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Eilif Peterssen
It is one of my more recent series and also my largest cycle of paintings to date (31 works) and I have called it “Dreams of a Summer Night”. I have long been an admirer of Scandinavian literature, poetry, painting, music and the culture of these nordic countries although I never considered this passion as something which could be combined with my painting until lately. The subject of many of these pictures is a response to the visual representations nature and of long northern summer nights which I found in the work of Kitty Kielland (1843 -1914), Eilif Peterssen (1852-1925), Anders Zorn (1860 -1920) and Eugène .Jansson (1862-1915) was one of the most expressive of the many “blue painters” in Swedish art of the 1890’s and whose vast panoramic views of Stockholm from Södermalm have long held a fascination for me although their influence has only appeared in my pictures since early 2006.
Sensuality and exultation are irrevocably linked with an evocation of the northern countries magical summer nights as represented through the words or images of writers, poets and painters. Other, equally fascinating sensations can be found in the paintings of the very cold, long and dark days of winter by Norwegian Harald Sohlberg (1869-1935), Sweden’s Prinz Eugen (1865-1947) and the Dane Laurits Andersen Ring (1854-1933). This relationship was commonplace in Nordic literature of the time and in the music of the early years of the twentieth century. Like many of the northern landscape painters the ideal of a deep involvement with nature and the emotions of the artist was inseparable. The essence of this I feel, can be found, from time to time, in some of my most recent pictures and was the theme which became the my main cycle of paintings in the January 2009 exhibition.
This relationship was also a commonplace in Nordic literature of the time and in the music of the early part of the twentieth century. Composers and writers, such as Ture Rangstrom (1884-1947) and August Strindberg (1849-1912), were well acquainted with the half-light of summer night,, a long-established symbol in art of Nordic longing and its mysteriously intense sense of kinship with “nature”. To many of the northern landscape painters this ideal of a deep involvement with nature and the emotions of the artist was inseparable.
More Paintings from "Dreams of a Summer Night"
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