Winter landscape: sunset

Ludwig Munthe (1841-1896) was born in Norway and became a pupil of the German artist Franz Wilhelm Schiertz (1859-1860) in Bergen from 1859 to 1860 and then in 1861 went to Düsseldorf, where he settled definitively. He also travelled in the Netherlands. His work was popular with art critics and collectors all over Europe.

This painting is a fine example of Munthe’s oeuvre essentially composed of winter landscapes dominated by grey and ochre pigments. The dramatic effect of light and subject matter are characteristic of the late Romanticism which favoured compositions dominated by a wide sky and a low, almost bare landscapes. After 1870, Munthe developed a style of his own, a form of Realism influenced by the Romantic aesthetic which is well illustrated in the present work. This painting is a typical example of the 19th-century Norwegian art under the influence of the Germanic Romanticism.