Carl Larsson Harvesting Ice 1905

<span class="paragraphSection">The late afternoon sun turns the clouds a delicate pink as the pale blue wintry sky fades away into night. Out on frozen Lake Toftan, three men and <span style="font-style:italic;">Brunte</span>, the horse, are hard at work in sub-zero temperatures. The man on the left, <span style="font-style:italic;">Johan</span> is using a large vertical saw to cut blocks of ice which his two colleagues drag with ice-hooks over the horse’s shafts so that <span style="font-style:italic;">Brunte</span> can pull them onto the frozen snow. A row of ice blocks marks the day’s work. In the right foreground, a timber mooring ‘dolphin’ frames the composition and draws the eye past two half-buried horizontal timber posts, which mark the edge of the lake. Sled tracks between the posts show the route taken by the horse as it headed north towards the ice. The men have planted branches around the excavation hole as hazard warning signs. Beyond the lake, low rolling hills lead to a thicket of conifers and a clump of bare deciduous trees, which shroud a small church and its spiky-spired bell tower. The artist’s monogram, a circled CL, can be seen at the base of the ‘dolphin’s’ middle post.</span>

http://ift.tt/2leexby