Image source: Wikimedia Commons (Public domain). View source
Midsummer Dance
- Artist
- Anders Zorn (1860–1920)
- Date
- 1897
- Dimensions
- 140 x 98 cm
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Location
- Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, Sweden
Midsummer Dance shows country people dancing in couples on a summer night in the province of Dalarna in Sweden. Behind them rises the maypole, decorated with leaves, and the red wooden houses glow in the soft light of the endless Nordic evening.
A closer look
Zorn grew up in Mora, in Dalarna, and returned there often, painting the traditions of his home region. The midsummer celebration, around the longest day of the year, is one of Sweden's most beloved festivals, when the sun barely sets. Here the couples whirl in a dense mass, the women's skirts and the men's white shirts catching the light. Zorn's brushwork is broad and confident, capturing movement and the special twilight in which colours stay warm and visible at midnight.