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The paper aims at presenting and analyzing The Dreamer, a major work by the Norwegian painter Halfdan Egedius (1877-99). The painting was executed during the summer 1895, when Egedius was staying at Bø in the rural district of Telemark. It is mentioned quite frequently in the artist's correspondence, where he used to refer to it simply as a portrait of his friend and fellow artist Torleiv Stadskleiv. The composition is straight enough, the model being placed on a log-chair in the middle of a peasant interior typical of the district. The colour scheme is simple, based on strong, saturated hues arranged in striking contrast. A dark-haired man dressed in black Sits quietly, resting his head upon his hand and seemingly wrapped in his own thought. The idea for such an arrangement may derive from Edvard Munch's famous Night, painted at St. Cloud in 1890, where a brooding figure is placed in somewhat the same way in an interior lit from outside. Stadskleiv's peculiarly twisted pose, on the other hand, is directly dependent on Eilif Peterssen's portrait of Arne Garborg (1894), although in a more general sense it harks back to Rodin's famous Penseur and ultimately to the dark figure of Heraclitus in the School of Athens. Indeed, the portrait of Stadskleiv belongs within the long tradition of representations of the melancholy complexion. It was not made to commission and may rather be seen as a symbolic depiction of the inspired artist as such. The idea of a melancholy temper and its close connection with artistic creativity was of course well known at the time: the Finnish artist Magnus Enckell, for instance, executed a large painting with the title Melancholy the very same year. It should be added, perhaps, that the poet and journalist Arne Garborg, a leading light of contemporary Scandinavian culture, was known for his profound and brooding intellect. Stadskleiv himself was quite a character. A native of Bø he became to the town-boy Egedius something of a personification of the characteristic, traditional peasant culture of Telemark. He had a taste for the occult and was even given to superstitious beliefs. The two young painters were exceptionally close friends and stuck together a lot, not least during the summer 1895. It appears from Egedius' correspondence that Stadskleiv painted his friend's portrait more or less at the time the Dreamer was completed. Insistent allusions to the local rural milieu and Norwegian peasant culture are not accidental. Egedius had close connections to a circle of painters holding that true art must be national in character. In the Dreamer he consistently kept to colours and colour combinations which were at the same time propagated by the art historian Andreas Aubert as representative of the particular «Norwegian instinct for colours», and which were referred to by the painter Gerhard Munthe as a «national Norwegian choice of colours». Indeed, the Dreamer appears not only as the artist, but as the truly Norwegian artist as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The problem discussed in this paper arises from the emotional experience of Liss Eriksson's The Couple (figs. 1, 2 and 3). The discussion of the impression of tenderness and close contact between two people is in the main based on comparisons, even though internal characteristics of the work are also taken into account. The aim is to demonstrate the importance of choices of alternatives which consciously, or possibly unconsciously as well, play a part in experiencing the emotional qualities of a work. The examples from earlier periods begin with a presentation of a series of solutions to the problem of depicting the meeting between Joachim and Anna at the Golden Gate in Jerusalem. The intellectualism of Giotto (fig. 7) and his emphasis on the spatial function of the bodies is presented with examples from the religious art of the late Middle Ages (figs. 4, 5 and 6) which suggest a continuum from a discursive reading to the simultaneous experience of the artistic symbols. This moves into the area of the profane with Rembrandt's Jewish Bride (fig. 8) in which the gestures and other aspects of body language are discussed in relation to spatial problems and problems of light. Solutions from the works of Edvard Munch and Auguste Rodin are presented in which, against the background of differing personal and artistic concerns, the physical union of the bodies is one of the aspects emphasized strongly (figs. 9 and 10). In his publicly commissioned sculpture The House Liss Eriksson's starting point was Giacometti's Palace (1933). The version of the Couple which formed part of this work was later developed into the equally public work The Couple, a synthesis of ideas from The House, but now compressed and concentrated to the presentation of the two persons themselves, in close spiritual and physical union. The article concludes with discussion, now with a widened frame of reference, of the role played by choice in experiencing the emotional dimensions of The Couple. With the help of quotations from Björn von Rosen, the poet and artist, and Robert Musil, for instance, the absurdity of reconstructing unambiguous connections between formal structure and emotional experiences is emphasized. Only to a certain degree can the area of experience be rationalized. The inadequacy of language when it comes to the communication of this subtle content is illustrated, moreover, also with the introductory quotation from Joseph Brodsky, a reminder that can also be addressed to those who interpret pictures, "You do not dissect a bird to discover the source of its song; what you should dissect is your own ear.» In other words the aim of this discussion is to show that the emotional dimensions of a major work of art, despite the difficulties, should not be withheld from the rational analysis of art criticism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]