Norwegian Mountain Landscape 1819

Johan Christian Dahl created this “Norwegian Mountain Landscape” using oil paints. Oil paint has a wonderful capacity to capture light and atmosphere, and here it does just that. Dahl coaxes a whole world out of a limited palette of browns and greens. This gives the artwork a very particular mood: solemn, but also inviting. Think about the artist’s labor as you look closely at the painting. He had to mix and prepare his colors meticulously. The building of the painting's surface would have taken many hours. This is a very different kind of labor from, say, quarrying the stone that makes up the mountain itself, but is labor nonetheless, tied to the wider economy of art production and consumption. Looking closely at the materiality of this painting, and the making process behind it, helps us appreciate the layers of meaning that it holds. It’s so much more than just a pretty view.