Winter

Thorvald Erichsen was among the Norwegian painters who absorbed Post-Impressionist colour through direct contact with French painting, and his 'Winter,' painted in 1901, applies this enriched palette to the Nordic winter landscape—a subject with deep roots in Scandinavian national romanticism. The Norwegian winter, with its compressed daylight, blue shadows on snow, and bare tree silhouettes against pale sky, had been painted by Dahl, Tidemand, and Munthe as assertions of national identity. Erichsen brought a modern chromatic sensibility to this inherited subject. The National Museum in Oslo holds the work.

Erichsen's winter palette exploits the distinctive colour qualities of Nordic snow—the blue-violet shadows, the warm yellow of low winter sun, the greys of overcast skies—with Post-Impressionist directness. The composition likely emphasises the horizontal quietude of a snow-covered landscape.