View from Bærum

Gerhard Munthe's View from Bærum (1886) depicts the landscape of Bærum — the municipality west of Oslo that stretches from the city's suburbs to the pastoral hills of the Oslofjord region. Munthe was based in the Oslo area and documented its surrounding landscape with consistent naturalist attention. The Bærum view would capture the specific character of the Oslo region's landscape — the rolling hills, the farmsteads interspersed with woodland, the Oslofjord visible in the distance — rendered with the careful observation of a committed Norwegian landscape painter.

The Bærum view is handled with naturalistic observation appropriate to the pastoral subject. The specific colors and atmosphere of the Oslo region landscape — the cool greens of Norwegian summer foliage, the grey-blue of the sky, the distant silver of the fjord — are rendered with Munthe's developing naturalist skill. His composition uses the elevated viewpoint to organize the landscape into receding planes, a classic approach that shows his understanding of landscape spatial construction.