Midsummer Dance

On Midsummer Eve the couples turn around the maypole in the pale northern night, the fiddler perched on a table at the left and the whole village gathered in the light that never quite dies — the great celebration of the Swedish summer, painted with a swiftness that makes every figure seem caught in motion. Anders Zorn made the picture in 1897, at the height of his international fame, and set himself and his wife Emma among the dancers in the left foreground, the artist at once chronicler and participant in the festival that had become the emblem of his homeland. Painted in Zorn’s signature blues, whites and the red of the women’s bodices, the canvas was bought for the Nationalmuseum in the year it was made and has since become the most reproduced image of the Swedish folk festival in art. The painting is held in the Nationalmuseum, Stockholm.