Flowery Meadow at Veierland

Munch found this scene during one of the family’s many summer trips to the western shore of Kristianiafjord in the 1880s. In the summer of 1887, they rented a house on the island of Veierland. The picture has been described as “a small masterpiece, a richly coloured nocturnal landscape” from Munch’s early years (Eggum 1991). The composition is formed around a high horizon that gives spatial depth. Technically, it shows that Munch was experimenting with new approaches to painting. The use of the upright format is rare in his landscapes, although the moon and moonlight would become a recurrent theme in the decades that followed, albeit in much larger formats.

The depiction of moonlight and the mellow twilight of midsummer nights aligns this work with other contemporary Nordic landscapes. At the National Annual Autumn Exhibition in 1886, the year before Munch painted his Flower Meadow at Veierland, established artists including Kitty Kielland, Eilif Peterssen and Christian Skredsvig exhibited paintings inspired by their summer sojourn at Fleskum Farm in Bærum. The Fleskum paintings represented something new that encouraged a greater emphasis on atmosphere in Norwegian landscape art. Munch’s picture can be seen in conjunction with this kind of neo-romantic shift.

The painting is neither signed nor dated, but the place name in the title corroborates the date attribution. X-ray photography has revealed one or more earlier compositions beneath the visible work. The picture was shown at Munch’s first solo exhibition at the Studentersamfundet (Students’ Association) in 1889, under the title Sommeraften på Veirland (Summer Evening at Veirland). When it appeared in the Munch exhibition at the National Gallery in 1927, it bore the title Blomstereng på Veideland (Flower Meadow at Veideland). The painting was gifted to the National Gallery by Customs Inspector Jacob Woxen in 1921, and in the museum’s supplementary record it is listed as Blomstereng (Flower Meadow).

Vibeke Waallann Hansen The text was first published in Edvard Munch in the National Museum. A comprehensive overview (Oslo: National Museum, 2022).

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