × 74 cm). To Krøyer’s regret, Peterssen did not have time to sit as model for his portrait of friends, Hip, hip, hurra! (1887, Gothenburg Museum of Art. Ibid., 33. See also K. Madsen, Skagens Malere og Skagens Museum [Skagen’s painters and Skagen Museum] (Copenhagen: Ny Carlsberg Fondet, 1929), 98–102; and A. Schwartz, Skagen. Den svundne Tid i Sagn og Billeder [Skagen, Bygone days in legend and pictures] (Copenhagen and Kristiania: Gyldendal, 1912), 138–40.
70 Christian Skredsvig visited Skagen for the first time in 1872 and “discovered” the place a year later on a study tour together with Karl Madsen. See Madsen, Skagens Malere og Skagens Museum, 18–19; and Thomsen, “Christian Skredsvig,” 31–4 (Chr. Skredsvig, Om Skagen, unpublished mss in The Royal Library Copenhagen). Another important model was the artist’s colony in Grez-sur-Loing, which it seems was also “discovered” by Skredsvig as the first Scandinavian in 1881. Thomsen, “Christian Skredsvig,” 108. See. M. Jacobs, The Good and Simple Life. Artist Colonies in Europe and America (Oxford: Phaidon, 1985), 33–9 and 88–110 (91, brief and vague about Fleskum). See also note 61.
71 Lange, “Fra den hellige lund,” 81, 84 and 87. See catalog Harriet Backer 1845–1932, 56, 58, and 63; and M. Lange in catalog Nordiske stemninger, 178–82. During the winter of 1885/86 Kielland painted a replica of After Sunset (from a study and photograph), which to her consternation was refused by the 1886 Salon. Lange constructs her theory about the influence of Puvis de Chavannes on a passage in the letter from Kielland to E. Werenskiold (April 15, 1886, NBO), where Kielland writes that her teacher Pelouse thought she had gone terribly astray: “that I painted like Puvis de Chavannes, and when he could see by my face that I was not distressed by this, he said ‘yes’ and like Manet and Monet.” Lange does not discuss Pelouse’s reference to the two Impressionists. See also note 81 later. Both Kielland’s Summer Night and After Sunset were exhibited at the great Nordic exhibition in Copenhagen 1888 (nos 732–3, see note 87).
72 After Sunset (1885) was painted at Bossvik, near Risør, at the same time as Shrimp Fishing (Rekefiske) and stands as an accurate representation of the place. The studio version from 1886 seems somewhat more simplified in style and is marred by the clumsily drawn house. The motif seems to have had significance for Munch’s night paintings of the Kjøsterud house in Åsgardstrand, The Girls on the Bridge (Pikene på bryggen), 1899 and later.
73 Erik Werenskiold painted evening moods in, among other places, Pipping near Munich in 1879, Evening at Pipping (Aften ved Pipping, National Museum of Art, Oslo), Villiers-le-Bel in 1882, On the Path to Church (På kirkevei, catalog Maleren og tegneren Erik Werenskiold [The painter and draughtsman E.W.] [Lillehammer Art Museum, 1985], 28 and 33) and Gvarv in Telemark, Evening at Lindem (Aften på Lindem, 1884, ibid., 36 and 39 [private collection]) and Store House (Stabbur, 1885, see n.19). In 1880, Munthe painted Evening mood (Aftenstemning, National Museum of Art, Oslo). Skredsvig had painted both evening moods and reflecting water in his Munich period 1877–8. See Thomsen, “Christian Skredsvig,” vol. 3, nos 64–8, 132, 134, and 137 (1883), 143 and 144 (1884); Summer Night. Moonlight over Nordmarken (see note 31 earlier); and In September. Motif from Stabekk (I September. Motiv fra Stabekk, private collection). Thomsen, ibid., vol. 1, 126 (reflecting pool in sunshine). Other Scandinavian “specialists” in reflecting water: Albert Edelfelt, Frits Thaulow and Anders Zorn (B. von Bonsdorff, K. Berg and P. Grate in the catalog 1880-årene i nordisk maleri, 72–81 and 258–9, plus note 60 earlier).
