Occasionally an underknown artist resurfaces from the past whose style is so familiar that his work immediately feels at home among that of his contemporary masters. This can happen even when the influential innovations of those masters are misinterpreted by the artist, producing work that is provincial, if not naive. If an artist is talented, honest, and true to his temperament, however, his work ultimately can rise above pastiche and can stand alone. The photography of the Norwegian Modernist photographer John Olav Riise (1885–1978), who is the subject of a wonderful compact retrospective at the American-Scandinavian Foundation until August 17, is such an art.

Riise rarely left Norway, and his photographs, no matter how modernist, surreal, or melodramatic, never lose their Northern light or that region’s sense of artistic modesty and restraint. Ultimately, Riise was as interested in painting as he was in photography, and the Cubists had a large influence on his work, as did the Pre-Raphaelites, Surrealists, and Bauhaus photographers. Riise studied drawing with Leon Aurdal, who had studied with the French painters André Lhote and André Derain; and his brother Hermod studied painting with Christian Krogh and, in Paris in 1927, with Lhote. Exhibited widely in London and Europe, Riise showed yearly at the Salon International D’Art Photographique de Paris between 1924 and 1932, where his photographs were displayed alongside works by Man Ray, André Masson, and Max Ernst — all of whom left their mark on the photographer.

Approximately 60 of Riise’s photographs from the 1920s to the ’60s are on view in the exhibit at the American-Scandinavian Foundation, which was curated by Eva Klerck Gange, curator at the National Museum of Art, Architecture, and Design in Oslo. They show the photographer’s development from an accomplished portraitist to a Cubist, Surrealist, and abstractionist who layered negatives, cropped images, and hand-colored his prints.

Although Riise’s work takes tremendous leaps for its place and time, his photography is moderate and subdued, closer to the Neoclassicism of Ingres than to the Expressionism of Munch. His work touches upon dreams and eroticism — even sadomasochism — as well as the merging of cloud, landscape, flora, and fauna. But missing from Riise’s strange images is the erotic charge of either Ingres or the Surrealists. The pictures would remain Modernist exercises if not for the conflict, or stasis, between their progressive subject matter and their reserved tone.

Riise was never a slave to the medium of photography or to the avant-garde. His own unique world view is evident from the beginning. The first gallery in the show, which is arranged chronologically (most of the works are untitled and undated), is devoted to early portraits from the 1920s and ’30s, in which his subjects feel molded to his particular style. Here, we see two dozen silver gelatin prints of performers, mostly actresses, in poses that range from romantic, glamourshots and near-nude soft-core eroticism, to mug shots or character studies. Brooding and in deep shadow, many of the figures’ faces are in profile or their heads or eyes are averted from the camera. Riise, interested in the flow of line, the stray wisp of hair, or the play of curved, dark shapes against curved, light shapes, keeps personalities at a distance. His pictures are not really portraits per se but, rather, studies in rhythm, line, shape, and mood.

It is not surprising that among the early portraits are hand-colored images with alternate titles such as “Madonna” or “Meditation,” pictures in which Riise, painting over the images, invents parts of figures, drapery, and a fairy tale landscape seen through an archway. Clearly, he wants to be a painter of stories — religious and melodramatic — but he is not confident enough to abandon the crutch of the photograph. In some of these images I sense that he longs to be Raphael or Vermeer. In others, he brings us what look like Hollywood gangsters and Greek maidens.

The artist never abandons the photograph entirely, but he does learn to paint with both the camera and the developing process, through which he manipulates the image to the point that it no longer resembles a photograph.

In his landscapes, which were clearly a turning point, Riise begins to overlap numerous transparent images, creating Surreal or abstract montages. In some of the pictures, we can see the Riise’s shadow making animal shapes against snowdrifts; the artist is like a child looking for the elephant in the clouds. One of the images resembles prehistoric cave paintings of bison on the walls of Lascaux. Other landscapes recall Kandinsky’s early nearly abstract landscapes or those of Franz Marc, in which animal and countryside frolic as colored shapes. In others, Riise layers face and landscape together, as if he were attempting to create metaphoric amalgams like those of Paul Klee. Eyelashes, drapery, noses, mountains, and leaves all play off of one another, creating cubist pattern and surreal dreamscapes in which faces suddenly appear in the hills or sky.

The last galleries are filled with portraits in which the photographer-painter takes more liberties. Here, he retains the face but molds and manipulates the image as if he were a sculptor and the original photographs were clay. Faces appear to be wrapped like mummies in veils that, like blindfolds, goggles, and gags, give the images a sadomasochistic edge. Heads are cropped, and new surreal shapes emerge. These free-floating human forms resemble gelatin, mirrors, images in crystal balls, the heads of Francis Bacon, or spirit photography.

Riise, playing with images of the world, wants to recreate both landscape and man. He is not interested in the psychological portrait or in pure abstraction, but in a dream world somewhere between what is seen and what is imagined. He never quite got it exactly right, but the rewards of his search are well worth exploring and should not be forgotten.

Until August 17 (58 Park Ave., between 37th and 38th streets, 212-879-9779).