At Sunset

Painted in 1895, this canvas depicting a scene at sunset is held by the Gothenburg Museum of Art, extending Johansen's Swedish institutional presence alongside the Tyresö moonrise of 1905. Sunset as a subject occupied a long tradition in European landscape painting, from the luminous skies of Claude Lorrain through the Romantic atmospheric painting of Turner and Friedrich to the Impressionist engagement with specific moments of colour transformation. For Johansen, sunset provided a natural counterpart to his studies of interior lamplight — both required mastering the warm, directional, emotionally charged quality of light at extremes. The 1895 date places this work in Johansen's mature period, when his technical command was fully developed and his interest in light as the primary subject of painting was firmly established. Swedish collections' acquisition of his work reflects the broader Scandinavian cultural unity that allowed Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish painters to move and exhibit freely across national borders.

The sunset scene demanded Johansen's most saturated palette, with warm reds, oranges, and golds in the sky contrasting with the cooler, darkening tones of the landscape below. The transition zone where sky meets land or water required the most careful colour management, and Johansen handles this with the confidence of a painter accustomed to working with complex light conditions.