This time of year is when, in the most northern extremes, the sun doesn’t set at all, or just cruises along the horizon for a while before rising again: the time of the Midnight Sun.

While they were back in the Nordic countries in the summer of 1890, Anders Zorn and his family took a cruise up the coast of Norway to visit the most northerly point of mainland Europe, where he painted North Cape with the Midnight Sun, completed slightly after the solstice, on 6-7 July 1890. This may give the impression of being finely detailed, but is in fact a quick oil sketch, in which his paint is often applied so thinly as to barely cover the ground.

In Midnight, one of Zorn’s major works from 1891, he demonstrates his mastery of oils in this apparently spontaneous view painted from the stern of a small rowing boat, as its occupant steered it towards the opposite shore by the light of the midnight sun, near Mora. As with so many of his paintings, its spontaneity is deceptive. He planned each painting meticulously, with thorough preparation, like a chess player thinking through their next moves. Following this intense mental rehearsal, every brushstroke in the finished work had been laid in place in his mind; applying the paint was then a brief performance to complete the act of creation.

For his undated view of Northern Norway, Midnight Sun I suspect that Adelsteen Normann travelled north to the Lofoten Islands, where he had painted earlier in his career. A small group of seabirds, probably gannets, are in flight just above the glassy surface of the fjord, at the lower right.

In late May of 1940, the war artist Eric Ravilious joined HMS Highlander, an escort to the aircraft carrier HMS Glorious, on deployment to recapture Narvik in north Norway. His ship returned briefly to Scapa Flow before returning to Narvik to recover the forces it had landed there. In early June, HMS Glorious was sunk there with great loss of life. Midnight Sun (1940) shows the aircraft carrier in the distance, and in the left foreground is a depth charge launcher, used against submarines.

During the early 1890s, Willard Metcalf spent a lot of his time painting landscapes on the East Coast of the US, including Midsummer Twilight (c 1890), which shows countryside and old stone buildings more typical of France.

Flaming June (c 1895) is probably Frederic, Lord Leighton’s best-known work, and was one of his last paintings. It’s strongly evocative of the thermal and other sensations of a hot summer’s day, and a fine display of Leighton’s figurative painting skills. But it also has to be one of his shallowest works, as it lacks any meaning, narrative, or sophistication in reading. That may well explain its continuing popularity on greetings cards and other mass media.

A Clear Night in June (1905-07), above, and A June Night and Old Jølster Farm (before 1911), below, are two of more than a dozen views Nikolai Astrup painted of this farm after about 1902. He painted these when the blossom was on the trees, and the meadows were a patchwork of yellow with the first of the summer flowers.

Willard Metcalf’s Midsummer Shadow from 1911 is a scene of gentle rural dilapidation with an unusually strong perspective recession. The old painted signs at the right add splashes of contrasting colour. As with most of his paintings, he uses a near-square canvas, rather than the more panoramic canvases which were often preferred by landscape painters.

I wish you a happy Midsummer Eve, and lasting Midnight Sun.