About this work
A single figure — a woman, small against the breadth of the western Norwegian landscape — stands within the farmstead of Sandalstrand on the steep southern shore of Lake Jølster. The scene is bathed in sunlight, but the weather is about to change: dark clouds are approaching over the mountains in the background.
To the left, the composition reveals Gamlestova (the old cottar's cabin), Kjøkkenstova (the kitchen cabin), and løa (the barn) — the cluster of historic wooden structures Astrup had rescued from demolition and assembled on this precipitous hillside. The palette is characteristic of his late output: heightened, slightly unreal, with the mountain ridges pressing down toward a high horizon and the flat gleam of the lake below. The woman — almost certainly Engel, Astrup's wife, who appeared in a number of his paintings from Astruptunet and the vicarage garden at Ålhus — anchors the composition without dominating it, a human presence measured against the scale of mountain, water, and sky.
After his return to Jølster, Astrup and his wife Engel Sunde Astrup settled on a farmstead perched on a precipitous north-facing slope above the lake, which came to be known as Sandalstrand. Plagued by financial difficulties and self-doubt, Astrup nevertheless transformed this land into a small farm and garden capable of sustaining his family.
Surrounded by untamed mountains and Lake Jølster, the carefully planned complex at Sandalstrand, with its dramatic views across the lake, would become an artist's garden, the components of which provided Astrup with the subject matter through which he developed his own modern aesthetic. The Sandalstrand motif was one he returned to obsessively across media: Astrup made several woodcut versions with variations on the motif, and he also used the woodblock as part of the process in creating this painting. The motif is a mirror image, and the mountains, which are actually situated west of Sandalstrand, have now ended up in the east — one possible explanation being that Astrup may have drawn the motif directly on the woodblock, which, when printed, produced a mirror image. This interplay between printmaking and painting is central to understanding how Astrup saw the world: not as a fixed view, but as a felt place, rebuilt each time from memory and mark.
This is a painting that rewards a room with natural light and a long wall — somewhere the
