Fritz Lindström - The Plain near Väsby, Skåne, 1917

Fritz Lindström (1874–1962) Sweden

The Plain near Väsby, Skåne, 1917

signed with monogram and dated lower left “FL -17”
oil on board
unframed 34 × 49.5 cm (13.4 × 19.5 in)
framed 45 × 60.5 cm (17.7 × 23.8 in)

Provenance: 
A private south Swedish collection 

Exhibition:
Lindström exhibited in Helsingborg in 1917. Given the date of the present work and its local subject, it is possible that the painting was included in that exhibition.

Essay:
Painted in 1917, The Plain near Väsby, Skåne belongs to an especially interesting period in Fritz Lindström’s landscape painting, when he worked repeatedly in northwestern Skåne. Other surviving works from the same year depict the coast at Kullen, demonstrating his sustained engagement with the landscape around Höganäs and the Kulla Peninsula.

The present painting turns away from the dramatic coastline and instead looks inland towards the broad agricultural plain surrounding Väsby, a village situated just east of Höganäs. The landscape is characteristic of Kullaslätten, the low and comparatively flat cultivated terrain that extends across the southern part of the peninsula. Here, the horizon is low and distant, allowing the enormous sky to dominate the composition.

A stone wall stretches horizontally across the foreground, interrupting the open fields and creating a strong structural division within the painting. Beyond it lies an expanse of luminous green, punctuated only by distant trees and farm buildings. The simplicity of the terrain gives the sky an almost monumental importance.

Above the plain, enormous clouds rise in successive masses of white, pale violet, blue and grey. They seem to build rapidly across the horizon, suggesting unsettled weather and perhaps an approaching storm. Lindström gives these clouds a physical presence through broad, rhythmic brushwork. They are not a passive background but the principal dramatic element of the composition.

This sensitivity to atmosphere was central to Lindström’s landscape painting. Born in Stockholm in 1874, he studied at Konstnärsförbundets school under Richard Bergh and at Valand under Carl Larsson before continuing his studies in Copenhagen and Paris. In 1903 he settled near Lake Racken outside Arvika and became closely associated with the group of artists now known as the Rackstad Colony.

Together with painters such as Gustaf and Maja Fjaestad and his brother in law Björn Ahlgrensson, Lindström belonged to a generation that sought a closer relationship between artistic life and the countryside. The landscape around Racken became fundamental to his art, yet he continued to travel and work elsewhere in Sweden. His Skåne paintings of 1917 demonstrate that his interest in landscape was by no means confined to Värmland.

Lindström was particularly responsive to colour. Contemporary and later accounts frequently emphasize the strength of his palette, and this painting illustrates that quality well. The intense green of the fields is set against passages of ochre, violet, rose and blue, while touches of brilliant colour appear within the cloud formations themselves. Even the stone wall is transformed into a sequence of mauve, pink, blue and grey strokes.

The painting also reveals the freedom of his mature brushwork. From a distance, the fields, wall and sky form a coherent landscape. At close range, however, they dissolve into separate strokes and patches of colour. The wall is particularly expressive, built from short touches that suggest individual stones without describing them laboriously. A similar freedom appears in the sky, where the paint follows the swelling forms of the clouds.

This balance between observation and expressive colour links Lindström to the broader development of Scandinavian landscape painting around 1900. His early education took place within the circle of the Konstnärsförbundet, where artists sought alternatives to academic convention and placed renewed emphasis on direct experience of nature. In Lindström’s mature landscapes, this legacy is combined with an increasingly personal sense of colour and atmosphere.

Väsby itself lies within a landscape shaped by centuries of agriculture. The surrounding Kulla plain is characterized by open fields and long horizons, making weather particularly visible. In the present work, this openness becomes essential to the drama. There is little to obstruct the eye between foreground and sky, and the approaching cloud formations therefore seem to advance directly across the fields.