Loren Holmwood Sámi with Reindeer 'Höstflytning', Northern Norway

An original c.1936 etching print – Loren Holmwood, Sámi with Reindeer 'Höstflytning', Northern Norway.

A compelling portrait of a Sámi woman and children, engaged in the Höstflytning, or 'autumn flight', when reindeer herding families in Northern Norway move from coastal pastures to inland mountains and plateaus for winter.

American portrait artist Loren Holmwood (1892–1985), a member of the Laguna Beach artist colony, is known in particular for his depiction of children, in a manner evocative of his contemporary Norman Rockwell (1894–1978).

Remarkably, in November 1936, Holmwood travelled from California to Hammerfest and North Cape in North Norway in search of source material; this etching is undoubtedly a result of this trip. Holmwood left his Berkeley studio in June 1936, travelling by motorcar to New York where he took the Swedish liner Drottningholm to Gothenburg. From Gothenburg he went to Oslo and subsequently travelled up the west coast of Norway, visiting Bergen, Aalesund and Trondheim on the way to the far north, then on to Stockholm and Copenhagen before returning to the United States.

What prompted this adventurous mission we do not know, but it is interesting to note that later in life Loren Holmwood settled at Tahoe City, where he gifted fifty-two acres of his land along Ward Creek to the Washoe community in Nevada. His experiences amongst the Sámi were perhaps formative in a wider affinity for the cultures of indigenous peoples.

Holmwood's large etching is both charming and impactful; the Sámi confront the viewer's gaze head-on and the cropped 'snapshot' composition creates a dynamic sense of reality beyond the artist's lens.

Etching with colour.