The Mystic North: Symbolist Landscape Painting in Northern Europe and North America 1890-1940 - used book

In the early 1980's a number of Symbolist artists in northern Europe turned to the wilderness of their native landscapes - deep virgin forests, rugged coast lines, and high mountain peaks. These remote and often unexplored and uninhabited regions became subjects through which the artists probed personal feelings and spiritual states. In part these painters were inspired by Guaguin's rejection of European civilization for an imagined South Seas paradise. They were influenced too by vanguard French art, by Puvis de Chavannes, and by van Gogh. They rejected the Symbolist art of culturally dominant nations like France, which was entirely figure-oriented. Their own poetic vision, they firmly believed, was superior to what they considered the cold technical facility of French painting. And - working in Norway, Finland, Switzerland, and the Netherlands - they made a unique contribution to Symbolism which eventually crossed the Atlantic and triggered a comparable Canadian movement. In 1913 a touring exhibition of contemporary Scandinavian painting reached Buffalo, New York. Two Canadian artists, J.E.H. MacDonald and Lawren Harris, saw it there. As MacDonald recalled, some of the paintings were 'true souvenirs of the mystic north round which we are revolve.'This, he concluded, is what we want to do with Canada.' This study gives an international perspective on Symbolist landscape painting through its two phases. The first is Europe (1890 and 1910) and the second phase is entirely North American, running from about 1910 to 1940 and including American artists as well as the Canadian Group of Seven. The Mystic North is a revealing survey for students, collectors, and lovers of American and European art and of landscape painting in general.