A single fire standing in a dark valley
First, picture a painting. At the bottom of a deep valley, an enormous pillar of fire blazes upward. The flames illuminate the surrounding mountains and the figures of the gathered people, flickering in contrast with the darkness. This is Nikolai Astrup's "Midsummer Eve Bonfire." Depicting the bonfire lit on the eve of St. John's feast, a tradition passed down in the valley of Jølster in western Norway, this work was begun in 1912 and completed in 1926 — a major work of his later years, it took as long as fourteen years to finish.[3,4]
Summers in the northern country are short, and even the nights never fully sink into deep darkness. It feels as though the fire symbolizes the life-force of that brief season. Surely I am not the only one who sees, in the flickering flames and the rising smoke, the breath of something hidden within nature.[3]
The painter who never left the valley
Astrup was born in southern Norway in 1880, and from 1883 grew up in a village by Lake Jølster, where his father served as a pastor. In 1895 he was sent to Trondheim to enter a theological school, but there he began frequenting museums and encountered the works of modern painters. Not the path of theology, but the path of painting. In 1899 he studied at the painting school of the female painter Harriet Backer in Christiania, honing his skills.[1,4]
Yet he did not remain in the capital. In 1902 he returned to his native Jølster, and from then on placed the source of his creativity in this land. Jølster was a long, narrow valley surrounded by high mountains, a place where a traditional way of life remained, its dialect and culture rooted in Old Norse. Astrup defined his own art as something deeply rooted in a particular land, and is said to have denied any direct influence from other painters or contemporary movements. One is tempted to call him the painter who clung to his valley.[4,6]
Encountering Hokusai in Paris
Even he had a period when he ventured out into the wider world. From 1901 to the following year, with the support of an art collector, he studied under Christian Krohg at the Académie Colarossi in Paris. During this study abroad, he researched the works of Henri Rousseau, Maurice Denis, Paul Gauguin, and Katsushika Hokusai. He became familiar with the woodcuts of Western painters such as Gauguin, and in Christiania he also observed Edvard Munch at work.[4,6]
In time, Astrup came to be regarded, alongside Munch, as a pioneer of modern woodblock printing in Norway. His printing blocks were made mainly of alder, and were printed using a "Japanese method" of rubbing the back of the paper with the hand or a piece of wood, without a press. He applied oil paint directly to the block, and after printing added further colouring with a brush; for this reason each piece has a different expression, and he himself is said to have described them as "closer to painting than to prints." The woodblock print "Foxgloves" required precision in its multicolour printing and exact placement of the paper, and printing just a few copies is said to have taken more than two months. Munch, too, valued his prints highly, buying three, including "Head of a Boy." In this exhibition held in Japan, please do turn your attention to this woodblock work.[4,6]
The garden, another work
In late 1906, Astrup met Engel Anderssdotter Sunde in a room of a farm, and married her the following year, 1907. From 1913 he moved to Sandalstrand on the opposite shore of the lake, cultivating it as a self-sufficient farm. Together with his wife, he cut the steep slope into terraces and reconstructed old log cabins into a "tun," the form of a traditional settlement.[4,6]
This garden itself was his work. He pruned trees into troll-like shapes, created spaces called "grottos" inspired by Japanese and English gardens, and, fixing his viewpoint within the garden, painted the scenery visible from there in some twenty-two paintings. His 1925 "Spring in Jølster" depicts the Sandalstrand farm he built with his wife. "Rhubarb" depicts a scene of picking rhubarb, and "Spring Night in the Garden" depicts flowerbeds of black soil surrounded by trees, with the lake spreading out behind them. In "Spring Evening in Jølster," the figure of his wife Engel is painted in. Here, life, farm work, and painting feel inseparably bound together.[4,6]
Taking time to grasp the light
"Midsummer Eve Bonfire" took fourteen years, and "Rhubarb," too, was continuously worked on over a long period from 1911 to 1921. Astrup rarely dated his works, which suggests he was a painter who spent much time facing a single canvas. He also left oil paintings on spring subjects, such as "The White Horse in Spring" of 1910.[4,6]
The painter who never left the valley returned to his homeland carrying the techniques he had learned in Paris, and went on painting the garden he had built himself and the summer nights — please do trace that line at the venue. The temperature of the bonfire's flames, the texture of colour laid upon washi paper — surely these are things that can only be confirmed before the actual works.
