Peat Bog at Jæren

Gloomy, grey clouds hang heavy over the flat terrain of the Jæren landscape, casting a pall on the bog below. The sky’s presence is intensified by the reflection of the clouds in the water and by the white cotton-grass, whose soft, round shapes resemble cloudlets.

In the background we can make out a person with a horse and cart; they seem small, almost insignificant. Around them lie black heaps of peat cut from the bog, silent testimony of both the local population’s toil and the bog’s utility.

Kitty Kielland, born in Stavanger, is most famous for her depictions of Jæren. Her paintings of this flat landscape won her lasting acclaim as one of the most distinguished landscape painters of the late 1880s. Her style is partially rooted in realism’s matterof- fact depiction of visible reality, but it also conveys a wistful, lyrical atmosphere and a symbolism that was typical of the neoromanticism of the 1890s, a movement she helped develop.

Kielland is regarded as the first major female landscape artist in Norway. Contemporary female artists eschewed landscapes in favour of subjects that were deemed more appropriate for women, such as portraits, still lifes, and interiors. Kielland’s atmospheric depictions of the Jæren landscape represented a break from this tradition.

In addition to her noteworthy career as a painter, she was also a vociferous advocate of women’s rights and was a co-founder of the Norwegian Association for Women’s Rights.