Joie de Vivre, Three Dancing Figures

Three naked figures are performing a chain dance in a bright, flowering landscape. It is an image of “Arcadia” – the lost age of happiness. The painting is only a fragment of a much larger work. Originally, there was a young man in the right foreground, sitting in the shade of a tree (part of his arm can still be seen). He was deep in thought and excluded from the company. The artist has removed him as though to insist on the bright side of life. Edvard Weie was one of the artists who played a part in developing modernist painting in Denmark, but he himself felt that he only knew adversity and met with no understanding.