The lake

About the original:

Prince Eugen was a landscape painter, and he often took his motifs from the cultural landscape around Stockholm and Mälaren or from Scania. In Sweden in the 1890s, the prince became an important advocate of mood painting, which was also practiced by his Norwegian painter friends Eilif Peterssen, Frits Thaulow and Erik Werenskiold.

In Innsjøen, the hilly landscape of Balingsta spreads out with fields, forests and manor buildings. Lake Orlången, without a ripple on the surface, dominates the quiet evening scenery. The new moon, which is reflected in the water mirror, suggests that night is approaching, and light has come into the windows of the big house. In the mood painting of neo-romanticism at the turn of the last century, the painters allowed the details to merge into uniform surfaces. Here, Prins Eugen allows the relatively coarse-meshed canvas to correspond with a rather dry and grainy color treatment. In the shade of the trees, patches of yellow and blue create an optical effect, which especially excites Swedes:

"I don't understand that you can paint with colors other than blue and yellow. It does give a foretaste of bliss, but then there are also the complementary colours. Good calm to have a scientific education!” (Prince Eugen in letter to Helena Nyblom, September 1892.)

Text: Frode Haverkamp

From "Highlights. Art from Antiquity to 1945", The National Museum 2014, ISBN 978-82-8154-084-2

Date: 1891

Other titles: The Lake (ENG)

Designation: Painting

Material and technique: Oil on canvas

Technique: Oil

Material: Canvas

Dimensions: H 60 cm x W 201 cm

Subject: Visual arts

Classification: 532 - Visual arts

Type of motif: Landscape

Acquisition: Gift 1892

Inventory no.: NG.M.00713

Part of exhibition: The dance of life. The collection from antiquity to 1950, 2011 - 2019

Registration level: Single object

Owner and collection: The National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, Visual Art Collections

Photo: Larsen, Frode