+ The Scandinavian writer August Strindberg painted. I didn’t know that.

Strindberg had an abundantly rich mental life (perhaps too rich). Contrary to what he said, he painted not in his spare time but in those periods in his life when writing failed him, in times when he was experiencing difficulties in his several failed marriages and relationships, and suffering his intermittent financial and inner crises. Little wonder then that painting, rather than providing solace, should itself reflect his mental state. Strindberg seemed to believe in (or could not see beyond) what Ruskin called the “pathetic fallacy”, which is to say that nature personified his emotional state. When he broods, the sky broods. When he is assailed, he sees the buoy at sea or the landmark on the cliff top similarly beleaguered. When he is lonely or isolated, so too is the solitary plant, struggling on the barren shore (a subject he repeated several times). Wind-lashed, he stands on a clifftop, the bare masts of a ship wallowing in the waves. Strindberg was, after all, a dramatist.