Kringen i Gudbrandsdalen 1787 - 1870

Curator: Today we’re looking at “Kringen i Gudbrandsdalen,” a work by Johannes Flintoe completed sometime between 1787 and 1870. The piece is composed using watercolor and gouache, giving it a distinctive character. Editor: It has a muted, almost ethereal quality. The colours are very restrained; there is a soft focus as it looks out at that sweeping river bend surrounded by the mountain ridge. Curator: It really captures the essence of Romanticism, doesn’t it? Landscape painting became very popular during this period as an embodiment of a collective desire to be close to nature. We are talking here of a sense of national and cultural identity bound to an actual place. What do you see in that, though, as related to materials? Editor: The layering of watercolor is so delicate here, almost giving the impression of sediment slowly deposited over vast amounts of time. You see that granular effect that Flintoe accomplishes, that slow building up of earth as the product of the river. You also can trace an evolution in labor as a lone figure appears upon a recently etched passage along the land's surface. Curator: True. He gives an insight into his present in the mountains. That red cap gives me a sort of key. Editor: Absolutely. His careful depiction of light – you can practically feel the cool mountain air. There are also symbolic contrasts—nature, untouched, wild. Curator: Nature becomes almost a character here. I mean, look at the curve of that bend. In folklore, rivers were thought to have held immense, at times even spiritual, powers. What would you say is nature in the history of art? Editor: Certainly. Landscape offered not just pretty pictures. Here you almost grasp what’s being physically crafted—not just in terms of land and soil and river, but artistic processes. The building, breaking, transporting, eroding, making into something else altogether is just wonderful! Curator: I agree; viewing it through both lenses deepens its impact considerably. Editor: Yes, I am just now struck by how Flintoe is drawing the viewer in on the processes of both painting and geological metamorphosis!