Our Double Take series is a collaboration with Harvard Art Museums, pairing objects from both collections: a plant from the Arnold Arboretum + a work of art from the Harvard Art Museums.
In “Train Smoke,” Norwegian artist Edvard Munch depicts a locomotive moving through the landscape outside Oslo, its plume rising above a stand of pines. Painted in 1910, the scene captures a region where forest and industry existed side by side. An alternate title for the work, “Train Smoke – Oslofjord Northern Beach,” locates it even more precisely along the Oslofjord.
When Arboretum Keeper of the Living Collections Michael Dosmann saw the painting, he knew immediately that there was a Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris) in the foreground. Scots pine has a broad native range, stretching from the Atlantic coast of Europe across the continent to the Pacific. The Arboretum’s 40 specimens reflect that geographic span, with trees originating from across the species’ range—including Norway, where Munch was painting.
Michael consulted the Arboretum’s records and found an even closer connection. The cones that produced the seed for several of the Arboretum’s Scots pines were gathered on Kalvøya Island in 1985. Located in the Oslofjord just west of the city center, Kalvøya sits directly across the water from the shoreline where Munch painted this scene decades earlier. Is the progenitor of the Arboretum’s tree pictured far-off in the distance in Munch’s painting? We can’t know for sure, but it seems possible!
Visit Pinus sylvestris (308-85*D) along Conifer Path in the Arnold Arboretum.
Visit “Train Smoke” (2023.552) on the first floor at the Harvard Art Museums.