The Perfect Landscape (2 page)

“Edda dear,” she says. “This is Hanna. She’s taking over the Annexe from Bjorn. She’s just come across from Amsterdam. You just arrived yesterday, didn’t you, Hanna?” Hanna nods in response and says hello to Edda.

“Edda fixes everything around here,” says Kristin, laughing. “She’s worked here at the gallery since it started. She’s a real treasure. I don’t suppose there are any Danish pastries today, are there?” Kristin asks, and Edda is already on it; on her way out she smiles at Hanna, who immediately takes to her.

Hanna contemplates the painting. Whose responsibility will it be to examine it? What is the gallery’s organization; how is it structured? As conservator, it must be Steinn’s job to see to this sort of thing. From this one brief meeting she has the impression that the gallery is a small closed world and the staff function like a family. They have all worked here for a long time—Edda from the outset, Baldur for at least ten years. Steinn looks very much at home here, and Hanna knows that Kristin has been the director for about five years. Even the young woman, Agusta, seems to be one of the family.

Kristin interrupts her thoughts. “Hanna, you and Steinn look into this. Bjorn was damn good at writing reports. I hope you’re going to follow in his footsteps,” she says.

“Hanna wrote her dissertation on Gudrun,” Baldur interjects, as if coming to her defense. Hanna looks at him in surprise; she doesn’t need someone to defend her and doesn’t appreciate being put in that position unbidden. As director of the Annexe, she is also surprised to be asked to take this task on. Her area of expertise is managing exhibitions and the
history of landscape painting. But it is true, she did write a dissertation on Gudrun and knows her work well. In her mind she slips into the en garde position, ready for anything.

“Yes, that’s right, I did. In fact, with particular reference to this period of Gudrun’s career,” she says calmly, imagining herself pressing the tip of her foil against Baldur’s chest, pinning him to the wall while she talks. She is here on her own merits; this is her job and she doesn’t need anyone meddling.

Baldur doesn’t say anything further; it’s the lawyer, Thor, who cuts in. “Didn’t Gudrun hold an auction of her paintings in Copenhagen before the war?” he asks, looking to Hanna for confirmation.

“Indeed she did,” Hanna replies. “And in all likelihood this was painted either in her student days or the summer before she left for Paris. It looks like one of her woodscapes. It’s possible that Gudrun sold it at an exhibition held in the Larsen Gallery on Hojbroplads, or maybe at the auction you mentioned—which she held to fund further training in Paris.”

After a moment’s silence Hanna adds, “It looks to me like this painting is a really valuable acquisition.” She looks at the painting and particularly at the mountain in the background. It can only be Mount Baula, actually painted as a straightforward triangle and typical of Gudrun’s style. This is undoubtedly a boost for the gallery. The Annexe and the gallery are clearly not such separate entities as Hanna had thought; the gallery is simply too small for that. Everyone has to pull together here, and Hanna’s role needn’t necessarily be limited to the Annexe. That may not be a bad thing. Straightaway on her first day she’s been given a very responsible project, which shows that she is
trusted and that her knowledge in a particular field is known within the gallery.

Hanna gets up from the table to look at the picture more carefully. Kristin joins her, and they discuss the aesthetics of the painting; they talk about Gudrun’s career and her other works the gallery owns. Kristin is easy to talk to, but Hanna senses that she would stand her ground. She is clearly the sort of woman who gets her way. Her dappled neck scarf may be like a matador’s muleta, but Kristin lets the bull charge where it will—she has her own strategy in play. Hanna will be on her guard.

Behind her she can hear Baldur and Thor talking about a new golf course on the outskirts of the city and the door closing. When she looks around, Steinn has left. Edda returns shortly after with a tray, and the meeting dissolves into drinking coffee and eating Danish pastries. Kristin does most of the talking, telling the others about a dinner she was invited to in Copenhagen not long ago with the former Icelandic president. Aha, thinks Hanna. Snob. Maybe the neck scarf is a sign of vanity, a desire for glitz—a chasing after the wind. But perhaps being a snob is in some ways a positive attribute for the director of an art gallery. If you must give up some of your time to various social duties, such as openings, you might as well enjoy it. Kristin doesn’t refer to Elisabet Valsdottir again, but Hanna would like to learn more.

