Why have I never heard of the Norwegian artist Nikolai Astrup, despite having spent a summer in Bergen, Norway? Born in 1880 in the municipality of Jolster, 200 km north of Bergen, Nikolai Astrup lived his entire life in this scenic part of Western Norway painting the natural world around him. These thoughts came to mind as I recently visited the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Mass. “Nikolai Astrup: Visions of Norway” is the first special exhibit since Covid. Even more noteworthy is the fact that it is the first time this artist’s work has ever been exhibited in North America.
“If only we saw the world in our youth with the wisdom we attain with age,” I thought to myself, as I walked slowly through the Astrup exhibit remembering a long ago travel experience. I was 23 the summer I lived with a Norwegian family on the rural outskirts of Bergen. Unprepared for the culture, language, and history of where I was going, my job was to keep track of a group of American students on a summer abroad program. Norwegian was a difficult language, and young Norwegians, unlike American teenagers, liked hiking and being outdoors. So the most frequent question my high school “charges” asked was, “Where is the nearest mall?”
I hadn’t thought about that summer for decades, until I saw Nikolai Astrup’s paintings. It was then, that I remembered the breathtaking mountains, forests, bodies of water, simple farm buildings, wooden houses and small churches and gardens in Western Norway. Painting with bold thick brush strokes on large canvases draws you in just as the real landscape does. Astrup painted what he saw around him in a place he lived his entire life, often creating the same scenes during different seasons, times of day, perspectives and angles. He could look at a familiar view and see something different every time. This is what makes his paintings charming and almost mesmerizing.
Much more can be said about Astrup and what influenced him throughout his artistic life, but I have learned that he is the most well-known artist in Norway even though he died almost 100 years ago. Norwegian homes have prints of Astrup paintings on their walls.
Now that 85 of his works are being exhibited at the Clark, he is bound to become known outside his homeland. I, on the other hand, am struck by the desire to return to Norway. Fifty years later, I know I would look at the landscape differently as Astrup did in his paintings, and I would visit the Bergen Art Museum, something that was definitely left off our Norwegian itinerary the summer I lived there so long ago.
.
