The viewer looks out from a snowy height over a winter landscape on the outskirts of the capital. In the foreground to the right is a group of tenement houses and a walled courtyard with some smaller buildings. Streetlights and lighted windows shine in the dark. In the middle ground there is a stretch of flatter land, perhaps an ice-covered bay. Farther on in the picture the land rises again. There are a few scattered houses and farms in the distance, and the horizon is picked out by the silhouette of a dark forest. The deep blue of the evening sky is reflected in the snow.
This was a time when many artists were fascinated by the growth of the city. They returned repeatedly to the urban periphery. They liked to depict the illuminated city with its gas street lighting and electric light. Nordström’s painting shows us the line between town and country, but also a more ill-fated boundary drawn between civilization and the wilds beyond.
Kristoffer Arvidsson from The Collection Gothenburg Museum of Art, Gothenburg 2014
