Winter night in the mountains

Harald Sohlberg painted several versions of this Norwegian mountain scene, and he called it the most Norwegian painting ever made. The subject is the Rondane mountain range, glowing pale blue under a night sky, with a single bright star hanging above the peaks. Sohlberg first saw this view while out skiing in 1899, and the image stayed with him for years. He kept returning to it, reworking the composition again and again until he finished this large version in 1914.

The bare trees in the foreground stand like dark silhouettes against the luminous snow, framing the mountains behind them. There are no people and no cabins, just the cold shapes of the land under starlight. Sohlberg worked in a style connected to symbolism, where a landscape carries feeling and meaning rather than simply recording a place. The star above the mountains has led some viewers to see the painting as spiritual, almost like a private moment of awe. Today it is one of the best loved paintings in Norway, and in 1995 it was voted the country's national painting.