The Cloud

The exhibition A Mirror of Nature: Nordic Landscape Painting 1840-1910 looks interesting but is not coming to Britain. One of the artists included is Prince Eugen of Sweden, a royal landscape painter who bought and promoted the work of the Impressionists. His work is influenced by Impressionism but tends to have a symbolist quality, as in The Cloud (1896). As it says on the exhibition website, ‘The intensity of the colour, the path into the unknown and the cloud in the distance, together with the absolute stillness, can all be interpreted as symbols of a longing for the life to come.’ A sense of Prince Eugen’s range can be obtained from the Waldemarsudde website, including an earlier version of The Cloud (1895). The 1890s must have been the last time a landscape-painting prince could be at the cutting edge of art…

Prince Eugen, A Summer Night at Tyresö, 1895

Postscript 2016

I have now visited Prince Eugen's villa in Stockholm - it lives up to the description in the comment below.  Here's a photograph of the interior, showing landscape paintings on the wall and the view from a window.  The other photograph below is one of the Prince's cloud paintings hanging on the wall.  The accompanying text includes this quote: "What actually interests me are clouds, the huge white and yellow kind that swim around and balloon in the sky."