SKOGSTAD ▲ Christa Zaat

Christa Zaat



Eilif Peterssen (Norwegian painter) 1852 - 1928
Sommerdag, Utsikt over Dalen ved Skogstad (Summer Day, View of the Valley at Skogstad), 1902
signed and dated Eilif Peterssen / 1902 l.r.
oil on canvas
113 x 97 cm. (44.5 x 38.25 in.)
private collection

Catalogue Note Sotheby's
Summer Day is a testimony of Peterssen's position at the forefront of the development of Nordic landscape painting. The translucent light of the rich green valley where Peterssen started spending his summers in 1901 embues the composition with an optimistic warmth and well-being.
Executed some years after Peterssen returned from France, the present work combines the spontaneity and bright colours of Impressionism with a provincial motif that celebrates the innocent rustic charm of summers spent in the Norwegian valleys. Layered with national pride and the promise of regeneration through the two young boys in the foreground, the work is reminiscent of Skredsvig's elegaic The Boy with the Willow (fig. 1), and recalls the nuances Peterssen first explored in his painting Summer Night of 1886.
By the time the present painting was executed the emigration of many Norwegians to North America had already made a great impression upon Norway's towns and countryside. This drift to the New World had a significant effect on contemporary literature and art. Bought directly from the artist by a Norwegian émigré living in Wisconsin, Summer Day provided a poignant expression of the simple values and healthy lifestyle that the first owners had left behind.
Peterssen returned many times to this motif in years to come, though never was his execution again quite so refined and poignantly balanced.