Summer Night

A table set for a meal waits on a balcony, dressed with white cloth and red flowers, while beyond the railing a forest of dark spruce rolls down toward a pale lake and distant hills. Harald Sohlberg painted this scene in 1899, capturing the strange light of a Norwegian summer night, when the sun barely dips and the sky glows in bands of turquoise and deep blue. The season is short in that part of the world, so the long evenings carry a certain weight, and Sohlberg was fascinated by how the fading light changed the colors of the land.

Sohlberg painted the view from the veranda of a house at Nordstrand, near Oslo, where he was staying. The contrast between the human corner in the foreground, with its little table and empty chairs, and the vast wilderness beyond gives the picture its pull. The people who set that table are nowhere to be seen, which leaves you wondering where they went. Sohlberg is best known today for his mountain scenes, but this early work shows the same careful eye for the moods of the Norwegian outdoors that would define his career.