As primarily a landscape artist, Margit created a lot of paintings of countryside scenes—with trees, fields, creeks or rivers, maybe a barn or two. All the elements! And there can be a great variety in how she presented those elements. But two main variations were very popular. Unfortunately they both were recorded as “summer stream” in her notebook.

Of course, back when Margit started keeping records in a little spiral notebook, she didn’t assign a name to a painting so that later generations would nod in agreement. She was just jotting down the first thing that came to her so she could remember, at least in the short term, what the painting was about. That’s how she got to have a lot of pictures called “Summer stream”, even when those waterways had clearly taken various paths.

To distinguish the two themes, we will call them “pastoral river” and “like ours“.

Two distinct courses

You may see this line of paintings as just a variation. Sure, here you’ll find the main tree(s) on the left bank while in “Like ours” the prominent tree is on the right. But IMO the two sets of paintings have a distinctly different feel—far beyond where the trees stand. For example, here the farmstead—if visible at all—is on the horizon. And in that distance there are no hills typical of Margit’s corner of Minnesota.

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Margit painted many scenes that could be called “Like Ours”.
Here, are two main variations. See “Summer stream” at left and the classic “Like ours” at right.

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