View from Vaekero near Christiania

1827

Johan Christian Dahl

Painter, Norwegian, 1788 - 1857

A man and woman stand look away from us toward a moonlit, rocky, coastal inlet with misty, midnight-blue mountains along the horizon in this shadowy, horizontal landscape painting. The sky fills the top two-thirds of the painting, and the people are small in scale against the landscape. Along the horizon, pearl-white clouds float against a lilac-purple and pale pink haze. The sky deepens to ultramarine blue above, and a band of nickel-gray clouds sweeps in across the top edge of the painting to partially obscure the bright white moon, to our right of center. The moonlight gleams on the water below, which winds around the rocky coastline and small islands dotted with trees. Closer to us, the land stretches across the lower edge of the composition. Hulking, rocky formations line the left edge of the painting, and a wooden structure with mossy growth along its roof sits to our right. Long poles lean against the building’s roof. At the lower center of the painting, the woman, to our left, links her arm through the man’s elbow. She wears a long, rust-brown dress and a broad brimmed bonnet, while he wears a dark, knee-length coat and a round cap. They stand near the water’s edge, silhouetted against the bright reflections of the soft purple and pink sky above. Out in the water but close to the shoreline, brown nets hang like slings from a line of twenty-three, irregularly spaced poles. A three-masted ship is anchored near the shore to our right. Two rowboats, one with a person inside, and a few more sailboats are pulled up along a dock beyond the ship. The artist signed and dated the painting in the lower right, “Dahl Januar 1827”.

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In 1811 Johan Christian Dahl moved from his native Bergen to Copenhagen, where the twenty-three-year-old landscape painter studied in the Academy of Fine Arts. Dahl combined an interest in Dutch seventeenth-century landscape painters such as Jacob van Ruisdael and Allart van Everdingen with the influence of the crisply observed Roman landscape views of his contemporary Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg, whose work he discovered in Copenhagen. Dahl remained a specialist in landscapes, painting open-air oil studies, finished views, and imaginary landscapes based on memory and on the work of his Dutch predecessors. In 1818 Dahl traveled south, spending two years in Dresden, where he fell under the strong influence of the German romantic landscape painter Caspar David Friedrich. At the invitation of the Danish prince Christian Frederick, Dahl traveled to Rome and Naples, where he painted oil sketches and finished views of Italian sites. In 1821 he returned to Dresden, remaining for the rest of his life and sharing a house with Friedrich. Dahl made frequent trips to Norway and Denmark, and exhibited regularly in Copenhagen.

View from Vaekerø near Christiania was painted in Dresden in January 1827, after one of Dahl's trips to Norway (he had visited Christiania, present-day Oslo, the previous summer). An annotated landscape drawing dated June 1826 survives (National Gallery, Oslo), showing the ship and nets hanging out to dry at Vaekerø. The painting is infused with a melancholy, nocturnal mood frequently found in the art of Friedrich, and the repertoire of romantic motifs--cloud-covered moon, rocky inlet, misty hills, haunting ship riding at anchor, drying nets, and the couple contemplating the nocturnal scene--can also be found in the great German painter's works. Indeed Dahl owned one of Friedrich's most characteristic and comparable landscapes, Two Men Contemplating the Moon, which he sold to the Royal Picture Gallery in Dresden in 1840. View from Vaekerø near Christiania is one of Dahl's most Friedrich-like landscapes, and as such is a highly typical example of romantic landscape painting of the Dresden school. For all that it was painted from memory, it has a remarkably fresh feeling for nature, especially in the subtle effects of light modulated by clouds, mist, and reflections. It was commissioned from Dahl by the Hamburger Kunstverein, an artists' cooperative and exhibiting society in Hamburg, Germany, where it was exhibited in 1827 and purchased by a Norwegian collector, Jacob All.

(Text by Philip Conisbee, published in the National Gallery of Art exhibition catalogue, Art for the Nation, 2000)

On View

West Building Main Floor, Gallery 91


Artwork overview

  • Medium

    oil on canvas

  • Credit Line

    Patrons' Permanent Fund

  • Dimensions

    overall: 60.5 x 96.5 cm (23 13/16 x 38 in.)
    framed: 77 x 112.4 x 9.5 cm (30 5/16 x 44 1/4 x 3 3/4 in.)

  • Accession

    1999.99.1


Artwork history & notes

Provenance

Commissioned by the Hamburger Kunstverein, Hamburg;[1] Jacob Aall, Nes, Norway; (his sale, 1845, no. 15); N.H. Aall, in 1888; P. Sonstehagen, Oslo, before 1920; Mrs. Cappelen, Ulefoss, Norway; Mrs. Lovenskiold, Vaekero;[2] Christian Blich, Oslo; purchased 22 October 1999 through (Jean-François Heim, Paris) by NGA.
[1] The Hamburger Kunstverein was an artists' cooperative and exhibition society, a type of promotional society for artists popular at the time.
[2] The provenance is taken from Marie Lodrup Bang, Johan Christian Dahl 1788-1857: Life and Works, 3 vols., Oslo, 1987: 2:182, no. 542. N.H. Aall lent the painting to the 1888 commemorative exhibition of Dahl's work. P. Sonstehagen is given as the owner of the painting in Andreas Aubert, Maleren Johan Christian Dahl. Et stykke av forrige Aarhundredes Kunst och Kulturhistorie, Kristiania, 1920.

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1888

  • Commemorative Exhibition, Christiania (now Oslo) Kunstforening, Norway, 1888, no. 41.

  • Johan Christian Dahl 1788-1857: Jubileumsutstilling 1988, Nasjonalgalleriet, Oslo; Bergen Billedgalleri, 1988, no. 105, repro.

1988

  • Johan Christian Dahl 1788-1857: Ein Malerfreund Caspar David Friedrichs, Neue Pinakothek, Munich, 1988-1989, no. 65, repro.

1999

  • Cosmos: From Romanticism to the Avant-garde, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Montréal; Centro de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona; Palazzo Grassi, Venice, 1999-2000, not in cat. (shown only in Venice).

2000

  • Art for the Nation: Collecting for a New Century, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 2000-2001, unnumbered catalogue, repro.

2001

  • Casper David Friedrich: Moonwatchers, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2001, no. 13, repro.

2014

  • Dahl and Friedrich : Romantic Landscapes, Nasjonalmuseet for Kunst, Arkitektur og Design, Oslo; Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, 2014-2015, no. 60, repro.

Bibliography

1987

  • Bang, Marie Lodrup. Johan Christian Dahl 1788-1857: Life and Works. 3 vols. Oslo, 1987: no. 542, repro.

Inscriptions

lower right: Dahl Januar 1827

Wikidata ID

Q20185615


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