A Circumpolar Landscape: Art and Environment in Scandinavia and North America, 1890-1930

A Circumpolar Landscape demonstrates that Canadian and Scandinavian landscape painting reaches far beyond national identity and a preoccupation with Eurocentrism. This study brings together the work of Emily Carr, the Canadian Group of Seven, Anna Boberg, and Gustaf Fjaestad among others, with each chapter highlighting the high level of interactivity between artists and the environment. Simultaneously, this book highlights the lack of awareness of the respective ecosystems in which many of these works were produced. Working around northern hemispheric latitudinal lines, this book considers how a similar ecology and topography - orientated around the themes of forests, wilderness, lakes, mountains, aurorae, and ice – was depicted and is shared across these northern landscapes.

This powerful and timely book takes these respective art histories in the direction of the environmental humanities and an ecocritical art history, recognising the broader transnational and ecological framework of the Circumpolar North.