Midsummer Night Gudmund Stenersen

Stenersen initially only painted in his free time. Then, he studied in Paris under Léon Bonnat and Fernand Cormon, a celebrated history painter of the Paris Salon. Stenersen went to Italy in 1893 to learn more and after that he travelled to Munich
and London. In the following year he settled in Stavanger and joined the Jær painters’ colony. He painted portraits of many of the prominent figures of his time but was also successful as an illustrator of books and a lithographer. However, he earned himself a name mainly with his landscapes painted in a naturalist style. By the end of the nineteenth century, landscape painting had evolved into an important tool in the Scandinavian countries’ striving for national autonomy. Although the majority of painters mastered the foundations of painting in Munich and Paris along with the new painting styles and techniques, upon returning
to their respective homelands it was the rugged mountain ranges, sprawling pine forests, glaciers, fjords, and everyday life that served as the primary source of inspiration for their depictions.
Saint John’s Eve or Midsummer Night was a popular theme among Norwegian painters at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries. Celebrating a living tradition, people lit bonfires on the shortest night of the year to keep away evil, diseases, and witches. Like many others, Gudmund Stenersen depicted scenes of merrymaking people gathered around fires at
the summer solstice in several of his paintings. His composition executed in 1895 was met with great success. It was displayed at the 1898 spring exhibition in Budapest and the 1900 Paris Exposition Universelle, and it won the gold medal
at the Munich exhibition in 1901. Stenersen’s painting subjected to the 1906 International Winter Exhibition in the Műcsarnok (Kunsthalle) in Budapest also treated the theme of the summer solstice and demonstrated its maker’s confidence in combining elements of genre and landscape painting. Five merry youths are shown in the foreground watching a fire across the river, its smoke
lingering over the beautiful mountainous landscape, and a boatman by the riverbank is ready to set off. The use of blue and blue-green tones lend the scene
a mystical atmosphere. The painting was purchased by the Hungarian government from the Budapest exhibition of 1906 along with other important works, which have been treasured as outstanding pieces in the Scandinavian material Museum of Fine Arts.

Anett Somodi