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This series of Scandinavian Monographs is published 
 by the American-Scandinavian Foundation to promote 
 the study of Scandinavian history and culture, in the 
 belief that true knowledge of the North will contrib- 
 ute to the common profit on both sides of the Atlantic 
 
SCANDINAVIAN MONOGRAPHS 
 VOLUME V 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
THIS VOLUME IS ENDOWED 
 
 BY MR. C. HENRY SMITH 
 
 OF SAN FRANCISCO 
 
Midsummer Night at Riddarholmen, by Eugen Jansson 
 Owned by Thorsten Laurin, Stockholm 
 
Scandinavian Art 
 
 ILLUSTRATED 
 
 CARL LAURIN 
 
 EMIL HANNOVER 
 
 JENS THUS 
 
 WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY 
 
 CHRISTIAN BRINTON 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 THE AMERICAN-SCANDINAVIAN FOUNDATION 
 
 LONDON: HUMPHREY MILFORD 
 OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 
 
 1922 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY THE AMERICAN-SCANDINAVIAN FOUNDATION 
 
 C. S. PETERSON, THE REGAN PRINTING HOUSE, CHICAGO, U. S. A. 
 
PUBLISHER'S NOTE 
 
 For this, the first comprehensive treatment of Scandinavian art in 
 any language, the American-Scandinavian Foundation is fundamentally 
 indebted to Mr. C. Henry Smith, of San Francisco, whose munificent 
 gift provided for the completed manuscripts and the engravings. The 
 volume has been the labor of several years on the part of the eminent 
 authors, the translators, and editors. The survey of Swedish art has 
 been written by Carl G. Laurin, author of Konsthistoria, Sweden 
 Through the Artist's Eye, etc. The account of Danish art in the 
 nineteenth century is by Emil Hannover, Director of the Danish 
 IVIuseum of Industrial Art. The development of modern Norwegian 
 art has been traced by Jens Thiis, Director of the National Gal- 
 lery in Christiania. The appearance of the work has been some- 
 what delayed because of the illness of Mr. Thiis, who was prevented 
 from revising the last part of his manuscript. One of the trans- 
 lators, Mr. Frederic Schenck, of Harvard University, who rendered 
 the Danish section into English, did not live to see his work in press. 
 The Swedish section has been translated by Adolph Burnett Ben- 
 son, assistant professor of Scandinavian at Yale University, and the 
 Noi-w^egian manuscript by Sigurd Bernhard Hustvedt, assistant pro- 
 fessor of English at the University of California, Southern Branch. 
 The Swedish plates have been engraved by P. A. Norstedt och Soner 
 of Stockholm, the Danish and Norwegian plates by the Photochrome 
 Engraving Company of New York. The task of collating the manu- 
 scripts, editing the translations, and placing the illustrations, as well 
 as proof-reading, has been executed by Hanna Astrup Larsen, editor 
 of the American-Scandinavian Review. Throughout the prepara- 
 tion of the book the Committee on Publications consulted Dr. Chris- 
 tian Brinton, the well known art critic, who will be remembered in 
 this connection especially for his various essays on Scandinavian art and 
 for his catalogue of the Scandinavian Exhibition of 1912-1913. 
 
 The Committee on Publications. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Introduction 1 1 
 
 A Survey of Swedish Art 
 
 I. The Ecclesiastical Period 37 
 
 II. The Castles of the Vasas. After the Thirty Years' 
 
 War '. 5H 
 
 III. The Carolinian Age. The Ro\al Palace 73 
 
 IV. French and English Influences in the Gustavian Age 87 
 V. Sergei 106 
 
 VI. The Transition Period 114 
 
 VII. The Diisseldorf Influence. The Historical Painters 128 
 VIII. The Opponents. New Tendencies in Swedish 
 
 Painting 151 
 
 IX. New Tendencies in Swedish Painting (Continued) 185 
 
 X. Modern Plastic and Decorative Art 207 
 
 XI. Architecture at the Opening of the Twentieth Cen- 
 tury 223 
 
 Danish Art in the Nineteenth Century 
 
 I. The Period Before Eckersberg 241 
 
 II. Eckersberg 247 
 
 III. Eckersberg's School 255 
 
 IV. Marstrand 270 
 
 V. The Europeans 280 
 
 VI. The Nationalists 293 
 
 VII. The Coloristic Awakening 315 
 
 VIII. The Quest of Style and Recent Tendencies 359 
 
 IX. Sculpture 393 
 
 X. Architecture 420 
 
 Modern Norwegian Art 
 
 I. The Nineteenth Century Pioneers, Dahl and 
 
 Fearnley 43 7 
 
 II. Tidemand and Gude. Diisseldorf Technique and 
 
 Norwegian Subjects 454 
 
 III. The Munich School 484 
 
 IV. The Beginning of French Influence 497 
 
 V. The Naturalists : Thaulow, Krohg, and Weren- 
 
 skiold. Gerhard Munthe 507 
 
 VI. Other Painters of the Seventies and Eighties. . . . 542 
 
 VII. The Intermediate Generation 560 
 
 VIII. Munch 580 
 
 IX. The Present Generation of Painters 592 
 
 X. Sculpture in the Nineteenth Century 613 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 BY 
 CHRISTIAN BRINTON, M.A., Litt. D. 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 By Christian Brinton 
 
 I 
 
 WHILE it may appear extraneous to apply to aes- 
 thetic considerations the rigid determinism exempli- 
 fied by Hippolyte Taine, yet it is obvious that a 
 knowledge of the land and its people is essential to a proper 
 understanding of the art of a given country. You cannot ap- 
 preciate the significance of the Italian Primitives unless you 
 know something of the serene beauty of the Tuscan or Um- 
 brian hillside as seen in the conventionalized backgrounds of 
 the early masters. And similarly you will fail to grasp the 
 spirit of Northern painting if you are not in some degree fa- 
 miliar with the conformation of the country and the composi- 
 tion of the light that slants obliquely upon shimmering fjord 
 or sparse upland pasture. There can be no question concern- 
 ing the fundamental differences between the art of the 
 North and the art of the South. The one is septentrional^ 
 the other meridional, with all the distinction implies, 
 and it should be apparent to any observant person that these 
 divergences are in large part due to circumstances of race, 
 clime, and climate. 
 
