Carl Johansson - Lava Coast, Tenerife, 1894

Carl Johansson (1863–1944) Sweden

Lavaklippstrand, Tenerife (Lava Coast, Tenerife), 1894

signed lower left “Carl Johansson”
oil on board, executed in grisaille
unframed 27.5 × 49.5 cm (10.8 × 19.5 in)
framed 39 × 61 cm (15.4 × 24 in)

Literature:
För Svenska Hem. Illustrerad Familjetidskrift, first year, 1895–1896, issue 26, pp. 416–417, reproduced across the centre spread.

The contemporary caption reads: “Bild från Tenerife: Lavaklippstrand. Efter en oljemålning för ‘För Sv. Hem’ af Carl Johansson.”

Condition report:
Please contact the gallery for a detailed condition report.

Essay:
Painted during Carl Johansson’s journey to Tenerife in 1894, Lavaklippstrand presents the volcanic Atlantic coastline as an austere study of rock, water and light. Jagged formations of dark lava dominate the foreground and middle distance, breaking the surface of the sea in an irregular progression towards the horizon. Behind them, the coast dissolves gradually into mist, while the almost colourless sky occupies the upper half of the composition. The painting is unusually restrained for a landscape executed during a period when Johansson had recently encountered the brighter palette of modern French painting. Here, instead, he deliberately reduces the scene to a near monochrome range of blacks, greys, browns and white.

Johansson was born in Härnösand in 1863 and studied at the Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm between 1882 and 1885, where his teachers included Edvard Perséus and the landscape painter Per Daniel Holm. He belonged to the generation of Swedish artists that increasingly looked beyond academic landscape conventions during the 1880s and 1890s. A period in France in 1891 and 1892 brought him into closer contact with contemporary French landscape painting. His Motif from Montigny sur Loing, signed in 1892 and today in the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm, belongs to this important period immediately preceding his journey to the Canary Islands.

Tenerife represented a radically different landscape from the wooded valleys, rivers and snow covered terrain for which Johansson later became particularly well known. Its coast had been shaped by volcanic activity, with ancient lava flows reaching the Atlantic and cooling into dense formations of dark basalt. Johansson makes these geological forms the principal subject of the present painting. There are no figures and virtually no architecture to interrupt the view. Instead, the eye encounters a succession of rocks, pools and broken surfaces before reaching the distant headlands.

The precise stretch of coastline represented in the painting is not identified in its contemporary published caption. Johansson is, however, documented as having worked at Puerto de la Orotava, the present Puerto de la Cruz, during his Tenerife journey of 1894. Another surviving painting from the trip is inscribed with that location. The dramatic volcanic shoreline around the northern part of Tenerife therefore provides an important context for Lavaklippstrand, although a more exact identification of the site should not be made without further evidence.

What makes the painting particularly unusual is its execution in grisaille. The term describes painting based predominantly upon variations of grey or another deliberately restricted monochrome scale. Grisaille had a long history in European art. It could imitate sculpture, serve as an underpainting beneath colour, or provide a tonal model for engravers. By the nineteenth century the technique acquired another important function through the expanding culture of illustrated books, magazines and photographic reproduction.

This connection is especially relevant here. The painting was reproduced over the centre pages of För Svenska Hem in 1895–1896, only shortly after its execution, and the magazine explicitly described it as an oil painting made “for För Svenska Hem”. This makes the restricted palette much more than an incidental stylistic feature.

Illustrated publications of the period ultimately had to translate images into black, white and intermediate tones. Photography was itself essentially monochrome, while the rapidly developing photomechanical processes of the late nineteenth century allowed photographs and paintings to be reproduced in printed form with increasing fidelity. Colour, however, presented a problem. A red, blue or green passage in a painting might possess considerable chromatic contrast in the original yet become unexpectedly similar when converted into shades of grey.

An artist working directly in grisaille could control that translation from the outset. Light and darkness, rather than colour, became the principal means of separating forms. Grisaille had already served a comparable purpose for centuries in paintings prepared for reproductive engravings, where colour similarly had to be converted into tonal information. With the arrival of photography, the principle remained remarkably useful. A monochrome painting could be photographed and reproduced with much less loss between original and printed image.

Johansson also chose a subject exceptionally well suited to such treatment. The dark lava becomes almost black, while the Atlantic water catches pale streaks of reflected light. The distant landscape is softened into grey silhouettes and the sky is reduced to an almost luminous expanse. Colour would have given the scene an entirely different character. Its absence directs attention towards structure, texture and tonal contrast.

There is consequently something almost photographic in the painting, but Johansson does not imitate the mechanical appearance of a photograph. His brushwork remains conspicuous. Rocks are constructed from broad, abbreviated strokes, and the surface of the water is broken into horizontal touches of dark and light paint. Seen closely, the composition is highly painterly. Seen from a distance, those marks coalesce into the shimmering surface of the Atlantic.

Johansson would later become especially associated with cool and increasingly blue tonalities, eventually earning the nickname “Ultramarin Johansson”. Lavaklippstrand represents almost the opposite extreme. By withholding colour, the young artist concentrates entirely upon luminosity, atmosphere and the physical character of the volcanic coast, creating one of the more unusual surviving records of his journey to Tenerife.

Sources

För Svenska Hem. Illustrerad Familjetidskrift, first year, 1895–1896, issue 26, pp. 416–417. The work is reproduced across the centre spread with the contemporary title Lavaklippstrand and described as an oil painting made for the journal.

Helena Fällman, Carl Johansson: En norrlandsmålare, Murberget, Västernorrlands museum. Includes documentation of Johansson’s career and records a Landscape, Tenerife, 1894, among photographs of his works preserved in the Nationalmuseum material.

Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, collection entry for Carl Johansson, Motif from Montigny sur Loing, 1892, inv. NM 2989.

Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, collection entry for Carl Johansson, Motif from Indalsälven, 1902, inv. NM 3104.

National Gallery, London, glossary entry “Grisaille”. Defines grisaille as monochrome painting in which forms are established through tonal variation and discusses its historical use in reproductive processes.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, Odalisque in Grisaille. Discusses the nineteenth century use of grisaille as a tonal guide for black and white reproductive engravings.

Image Circulation and Copying Practice, scholarly study discussing the continued use of grisaille as an intermediary for both engraving and later photographic reproduction because monochrome originals translated particularly effectively into black and white photography.

A History of the Press in Sweden, discussion of the introduction of photography and practical halftone reproduction into Swedish periodical culture during the 1890s.