“Has Elisabet donated to the gallery in the past?” she asks cautiously and is careful not to indicate that she thinks anything out of the ordinary about the gift.

“Elisabet and I are old friends,” Kristin replies, “but she hasn’t given the gallery anything until now. This was just so ideal
and she told me she couldn’t help but think of me when she saw this at the auction.” Kristin positively glows as she divulges this information, and Hanna is careful to smile in response, but she is surprised. In Holland a gallery director would have kept such details to herself, made light of her connection to the donor.

In and of itself there’s nothing significant about the gallery accepting such a superb gift. Why should Kristin refuse a present from a good friend who also happens to be one of the richest women in the country? But it does make Hanna wonder what Elisabet might take upon herself to give the gallery next and how they would react if the gift wasn’t up to the gallery’s standards. Kristin would surely refuse such a gift, wouldn’t she? And if it became a habit among wealthy businessmen to give the gallery gifts in order to bathe their reputation in the art world’s limelight, then wouldn’t the gallery’s artworks become a motley collection? Hanna looks back at the picture. It speaks for itself, and she stops worrying and quietly admires the painting.

The meeting is over. Before she leaves, Kristin reminds them of the staff meeting later in the week. “We need to go over the program,” she says, “so we’re all singing from the same song sheet.”

Hanna sits quietly for a moment, looking at the painting while the others leave. Baldur is on the phone, talking in hushed tones. She wishes Steinn had not slipped out so soon. Something about his calm manner intrigues her. His job is not clear. Is he really conservator and caretaker combined? Perhaps that’s feasible in such a small gallery.

Exhaustion washes over her, a combination of jet lag and lack of sleep. To summon the energy to get up and tackle all
that lies ahead, a new job and new colleagues, she gazes at the scene in the painting—drawing strength from the vitality in the colors of the foliage, the uncompromising mountain, and the white light of the sky.

Gudrun didn’t paint many woodscapes during her career; for obvious reasons this has never been a common motif for Icelandic artists. They have tended to focus on mountains. And Icelandic landscape painting didn’t come into being until late in the nineteenth century. Up until that point the landscape had been perceived as nothing but rugged pathways and rough trackless terrain. Hanna observes the colors on the ground and the light on the tree trunks. It’s as if Gudrun has bent nature to her own will, given it a balance that it doesn’t possess, a tranquility that is not real, an immutability that Hanna knows nature does not have but that she longs to find, and she forgets herself for a moment.

When Steinn comes in with a roll of polyethylene, Hanna hurriedly gets to her feet because she wants to have a chat. But neither his manner nor the way he sets about the task invites interaction or interruption. He silently rolls the polyethylene out on the floor; takes the painting down from the easel; cuts the plastic with a penknife; and, wrapping the painting up very carefully, goes out with the knife and the roll of polyethylene under one arm and the painting under the other.

Hanna senses Baldur looking over to her as he finishes his phone call. He looks like he is hoping she will wait for him; maybe he wants to show her around the premises and the offices himself. What Hanna wants is to slip out into the corridor and follow Steinn, but that would look odd so she turns and waits for Baldur instead. He puts the phone in his pocket and smiles at her.

“You haven’t changed a bit,” he says in a friendly tone when it’s just the two of them. Hanna isn’t prepared for this. He talks as if they know each other better than she remembers, or like a supervisor to his junior. Maybe it’s just the Icelandic way. Has she forgotten how people talk over here? She doesn’t respond, and he carries on. “So you’re just taking over. You’ve done extremely well for yourself.”

As if he hadn’t really expected her to. But perhaps he’s only trying to be friendly. Hanna isn’t sure, and despite their old acquaintance she finds herself on her guard with him as she was with Kristin.

They go out into the corridor and walk down the stairs. Baldur gives Hanna a general outline of his role at the gallery. He is head of exhibitions, deals more with actually executing projects than generating ideas. He is responsible for producing the gallery’s publications and has been from the outset, from way before the Annexe came into being. It’s evidently very important to maintain good relations with Baldur, even though Hanna hasn’t quite worked out which reins of power he really holds. A little gallery in a small country, she thinks. Maybe the responsibilities of the employees are not as delineated as Hanna is accustomed to, the rules aren’t as inflexible, and perhaps everything happens more smoothly here than she has experienced before, but that doesn’t necessarily simplify matters.

