Karl Nordström was the Swedish plein-air painter who went furthest in adopting Impressionism, with heightened colours and fluid brushwork. In March 1882, he visited the Impressionist exhibition in Paris, and was deeply struck by Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Alfred Sisley. Christian Krohg was another source of inspiration.
One of the most Impressionist of his paintings from his years in France was Garden in Grez, a view of the kitchen garden from a window in the Pension Laurent in Grez, where Nordström was staying. Grez-sur-Loing is a village not far south of Paris, where at this time there was an international artists’ colony that was particularly popular with Swedish artists. Nordström’s garden is bathed in strong sunlight, which casts blue shadows. The pastose painting with broad, short brushstrokes contributes to the impression of flickering light. Plants climb up a white wall, seen dramatically foreshortened on the left of the picture. The garden plot is divided by a path leading from the right corner towards the middle, and ending in a gate onto the river. On the garden path stands a man in shorts and a straw hat, a watering can in his hand. Further into the picture we glimpse a woman.
The motif is mundane, without literary quality. In order to create as believable an impression as possible, Nordström has departed from a number of painterly conventions of composition and lighting. The picture has a vertical format, unlike traditional landscape painting. The painting is characterized by small shifts in tone, without half-tones. Like an Impressionist like Monet, Nordström creates contrasts by boosting the colours and setting cool against warm. Leaving behind the nineteenth century’s narrative paintings, we have left the studio, with its props, for a prosaic reality that bombards our senses with impressions.
Kristoffer Arvidsson from The Collection Gothenburg Museum of Art, Gothenburg 2014
