Edvard Weie (1879-1943), Romantic Fantasy, c. 1922
Among the different themes addressed by Edvard Weie, the so-called ”compositions” held the greatest fascination for him. The motifs often draw on literature or mythology, and Weie looked to the great masters of art history for inspiration.
The painting's motif
In all likelihood, the source for this painting was the Italian Renaissance artist Correggio’s Jupiter and Antiope from 1523-25. Correggio’s picture shows the nymph Antiope reclining naked in the lower right part of the canvas, while Zeus, having adopted the guise of a faun, appears from behind a tree. In Weie’s painting we recognise the reclining female figure with her curves and luminously white skin, whereas the faun’s shape and colouring merges with the wilderness. Fragments of landscape are interwoven with tactile brushstrokes. The meeting of the sexes, the sense of attraction and potential seduction that lies at the heart of the scene, has been translated into a dynamic drama of colour, shape, and tactility.
A new Romantic vein of art
The ambition behind Weie’s compositions was nothing less than to create a new Romantic vein of art, capable of depicting the tremendous drama of life with true grandeur. Guided by Romantic music, this new art was to be shaped by harmonies and sounds, thereby liberating itself from the stolidity of “old” naturalism and moving towards the supernatural instead. The objective was to regain a spiritual dimension borne by emotion; ”The Return of Poetry” within painting.