While they’re walking around the premises, Hanna recalls what she knows about Baldur’s career after they graduated. Things went tolerably well for him; he even exhibited in the National Gallery, was a bit of a star for a while. He also had a contract with another gallery to exhibit his work, but that ended long ago. Hanna can’t remember reading about any exhibition
of his work in recent years. Baldur’s zenith was around the time of neo-Expressionism; the style suited him well. She can picture the exhibitions becoming fewer and farther between as the years went by, how he didn’t succeed in forging relations abroad and had sated the limited market at home. In the end a regular monthly salary and a less demanding relationship with art than that involved in creating from scratch had given him more satisfaction in life than relentlessly carrying on painting pictures in a style that had gone out of fashion. Baldur was only one of many she knew who had taken this path.

Now drawings, craftwork, and the personal approach are back in vogue and painting is in a state of flux, Hanna muses. Surely Baldur wouldn’t consider going back to painting, would he? Can an artist who has put his art on the back burner for years on end get the chance to come back?

At least Baldur was once up with the times. As a youngster Hanna had only had eyes for landscapes, which weren’t in fashion even then. In their different ways Hanna’s parents had each encouraged her to go on and study art. Most of the people back home thought she would become a painter because she drew so well. It wasn’t until she got to art college that she realized there was more to art than being a draftsman. Gradually she had also realized that she was more interested in reading, looking, and interpreting. She didn’t have that edge that was needed to paint convincing landscapes when they were no longer the in thing. She painted the same motifs over and over but was always dissatisfied, couldn’t quite achieve what she was aiming for, and didn’t even really know what that was. History of art lectures were her favorite, when she sat in the semidarkness and watched the color slides being projected onto the
screen—even then it was the landscape paintings that moved her. Portrait paintings with landscapes in the background or fifteenth- and sixteenth-century paintings depicting landscapes through a window; the confined world of peasants in the paintings of Brueghel the Elder and the Younger in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; the expansive cloudscapes of the Dutch Golden Age; the emotional response to nature in Romanticism of the nineteenth century, when man stood alone in the face of forces greater than himself; the glorious use of color in Impressionism.

Following her course at art college, Hanna went on to study art at the university and then to Amsterdam to complete her master’s, where she concentrated on the history of landscape paintings in Europe in the seventeenth century. Curating came later, somewhat unexpectedly, just as fencing had. Heba had wanted to learn fencing, but in the end it was Hanna who became hooked on it.

Hanna and Baldur don’t stop on their tour around the gallery, nor do they talk about the current exhibit on display until Hanna pauses at a painting on the second-floor landing.

“Ah yes,” she says. “
Composition in Blue
, isn’t it? By Sigfus? I’ve only ever seen a photo of it.”

“There was a great hullabaloo about it,” Baldur comments. “But the painting’s not bad.”

“It’s smaller than I thought,” says Hanna. “And the blue color isn’t as piercing as I remember.” They stand there for a moment, looking at an abstract painting by Sigfus Gunnarsson, one of the nation’s most celebrated artists, which had been exciting news when it was donated to the gallery the year before.

Baldur shows Hanna all the nooks and crannies. The gallery’s artworks are stored in cellars and storage rooms all over the city, and their exhibition spaces are designed so displays can easily be changed. Once or twice a year the gallery focuses on the history of Icelandic painting, putting on exhibitions from their own collection, but otherwise the story of the nation’s art isn’t available to the general public. Their collection is limited, as are their funds for investing in works of art. If they buy the work of younger artists, then there will be gaps in the collection of older works; if they try to plug the missing gaps of history, then a whole generation of contemporary artists will be lost to the gallery.

Baldur seems very much at home here and has the power to open and close doors. Hanna wonders how well he and Kristin get along. Sometimes men find it difficult to have a female boss. And won’t she herself be his boss to some extent? The Annexe is an avant-garde exhibition space, the gallery’s trump card in international terms, and in recent years it has exhibited famous foreign artists alongside Icelandic ones. Now she is the new director. Her position is undoubtedly more important than his; despite everything, he is her subordinate.