Forever Relevant
Harald Sohlberg is considered one of our most well-known painters. He was relatively productive, but he often created different versions of the same motif.
Duality is present in Sohlberg’s art – his images are both mystical and sobering. Still summer-night motifs describe nature’s beauty, but they can also evoke concern. His colourful paintings appeal to intuition and feelings. They take on the hidden contexts between the outer, sensible world and humans’ inner being. In many of his landscape paintings, the absence of humans is conspicuous because the paintings also contain traces of human activity, such as homes, roads and telegraph poles.
Harald Sohlberg was born in Osloand apprenticed under Sven Jørgensen, Kristian Zahrtmannin Copenhagen, Erik Werenskioldand Harriet Backer. He studied in Parisand Weimarbetween 1895 and 1897 and was quick to join the young neo-romantics who opposed everyday naturalism.
The span between traditional beliefs and modern life make his pictorial world special in both Norwegian and international contexts. His motifs and technique distinguish him from his contemporaries, but also make him unique and forever relevant.
In his famous Winter Night in Rondane(1914) – also called Winter Night in the Mountains– Sohlberg sought to give the synthesis of his intense nature experience, expressed by strict drawing and an enamel-like glaze technique that added a soft glow. The motif is undoubtedly Sohlberg’s most well-known – and he made it in several versions, including as an oil painting and a colour lithograph.
