Landscapes of Solitude

The Lonely One, with its single tree set against a backdrop of Strindberg’s beloved Archipelago, can be seen as another symbolic self-portrait. Although there is poignancy in the image, Strindberg also seems to have regarded isolation as a strength. He wrote in By the Open Sea:

‘The single rowan stood on a few square feet of greensward, so solitary yet, in the absence of competitors, so unusually strong, as if it was better able to defy storm, salt and cold than the scramble of envious equals for the bits of earth.’

Strindberg himself often distanced himself artistically from other writers and artists, although he enjoyed their company socially. His painting is hard to pin down to a particular artistic movement. In Berlin in 1893, despite being at the hub of a group of avant-garde artists, he continued to employ the personal range of motifs that he had developed in Dalarö the previous summer. Palette with Solitary Flower on the Shore, one of his Berlin paintings, still focuses on the theme of isolation. In Dalarö, he had painted on any material that came to hand, often zinc sheets or pieces of cardboard. Here, the use of a palette underlines the element of self-portraiture and identifies the work more closely with the artist.

Cliff I, from 1902, gives the theme of self-portraiture a new twist. Strindberg was fascinated by the likenesses he perceived between different forms, which he took to be of spiritual or occult significance. Here, the rugged outline of the cliff can be seen, if turned upside down, as Strindberg’s own profile.