Summer Night

If there were a painting that encapsulates the Scandinavian concept of hygge (coziness) perfectly, it is Norwegian artist Harald Sohlberg’s Summer Night. The painting takes the view from the balcony of Sohlberg’s apartment in Nordstrand looking westwards across the Kristiania Fjord (now Oslofjord). Thought to commemorate his engagement to his fiancé, the table is laid for two, the scene set as if the lovers have just departed. The sharp graphic lines of the building and balcony, with the perspective recession it provides, takes us towards the blue hills and the setting sun. Even the reflection on the windows returns us to the luminous landscape. This plays in to a northern landscape tradition of drawing our attention away from the everyday and the present, towards stillness, the immensity of space, and the eternity of the horizon.

Like his peer, Edvard Munch, Harald Sohlberg strongly denied the influence of other contemporary artists. Born in Kristiania (modern-day Oslo) in 1869, he originally trained as a decorative painter, before studying for short periods under fellow Norwegian artists including Harriet Backer, Erik Werenskiold, and Eilif Peterssen. Sohlberg then went on to attend the art school of Kristian Zahrtmann in Copenhagen, where he encountered the work of Paul Gauguin and other Symbolist and Synthetist artists.

You can see this painting on display at Dulwich Picture Gallery in London until 2 June 2019 as part of Harald Sohlberg: Painting Norway, celebrating 150 years since the artist’s birth.

P.S. You can read more about the exhibition here.

Image: Summer Night, National Museum for Art, Architecture and Design, Oslo