637. HELMER OSSLUND. “Autumn evening, Nordingrå”.

Oil on canvas lined on panel 100 x 166 cm. Signed Helmer Osslund.

EXHIBITIONS
Pittsburgh, Carnegie Institute, 1935.

The Nordic painter Helmer Osslund was born in 1866 in Tuna Parish, near Sundsvall in Medelpad. After matriculating, he went to the United States to return to Europe after a year. He worked as a decorator at the Gustavsberg porcelain factory and then found his vocation - painting. Before the Norse views took over his production, he was an artist who with great enthusiasm and curiosity sought inspiration in many parts of the world. He can, without exaggeration, be attributed the concept of cosmopolite. In 1894 he made an extended trip, touching down in France, Denmark, Belgium, Germany, Holland and England, among others.
Osslund again encountered the Norrland landscape in 1898 and began his life's mission. He set out on rambles, in search of perfect vantage points and eye-catchers, carrying light greaseproof paper and colour palette in his bag. He surveyed the green High Coast of Ångermanland, followed the large dark rivers inland and explored the lighter fells of Jämtland and Medelpad. In his painting, in addition to the depiction, he also managed to take advantage of the mysticism of nature, which was partly inherited from him, but which was also on the wallpaper during the romantic currents of the turn of the century. This was expressed through vistas in twilight light, dramatic color contrasts, and through decorative touches.
From the high vantage points around Nordingrå, Osslund had milswide views and the motifs could be varied infinitely and the artist never encountered the same view twice. In “Helmer Osslund” (1937), Nils Palmgren describes the artist's attraction to the Ångermanland archipelago and in particular the area at Nordingrå: “perhaps the most beautiful jewel of the Swedish-Botanic coast, distinguished by proud and wild, primordial eruptive mountains, swampy fjords and narrow, imaginative inland waters. Osslund, when he painted these areas, has played on a softer instrument than Ejest and also used a milder palette with dominants mostly in gray-blue and black-gray. Often here he has sought to capture the bright, Nordic summer night with silver streaks over the waters and golden flaps of clouds, both of which the coming day, or the late autumn evening with its muted light streams and its contrasts between dark coniferous forest and golden leaf catchment”.
The current catalogue issue “Autumn Evening, Nordingrå” demonstrates Osslund's skill at handling colours in a way that creates harmony and drama at the same time with the dark green mountains that embrace the water with their bright blue hues. The artist also skillfully shows how he plays with the perspective where in the left foreground we feel close to the motif with the hill in the foreground, and then open up the whole composition with the wonderful view that his beloved Nordingrå offers.