Svend Svendsen (1864-1945)

“It is the presentation of facts in a new dress, the reincarnation of things.” Thus one critic described the art of landscape painter Svend Svendsen (1864-1945), best known for striking images of snow-covered forests at the cusps of days in his home country of Norway. Raised in Oslo, Svendsen moved to Chicago in 1881, where he studied at the School of the Art Institute. As he began to establish himself as an artist, exhibiting frequently at the Art Institute, he returned occasionally to Norway for further inspiration for paintings that at times hovered on the cusp of tonalism, hazy palettes that danced in ever smaller circles, and at other times embraced a stark brilliance that embraced the crisp edges of things and relished the correctness of a winter sun’s pink, so precise it seemed one could trace it not just to the month or day but to a specific minute of a late January afternoon.