After the Rain, motif from Eidsvold

This 1883 canvas depicting the landscape around Eidsvold after rain is held at the Statens Museum for Kunst in Copenhagen, indicating it entered a Danish rather than Norwegian collection — reflecting the porous cultural exchange between the two nations that remained closely linked by history and artistic tradition throughout the nineteenth century. Eidsvold, on Lake Mjøsa north of Oslo, had deep nationalist significance for Norwegians as the site of the Constitutional Assembly of 1814, where Norway's constitution was signed. A landscape painting of this place carries an implicit patriotic dimension even without direct historical reference. The after-rain condition — the specific atmosphere of post-storm clearance, with fresh washed light, glistening surfaces, and dramatic skies — was among the most prized atmospheric effects in naturalist painting, associated with the French painter Barbizon school and its Scandinavian followers. The 1883 date places this in Munthe's naturalist prime.

After-rain landscapes require careful management of the transition between wet and dry surfaces: puddles and glistening ground reflect sky light, while shadowed areas under trees retain moisture in a different way than open ground. Munthe renders the specific quality of freshly washed air — the increased transparency of the atmosphere, the heightened colour saturation — through clean, relatively bright colour relationships.