A Farewell to a View

A Farewell to a View

2019 - 2020

Oil on canvas

Mått 206,00 x 271,50 cm

GKM 2020-25

Purchase, 2020

From the research project “The Canon: Perspectives on Swedish Art Historiography”, 2021: Martina Müntzing works in a classical figurative tradition, which she simultaneously challenges by adding other stylistic traits, like leaving part of the canvas unpainted. Farewell to a View 2 (2020) is a paraphrase of Richard Bergh’s Nordic Summer Evening (1899-1900), one of the most famous works in the style of national romanticism at the Gothenburg Museum of Art. Now, both can be seen in the same gallery. The model for the woman is Martina herself, while the model for the man is her husband, the artist Lars Arrhenius. The tranquil evening landscape in Bergh’s painting has been replaced with a pale white view over a lake. The couple appears to stand on a height, from which a flight of simple wooden stairs leads down towards the beach. Lars Arrhenius died before the painting was completed. After that, Martina Müntzing could not bring herself to continue and left his clothing unfinished. The work is an example of how artists reinterpret existing artworks in new contexts, confirming the canonical status of the prototype.