Personal landscapes

Kitty L. Kielland was one of Norway's foremost landscape painters, and her entire artistic work was closely linked to nature – especially to the open and weathered landscape of Jæren. No other artist has depicted this area with such deep empathy and understanding, through personal interpretations of Jæren's horizons, colors and light. Kielland remains a pioneer in Norwegian outdoor painting.

It was not until adulthood, at the age of 29, that Kielland was allowed to begin her formal art education. She travelled to Karlsruhe to study under the landscape painter Hans Gude and later continued her development through studies and work in both Germany and France. In her encounter with various artistic directions, especially realism and later currents such as neo-impressionism, she developed her own evocative and poetic style – one that always had nature's distinctive character as its starting point. In the 1870s, she began working with open-air painting in Jæren, and this was to become a lifelong artistic and personal connection. One area that became particularly important to her was the Wiig farm, where she often painted.

In From Wiig 1895 is an example of the evocative landscape that became Kielland's signature. The motif shows a sunny and warm summer day with haystacks neatly placed over a field. In this motif, Kielland had also painted two figures in the process of gathering the hay. Half of the painting's composition consists of a slightly cloudy sky, which gives the painting an early modernist expression. The viewer is on level with the surroundings, that makes the motif feel close and real. The landscape is elongated and flat, with some swaying rock formations far in the distance. The strong summer sun drying the hay, the dry landscape and the golden colors of the painting distinguish this Wiig-motif from the bright green, mysterious and melancholic landscapes that we also associate with Kielland. In many ways, her landscape motifs were as faceted as her own personality. Kielland was critical of superficial art and valued what she called genuine elegance – an expression she associated with honesty, authenticity and personal depth. Her landscape paintings became not only depictions of external nature, but also of an artist's heartfelt and respectful encounter with the surrounding landscape.