74 F.-G. Dumas, Catalogue illustré du Salon (Paris: Libraire d’art, L. Baschet, 1883), 32, no. 1310. In the Autumn Exhibition 1884, Kielland had also shown a painting with the title Summer Night (no. 56).
75 See note 51. Like her former teacher Peterssen, Kielland had been a pupil of Gude (1873–5). The work with which she made her breakthrough, Peat Bog (Torvmyr, 1880, private collection), which also features mirroring water, was completed under the influence of the Swedish Barbizon painter, Alfred Wahlberg. See M. Lange in the catalog 1880-årene i nordisk maleri, 137.
76 K.L. Kielland, “Kvindespørgsmaalet”. Tilsvar til Hr. pastor J. M. Færden [The woman question. Response to Pastor J. M. Færden] (Christiania: Kitty Kielland, 1886) (positively reviewed in Dagbladet [Septermber 26, 1886], “Litteraturtidende,” signed “R.N.”). Kielland refers (17–18) to inter alia A. Bebel, Kvinnan i forntiden, nutiden och framtiden [Woman in the past, present and future] (Stockholm: Carl Suneson, 1885). She had borrowed the book from August Strindberg in Paris (letter from K. Kielland to A. Lie Isaachsen, Fleskum, September 10, 1886, NBO). In 1884 Kielland had been one of the founders of Norsk Kvindesagsforening. See A.Wichstrøm, “Blant likemenn. Søkelys på Harriet Backers og Kitty Kiellands karriere” [Among equals. Spotlight on the careers of Harriet Backer and Kitty Kielland], in K.Vogt (ed.), Den skjulte tradisjon. Skapende kvinner i kulturhistorien [The hidden tradition. Creative women in cultural history] (Bergen: Sigma, 1982) 184 and 189–90. See also B.N. Lein, Kirken i Felttog mot kvinnefrigjøring. Kirkens holdning till den borgerlige kvinnebevegelsen i 1880-årene [The Church’s campaign against women’s liberation. The attitude of the Church to the middle-class women’s movement in the 1880s] (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1981).
77 In a letter to A.L. Isaachsen (September 10, 1886) Kielland says that she is expecting Garborg at Fleskum the next day: “Garborg has been here once during this long summer […] obviously I do what I can to counteract the belief that he is a coarse person.” Her involvement in the Jæger debate emerges inter alia in a letter to E. Werenskiold (Paris, January 26, 1886, NBO), where she characterizes Jæger’s book as “magnificent.” In the letter to Bjørnson (April 7, 1886, n.7), Werenskiold writes that he is “among those who support the book.” See Letter from E. Werenskiold to J. Lie, January 31, 1886, NBO, in L. Østby, Erik Werenksiold og dikterne [Erik Werenskiold and the writers] (Oslo: Gyldendal, 1985), 77–9. See also Ø. Sørensen, 1880-årene. Ti år som rystet Norge [The 1880s. Ten years that shook Norway] (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1984), 71–7 and 87–90.
78 Hans Jæger, “Udstillingen. 1. Første værelse” [Exhibition. 1. First room], Dagen, October 20, 1886. In the letter to S.Werenskiold (May 8, 1887, n.8), Kielland comments on Skredsvig’s success and reacts negatively to Midsummer’s Eve: “What is one to make of the whole vast foreground that is between us and the boat, while nevertheless the figures are close to us, that is something one knows even less about here than at home. But he himself is overjoyed.”
79 Thomsen, “Christian Skredsvig,” 141–2. Skredsvig tells about his struggle with the painting, “my great torment,” in an undated mss (ibid. 140–1) from which it emerges that work on it continued outdoors at Dælivannet right up to September 1886. Skredsvig’s romantic attitude to nature also emerges in a letter to his soul-mate, the patron Olaf Schou (Høvik, November 7, 1886): “I am more and more coming to believe that for those of us who are more than usually endowed with a longing for beauty nature is the only salvation. […] And if we have once allowed ourselves to be entranced by nature—and felt what endless compassion it can have for our shifting mental states, then it becomes our longing. It becomes the discoverer of our finest spiritual life—and in our best moments we walk in great gratitude—but out of this comes the desire to give form, to really fathom what has been felt—and that’s when suffering enters” (NBO, not mentioned by Thomsen).
