Fra Mosvannsparken

Fra Mosvannsparken (From Mosvannsparken) — Mosvannet is a lake and park in central Stavanger, Kielland's home city — represents her engagement with the urban and suburban landscape near her own community, rather than the remote Jæren bogs or French locations that dominate her oeuvre. Painted in 1878, this panel work is an early example of her landscape practice before her Paris years fully transformed her approach. Mosvannet park was a public green space within walking distance of the city centre, and choosing it as a subject connected Kielland to a tradition of artists painting the accessible, familiar landscape within reach of their studios rather than seeking out spectacular or remote scenery. The Stavanger Museum's holding of this work is appropriate: it is a painting of a Stavanger location by Stavanger's most significant artist. The panel support suggests a more intimate, study-like approach consistent with her painting practice at this early career stage.

The panel support gives this early landscape a more intimate physical character than canvas, with paint sitting on the rigid wood surface in a manner that allows fine handling of detail. The park landscape — water, paths, and possibly trees — would have provided Kielland with the same problems of sky-reflection in water and the relationship between open space and framing vegetation that characterised her later bog paintings.