Views of Iceland (Updated)

Fourteen years ago, during a week in Iceland, I visited the Listasafn Íslands (National Gallery of Iceland), which was then housing an exhibition entitled Inspired by Iceland. The exhibition covered various styles and periods, but one of the highlights for me was a group or fifteen or so dramatic landscape scenes executed by an unknown painter or painters, probably in the eighteenth century. Though somewhat crudely done, the paintings were fascinating, especially when one realized that they were essentially works of fantasy. Though they bear inscriptions connecting them to real places in Iceland, their topographic infidelity makes it likely that the artist had never visited the country. (Earlier post here.)

It's been difficult to find reproductions of the paintings — there are said to be twenty-four in all — or more information about them, but the Listasafn has now put them back before the public eye, with the collaboration of the Icelandic Folk and Outsider Art Museum, in an exhibition entitled Iceland from Afar, which will run until October 2026. The reproduction above is from the Listasafn's Facebook page; the version on the museum's website is drabber and murkier, and I suspect that the former is more faithful to the original.