The Lone Cliff - Bertil Landelius (1912-1985) - 70 x 62 cm

This moody nature scene dates from around 1940, the period in which Landelius was quietly rewriting the rules of Swedish romantic landscape painting — keeping the mood, stripping away the sweetness. The composition is almost confrontational: a dark cliff pushes in from the right, its weight rendered in deep navy and charcoal, while the water below returns a luminous yellow-green sky in loose, confident strokes. The tension between that brooding mass and the atmospheric light above it is precisely what makes this work so compelling. Romantic in feeling, but with an edge that feels entirely modern.

The soft taupe mat and silver frame lets the painting breathe — anchoring it without competing.

In Stockholm, Bertil Landelius appeared in 1942 with his first solo exhibition at Galleri Gummeson and was received by very positive reviews. In Dagens Nyheter, Yngve Berg judged his exhibition as "one of the most remarkable, any of the young, internationally minded Skåne painters shown in Stockholm". Nils Palmgren wrote in Aftonbladet: "Bertil Landelius belongs to a young faction in Scanian landscape painting, which has brought the dark tone and the broad, bold brushstrokes into contact with modern Danish art. The peculiar and good thing about his palette is that it has juice and power where the light is turned down to a very dull overall effect". A few years later, the same critic wrote: "His motifs are simple and commonplace, and the illustrative means little in his art. The view of a road in the woods, a forest edge, a few rocks and a frozen lake, such motifs are enough for him. But on these he plays a piece that has a purely musical richness in tone."

Size: approx. 69,5 x 61,5 cm (with frame), picture dimensions ca 49,5 x 41,5 cm

The painting is cleaned and comes with a complimentary updated wooden frame. Both painting and frame are in excellent vintage condition. Please study the photos because they form the description.

About the artist:

Bertil Landelius (1912-1985) was born in Malmö in 1912 and belongs to a generation of Swedish painters who faced a choice: stay loyal to the romantic landscape tradition, or follow modernism wherever it led. Landelius did neither, and both. He absorbed the mood and atmosphere of Scandinavian romanticism and pushed it toward something more visceral — less concerned with beauty than with truth.

He trained in Copenhagen, at the Skånska Målarskolan in Malmö, and at the College of Arts and Crafts in Stockholm, graduating in 1935. His debut came as early as 1931 at the major Autumn Salon of the Skåne Art Association. His first solo exhibition in Stockholm, at the prestigious Galleri Gummeson in 1942, drew immediate critical attention. Dagens Nyheter called him one of the most distinctive young international Scandinavian painters to appear in the capital.

His work is held in the permanent collection of the Moderna Museet in Stockholm. He spent most of his life in Kristianstad in southern Sweden, where he also taught, and died there in 1985.