80 Thomsen, “Christian Skredsvig,” 110 and 164, demonstrates the clear influence of Millet in Skredsvig’s October Morning at Grez (Oktobermorgen ved Grez, 1881–2, National Museum of Art, Oslo), inter alia from Crépuscule (1858–9). In the letter to his mother from Paris (May 4, 1887, NBO), Eilif Peterssen writes that he is looking forward to seeing an outstanding exhibition by Millet, “who has perhaps been the greatest painter of our age.” See K. Madsen, “Jean-François Millet,” in Ude og Hjemme (Copenhagen, 1884), 515: “The pictures in which he has rendered moods in nature […] belong to his best. […] There is a sequence of glorious pictures in which he has painted evening.” See also Lange, Nutids-Kunst, 345–6; and note 48 earlier, as well as A. Fermigier, Jean-François Millet (Geneva: Skira, 1979), illus. 81. Jens Thiis argues that “for Norwegian landscape painting in the 1880s […] no French painter has been of greater importance than C.F. Daubigny.” Jens Thiis, Norske malere og billedhuggere [Norwegian painters and sculptors], vol. 2 (Bergen: John Grieg, 1907), 31. See note 25 earlier and S. Ringbom, “Nordiskt 80-tal: Verklighet, luft och ljus,” in the catalog 1880-årene i nordisk maleri, 10–11.
81 S. Ringbom, “Nordiskt 80-tal: Verklighet, luft och ljus,” in the catalog 1880-årene i nordisk maleri, 254–55 (private collection, on permanent loan to the National Museum ofArt, Oslo). Thomsen, “Christian Skredsvig,” 143–5. The foreground and the background of the picture are seen from two different locations at Dælivannet. See M. Werenskiold, “Fleskum-malerne,” 292 and 297, n.12. Lange, “Fra den hellige lund,” 86–7, considers The Willow Flute to be influenced by Puvis de Chavannes, via Kitty Kielland’s After Sunset (1885–6) and as a “culmination of everything the whole Fleskum period’s landscape painting was striving towards.” Thomsen, “Christian Skredsvig,” 166–7, points out that Skredsvig only once (1893) mentions Puvis in his letters, and then in a disrespectful tone. She also maintains that Skredsvig painted his emotive landscape Summer Night. Moonlight over Nordmarken (1884) before Kitty Kielland created After Sunset. See notes 31, 63, and 71 earlier.
82 See note 7; and Aars, “På Fleskum i Bærum 1886,” 107–10. In 1889 the Werenskiold family moved to Solberg farm, not far from Fleskum, and Kielland and Backer also lived periodically in Sandvika. Thus a large part of the colony from 1886 was again gathered with Fleskum as the social center. See H. Koht, Bærum. En bygds historie [Bærum, the history of a rural district], vol. 2 (Sandvika: Kommunehuset, 1924), 541.
83 See note 10. Erik Werenskiold received the “Grand Prix” (for A Peasant Burial, 1885). Peterssen Gold Medal, Munthe, Kielland and Backer Silver Medals. Skredsvig, as a jury member was hors concours and was awarded the Legion of Honour by the French state.
84 Østby, Fra naturalisme til nyromantikk, 5 and 7; and Udvalgte skrifter af Julius Lange, eds Brandes and Købke, 159–82 (originally printed in Nordisk Tidskrift [Stockholm, 1889]). See M. Malmanger, Norsk kunstdebatt ved modernismens terskel. Fra “erindringens kunst” til “det dekorative” [Norwegian art debate on the threshold of Modernism. From “The Art of Recollection” to “The Decorative”], in Kunst og Kulturs serie, no. 1 (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1985): 8–12.
85 See J. Lange’s article “Fotografiens Aestetik” (1865) reprinted in Lange, Nutids-Kunst, 523–32. Eggum, Edvard Munch og fotografi, 11.
86 Udvalgte skrifter af Julius Lange, eds Brandes and Købke, 164–5. Lange refers to Karl Madsen and to Anderson, The Pictorial Arts of Japan, see notes 59–61 earlier.
