Abstract

During the 19th century, several dozen painters trained in Germany turned away from the traditional trip to Italy and travelled to Norway instead. The Hardangerfjord and Sognefjord were their main destinations. Focusing on landscape painters such as Louis Gurlitt (trained in Hamburg and Copenhagen), Hans Fredrik Gude, and Georg Saal (both trained in Düsseldorf), we demonstrate how the idea of the sublime North was reshaped by the experience of the Norwegian landscapes and challenged by how these landscapes were received. The prejudiced yet striking words written by August Strindberg and the German art historian Richard Muther about the »grandiose« landscape paintings of the 1830s and 1840s force us to reconsider them. The effects of scale, panoramic views and the virtuosity of the brush then emerge as some of the resources that enabled Gurlitt, Gude and Saal to recast their experience of the Norwegian landscape in the dimensions of an easel painting, even if it meant abandoning the most anticipated mechanisms of the sublime.