LONDON.- Norwegian artists will make up the largest component of the June sale and among the works to be offered will be masterpieces by major names such as Edvard Munch (1863-1944), Thomas Fearnley (1802-42), Frits Thaulow (1847-1906), Peder Balke (1804-1887), Odd Nerdrum (b. 1944) and Christian Krohg (1852-1925). The most important - and most valuable - work of this section, however, is a re-discovered work by Nikolai Astrup (1880-1928). Entitled Soleinatt, Jølster (White Night, Buttercups at Jølster), Astrup's powerful depiction of Ålhus, a farm near his family home, has been sent for sale by Pacific Lutheran University in Washington State.
Unknown to scholars in the field, the work was left to the university in 1999 by a member of the local Lutheran community - the forefathers of whom first settled in Washington state back in the early 1900s. (The end of the 19th century saw an enormous influx of Scandinavian - and particularly Norwegian - settlers into the Pacific Northwest: by 1910, Scandinavians were the largest ethnic group in Washington, constituting more than 20 percent of the foreign-born population). The farm depicted in this impressive, large scale oil lies close to the town of Jølster, in Norway, where Astrup's father was the local pastor, and it incorporates and explores the two themes that preoccupied Astrup throughout his artistic life: the farming community and the primal forces of the natural world. Never seen on the open market before, this remarkable work of c.1910 is expected to fetch between £250,000-350,000.
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