Landscape as an independent genre in painting became established in Slovene art during the Romantic period in the mid-19th century. General interest in remote and untouched nature prevailed, especially among mountaineers and tourists, and nature also fascinated painters. Painting landscapes meant more of a moody and topographic documentary task for artists, rather than a pure painting challenge.
Marko Pernhart also painted in this sense; he was charmed by the beauty of nature during solitary walks in Carinthia and Carniola, along lakes and rivers, and while climbing mountain peaks. He painted precisely the fairy-tale beauties of a then little-known world, and the painting Lago di Fusine in Stormy Weather is one of his most famous images. The Lago di Fusine is one of the two Laghi di Fusine which lie below Mount Mangart on the tripoint between Italy, Austria, and Slovenia. The lakes were located in Carniola until the end of the First World War, but then this territory belonged to Italy.
The painter achieved a characteristic romantic dramatic atmosphere with a mass of stormy clouds that cover the entire sky, and with the sunbeams that barely penetrate through them, creating reflections on the lake’s surface and shore.
His characteristic smooth application of paint and precise painting achieved the mood of a mighty and uncontrollable nature, emphasizing its eternity with the exposed tree on the right, which defies both weather and time.