Sunlight

In today's featured work, a vast landscape of archipelago rocks unfolds. Low scrub covers the rocky terrain, and a bay separates the viewer's vantage point from a similar rocky landscape in the distance. Above, light clouds drift across a sky tinged pink and pale yellow.

The light is low; this is a scene of dusk or dawn. Around the turn of the last century, twilight held a central place in Nordic art. Many artists traveled to Paris, where they absorbed the influence of Impressionism and plein-air painting, working outdoors and directly before their subjects to capture fleeting moments. Nordic landscapes were often painted symbolically, as though nature held a deeper meaning, tinged with melancholy.

Charlotte Wahlström, the artist behind this painting, was part of this movement. She also traveled to Paris and absorbed the new artistic currents there. She trained at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm from 1878 to 1883, just over a decade after the Academy first opened its doors to women in 1864. She was among the first generation of women in the late 19th century to pursue art as a profession, and in France she spent an extended period at the artists' colony in Barbizon. Highly successful in her career, she received numerous prizes and grants and exhibited widely across Europe (and several times in the United States). She worked closely within the circle of Anna Boberg and Hilma af Klint, exhibiting alongside them at the Theosophical Society.

P.S. Here are 10 Nordic women artists you should know! You can check out our postcard sets full of other amazing women artists in the DailyArt Shop!