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If you had to show someone who’d never seen or felt snow an image that came closest to capturing the experience, you might rightly offer them an oil painting by Svend Svendsen. The Norwegian-born landscape painter drew admiration and awe with his winter scenes — still air, crisp footprints, the drama of a birch’s shadow or the heightened glow of an orange sunset spilling over a forest floor blanketed white [cue Norwegian Wood]. Summer Evening, then, is a somewhat unusual work for Svendsen. Created in 1893, two years before he won the Young Fortnightly Club competition that gained him recognition in Chicago and beyond, Summer Evening is notable for its aberrations of both season and medium. The haze and bleed inherent to watercolor lends itself to the verdant humidity of a midsummer gloaming. The darkness of the painting’s bottom half forces the eye to adjust to the low light, as it might on an actual summer eve, trying to pick out forms as the sun’s last breath remains perpetually poised to fade into night. It blends the impressionism of fellow Norwegian painter Fritz Thaulow, an early influence on Svendsen, with a degree of sublime romanticism typical to many landscape paintings of the mid to late-1800s. First exhibited with the Chicago Society of Artists, we’re pretty lucky to have this work at all. Had Svendsen submitted it just a year prior, the piece would more than likely have gone up in the flames that consumed the majority of CSA’s 1892 exhibition at the Atheneum Building. But that particular arrow of fate missed Svendsen, whose painted summer was allowed to turn to fall, then winter and winter and winter. If you’re looking to bring a little warmth into your home as the degrees in Chicago dip lower and the snowfall starts to add up, Svendsen’s intimate, transporting summer scene might be just the ticket. Get in touch here to talk with us about adding this piece to your collection.
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