Trollebotten

There are no known descriptions or photographs of this lost painting, but Astrup’s title indicates that this was a landscape painting of the Trollebotten area. This is a mountainous landscape that lies north of Ålhus in Jølster, and it belongs to a series of pictures Astrup painted during the summers of 1906 to 1908. The Trollebotten series depicts Lake Trollebottsvatnet and the jagged mountain Trollebottsegga.

Astrup refers to this version as “the big ‘Trollebotten’“, and he describes the painting’s use of colours as follows: “Grey-green and reddish-brown (dry and wet rock), some cold greens in the background, down towards the water – I think – the reflections in the water are grey and greenish, with white and ice-green ice floes – a luscious green (exotic) wild celery plant in the foreground amidst the melting glaciers.” The study for the version described here is Trollebotten (K100), which includes concealed figures in the mountainside.

According to Astrup, the painting was lost in the Bergen city fire in 1916. It was probably one of the paintings that Moritz Kaland (1869–1947) was storing for Astrup. The correspondence from after the fire reveals that Kaland’s studio was completely destroyed and that he suffered great losses. If Astrup was storing the painting with Kaland, it suggests that the painting was owned by the artist himself.