Haymaking, Vik at Stange

Munthe's 'Haymaking, Vik at Stange' of 1884 documents the central summer activity of Norwegian agriculture — the cutting, drying, and storing of hay that would feed livestock through the long Norwegian winter. Stange is a municipality in Hedmark, in the broad agricultural valley of Mjøsa, Norway's largest lake, where the flat fertile farmland supported extensive hay cultivation. Haymaking subjects had a long history in European painting, from the Dutch seventeenth-century tradition through Constable and Millet to the Impressionist painters — but Munthe's treatment brings the specific character of Norwegian agricultural practice and landscape to a familiar European genre. By 1884 Munthe was five years into his post-German career in Norway, still working in a naturalist vein while beginning to absorb the decorative and symbolic influences that would transform his art in the later 1880s. The haymakers' labor — scything, raking, turning, loading — is observed with the attention to specific physical practice that characterizes the best agricultural genre painting. The summer light and the particular landscape of the Mjøsa valley give this a recognizable Norwegian character.

The haymaking subject challenges Munthe to capture the specific quality of Norwegian summer light — brighter and more directional than the autumn and winter subjects he also favored — and the warm palette of cut hay, summer grass, and blue sky. Figures in motion through the field create rhythmic compositional interest.