The Old Captain’s House, Winter Afternoon, 1909…
(My new poem inspired by Harald Sohlberg’s painting…)
Chopped wood lies redundant in crisp snow afoot
The writhing, distorted boles, anchored, enabling
The myriad of naked and thinned branches to claw
At the icy air, like wind blown tresses of black, silhouetted
Against the winter sky, glorious in a sunset’s pale peach hue,
A gleam matched along the worn track, which slithers
Sinuously towards the dwellings, both proud against the weather’s
Vagaries. And beside a cottage, rising powerfully into view
Is a fine dwelling, the old Captain’s house, impressive and feted,
Its pallid walls bedecked by windows, spying upon a climate too often raw.
And like a sentry-box the front entrance lingers, a humbling
Guard for such an illustrious property of some repute…
Pete Ray…
19th February 2026…
Norwegian artist Harald Sohlberg painted this snow scene, likely around Oslo.
I was taken by the late afternoon sky and the snaking lane leading to the homes.
The number of windows, presumably to allow in as much daylight as possible are remarkable but for me, the ends of the branches of the trees add a spectral flavour to the work…
The additional thoughts of The Sand Martin:
‘As the sun goes down and the night sky moves softly into the picture, the
immediate attention is drawn to the three enormous dark, bare trees in the
foreground.
It is clearly winter and the branches are devoid of any leaves, so that their strong structures dominate and reach across almost the entire width of the painting.
Behind them stands the rather large and imposing Captain’s house with an adjacent cottage and a number of much younger looking, flimsy small trees, close to the properties. Thus one has to peer to look carefully at the buildings.
The yellowish hues along the track to the buildings indicate that the doorway to
the Captain’s House is well used and with little to no snow on the roof it is very
possibly well heated and poorly insulated.
The cottage roof is almost entirely covered in snow, like icing on a cake.
In fact all the ground looks icing sugar soft, being white and blue-grey as it gently
undulates up from the track and away into the far distance.
There is a powerful contrast for attention between the huge dark dominant trees, the very pretty snow scene and the Captain’s House, yet this is a peaceful, calm picture, showing the beauty of Nature in harmony with man-made buildings.’
