| dc.description.abstract | There has been very little art historical writing on the topic of paintings of interiors, conceived as an entity, and as a phenomenon of nineteenth and early twentieth-century art. Although Scandinavian art is perhaps generally associated with paintings of nature, there were, in fact, numerous Scandinavian painters who concerned themselves with domestic interior imagery, either as a speciality or simply as part of their oeuvre. Despite the common adage that the Nordic nations are particularly preoccupied with sunlight and that Northerners in general have traditionally expressed a strong feeling for Home life (as opposed to Urban identity), no thematic investigations of Scandinavian paintings, specifically, have attempted to consider these important elements of Scandinavian life in relationship to each other. Both as a necessary source of light in the quotidian life of the private home and as a suggestively poetic device descriptive of states of melancholy and psychological introspection, the window motif belongs naturally to depictions of the domestic interior. This survey deals primarily with the domestic window motif as it was employed in the description of human life, both male and female, urban and rural. Window imagery is conceived, generally, as a romantic element in paintings but also provided the artist with a motif which allowed for the rendering of light and atmospheric qualities in the interior, which again underscored the possibility for the expression of mood or Stimmung particular to the various rooms of the house and home-life situations. Scandinavian painters such as Harriet Backer, Vilhelm Hammershøi, Carl Holsøe, Carl Larsson and Edvard Munch (among many others) showed a strong proclivity for the use of the window motif in their interior paintings. While it has not been possible to proclaim that this phenomenon was due to national heritage, it is suggested that there may be a correlational explanation of some type here, as in very many cases, the window motif did not appear in similar themes as depicted by other European and American artists from the same period. The domestic realm was particularly employed as the physical enframement for female existence. Much of the window imagery this survey presents, thus deals with an idealised view of feminine life, as seen from a male perspective or construct. The woman-at-the-window was a leitmotiv during the period 1870-1920, after which time, domesticity had become rather anathema in art. This imagery was developed in accordance with traditional feminine virtues which included self-restraint and patience in waiting. Waiting in solitude was apparently the most expressive vision of the woman s exemplary endeavour to show dedication and devotion to her domestic purpose in life, but the female figure at the window can also be seen as representative of the male artist s sentiments with regards to his own professional experience in relation to society at large. This study considers gendered norms as one of the analytical aspects of window imagery. To this purpose, Scandinavian and international (mostly English and American) literature has been employed in the attempt to view Scandinavian painting from this period as being not solely insular but as being representative of both a cosmopolitan outlook and an inherent (conscious or subconscious) understanding of Scandinavian life and values. Window imagery is informed by a variety of pictorial precursors and examples of these, from the Early Renaissance to the Early Romantic period have also been considered here, with a desire to place such late nineteenth-century imagery in a more historical context. This survey is intended to be conceived as supplementary to the more common biographical and art formalistic methods of art analysis and applicable to the general discussion of paintings of the interior, both Scandinavian and international. | nor |