Landscape with a path between two dunes

Created in 1902, following Hallström’s training at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm but before his period of further study in Paris and travels through other parts of Europe and Russia, this evocative drawing is an exceptional example of the artist’s early landscapes. Two earthen mounds, strewn with rocks, rise against a dark, stormy sky, its cool purple tones contrasting with the warm yellows in the terrain below. Most likely Viking graves (based on the Royal Mounds at Uppsala), these mounds were of enormous interest to Hallström, who incorporated them into his work on multiple occasions and who would ultimately dedicate himself to the depiction and preservation of Viking history and legends on the Swedish island of Björkö.




This interest in the distant past is also reflected in the artist's monogram, which appears at lower left and incorporates his initials and the date in a sauvastika (counter-clockwise swastika). In nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Sweden, this symbol, which would of course take on potent antisemitic meaning thereafter, held strong associations with the Vikings and even earlier Scandinavian societies, appearing on stone sculptures ("picture stones") dating from the 3rd to the 9th century CE.