Den første kulde over søen

The museum keeps the title in two languages — Den første kulde over søen, the first cold over the lake, and in Swedish Första kylan öfver sjön — and the winter water it names became the subject that made the painter’s name. Gustaf Fjæstad studied at the Royal Swedish Academy of Arts in 1891 and 1892 and then at the Artists’ Association’s school under Richard Bergh, and he had worked beside Bruno Liljefors on the Biological Museum in Stockholm and with Carl Larsson on the murals at the Nationalmuseum before he moved in 1897 to Taserud, near Arvika in Värmland, where he and his wife Maja became the centre of the Rackstad artists’ colony. This canvas is two years older than that move. The museum acquired it in 1906, and in 2017 it was shown in the exhibition Japanomania in the Nordic Countries 1875–1918. Winter stayed his subject for the rest of his career — Cold winter evening, Frosty Morning and Snow Covered Road with Fence are the titles of later canvases — until after 1910 he turned increasingly to woodcraft. The painting is held in the Statens Museum for Kunst (National Gallery of Denmark).