87 Illustreret katalog over Kunstafdelingen ved den nordiske Industri-, Landbrugs- og Kunstudstilling i København 1888 [Illustrated catalog of the Art Section of the Nordic Industrial, Agricultural and Art Exhibition in Copenhagen 1888], no. 764 and 2 (charcoal drawing). Nocturne was bought (at the exhibition?) by the National Museum Stockholm, and thereby has also played an important part in Swedish artistic life. In his review of the exhibition, Aubert calls the picture A Summer Night’s Dream (Sommernattsdrøm). See A. Aubert, “Vor egen kunst,” Dagbladet (May 24, 1888). In his review of the autumn exhibition in Kristiania 1887, Aubert refers to Julius Lange’s recently published book, Sergel og Thorvaldsen. Studier i den nordiske Klassicismens Fremstilling af Mennesket [Sergel and Thorvaldsen. Studies in Nordic classicism’s representation of the human form] (Copenhagen: Andr. Fred. Høst & Søn, 1886), and claims that Lange “would, I think, be the first to congratulate our art on the occasion of the noble seriousness, with which Eilif Peterssen in his Nocturne has taken up the study of the forms of the female body. It is not only from this more general point of view that this poetic composition is of particular interest, but on account of the insight it gives into Peterssen’s psychology, for we see how in the midst of our rationalistic era he has personified the mood of the summer night in his landscape from last year in a nymph, who stands leaning against a tree trunk, lost in the woodland pool’s deep mirror.” A. Aubert, “Høstudstillingen. I. Til flygtig Orientering,” Dagbladet (September 25, 1887). See note 64 (re Thorvaldsen).
88 In the catalog Northern Light (1982, 204), Rosemary Hoffmann and Oscar Thue point to possible death symbolism in Peterssen’s Summer Night, with reference to (later) works by Strindberg, Munch and Ibsen: “[…] the fallen birch tree and the vigorous tree to the right may symbolize the cycle of the seasons—decay and regeneration.” Peterssen had lost his wife in 1882 and was afterward troubled by depression. See K.M. Ebbesen, “Eilif Peterssens historie-maleri,” Dissertation in art history (University of Oslo, 1984), 145; and letter from E. Peterssen to J. Lie, January 24, 1887, NBO. See also note 64 on Thorvaldsen’s grave relief.
89 See Eggum, Edvard Munch og fotografi, 43. On water symbolism, see M. Rossholm (Lagerlöf), Sagan i Nordisk sekelskifteskonst. En motivhistorisk och ideologisk undersökelse [The story of Nordic art at the turn of the century. A motif-historical and ideological investigation] (Stockholm: K.L. Beckman, 1974), 111–36; and idem, “Det nordiske stämningslandskapet,” Konshistoriska Studier 9 (1986): 205 (“Nordisk sekelskifte” [Nordic turn of the century], lecture at the 1st Nordic Art History Meeting, Hanaholmen, Esbo, 1984).
90 Chr. Skredsvig, Dage og nætter blandt kunstnere [Days and nights among artists] (Kristiania: Nordisk forlag, 1909), 111–17.
91 A. Eggum, Edvard Munch. Malerier—skisser og studier (Oslo: Stenersen, 1983), 77.
92 Werenskiold, “Optegnelser Skredsvig.” Ida L. Sherman has pointed to the striking similarities between Skredsvig’s A Poem about Life (Et dikt om livet) and Munch’s “Alma Mater” (ca. 1910–16, Aulaen, University of Oslo): “Edvard Munchs ‘Alma Mater’. Tretti år i kamp med et motiv,” Kunst og Kultur (1975): 151–2.
93 White water lilies are the foreground motif in both Ernst Josephson’s Strömkarlen (The water sprite, Eggedal, 1884, Prins Eugens Waldemarsudde, Stockholm) and Julius Kronberg’s sensual Hunting Nymph (Jaktnymph, 1875, National Museum Stockholm). See also Rossholm (Lagerlöf) (1986), 115–16, illus. 126.
94 See Kunst og kultur no. 3 (1982), with articles about the Lysaker circle by T. Skedsmo, N. Messel, and S. Gjessing.