 Granted a specific ethnic heritage and a special natural 
 environment, it is Interesting to note how certain nations 
 react to their surroundings. The art of the Italians, follow- 
 ing that of the Greeks, Is formal and balanced. It reveals 
 a regard for proportion, a genius for co-ordination, not seen 
 elsewhere in the pageant of pictorial expression. Italian 
 painting is not primarily a record of external observation, 
 of nature found ready at hand. Its spirit Is philosophic. It 
 
 11 
 
12 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 is deeply imbued with thought and reason. Little windows 
 scrupulously spaced look out upon vistas where everything 
 is held in equilibrium, upon a miniature universe subjected 
 to an inner sense of symmetry. There is in Italian painting, 
 from the fresh-tinted frescoes of Giotto to the flowing har- 
 monies of Tiepolo, no marked departure from this essential 
 principle. And while color plays an important role in these 
 compositions, notably in the work of the Venetians, it 
 rarely attains ascendency over line and form. 
 
 That which, without risk of misapprehension, may be 
 termed the scholastic element in Italian art assumes, with 
 the work of the Frenchmen, a more scientific application. 
 The chief contribution made by latter-day France to the art 
 of painting has been the development of the theory and prac- 
 tice of what is known as impressionism. While there have 
 been reactions against impressionism, they have proved noth- 
 ing more than tributes to a method without which modern art 
 could scarcely have come into existence. The entire pan- 
 orama of contemporary landscape painting bases itself upon 
 impressionism. We no longer, as with the Italians, gaze 
 through narrow little panels upon a remote, ordered world. 
 We are at last out of doors flooded with sunshine. We were 
 brought there by means of the patient analysis of light and 
 the application of certain definite scientific principles to the 
 problem of atmospheric painting. 
 
 If the art of the Italians is philosophic, and that of the 
 Frenchmen, especially Manet, Monet, and their successors, 
 illumined by scientific clairvoyance, it is but reasonable to 
 infer that the work of the Scandinavians should betray 
 characteristics equally distinctive. The inhabitants of the 
 Northern peninsula, cut-off from the main_current_of Con- 
 jinental cultural development, and living in close community 
 with nature, have evolved an aesthetic expression that may 
 be termed indigenous. In painting, sculpture, and archi- 
 tecture similar conditions have produced similar results. 
 While it is manifest that the art of Sweden, Denmark, and 
 Norway is by no means identical, it nevertheless shares cer- 
 tain specific affiliations. The differences are those of degree. 
 
IM KODUCriON 13 
 
 not ol kind. riiis art is an expression that lorcij^ncrs in- 
 stantly recognize as septe ntrional. 
 
 Scholastic with the Italian, scientific with the I^renchnian, 
 aesthetic utterance with the Scandina\ians tlisi)lavs a lyric 
 quality such as one encounters in the art of no other country. 
 In its finer essence the pictorial production of the Northern 
 peoples is lyrical. These paintings are songs in color, these 
 artists poets in line and tone. That this should be the case 
 there need be scant wonder, for here again have certain 
 causes produced their appointed results. Determinism in I 
 matters artistic is in fact as firmly established as is determin- 
 ism in the field of physiology or psychology. 
 
 The farther one journeys from Greece and Rome, the 
 less Is one enslaved by the fetish of form, by that academic • "lUAM. 
 tyranny which is the enemy of Individual expression. The u 
 
 relative remoteness of the Scandinavian artist from such F^oJ)^ 
 
 sources of enervation has proved his salvation. Living ^"'^^^''^^ ^.^ja^^ 
 alone or In more or less Isolated surroundings, there has ^"^ 
 sprung up between the Northern painter and his environ- 
 ment a kind of pregnant Intimacy. He has been compelled 
 to seek inspiration In his feelings and fancies, his reactions 
 to nature and natural scene. And the particular character 
 of the scenes with which he Is most familiar constitutes not 
 the least of those silent yet eloquent forces that have condi- 
 tioned his aesthetic consciousness. Serenity and precision ' 
 may flourish in the South, among the luminous isles of the 
 .Tlgean or along the shores of the Mediterranean, but the 
 North is the home of mystery, of poetic suggestion, and that 
 psychic restlessness which you encounter alike on the can- 
 vases of Edvard Munch or in the pages of August Strindberg. 
 The exalted, at times frenzied, struggle for freedom which 
 confronts you In the work of these men amounts Indeed to a 
 phase of eleutheromania. "" 
 
 The first thing that impresses the student of Scandinavian ' 
 art Is the infrequency with which one meets representations 
 of the human figure. Man is here not the center of interest 
 as is the case with the Greeks and Latins. It is nature and 
 natural phenomena that hold the place of honor. The art . 
 
14 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 I of the North is a chaste art. It betrays an impersonality, a 
 I cosmic anonymity far removed from the petty or trivial. 
 ' Deriving its stimulus from direct contact with the out of 
 doors, it dedicates its energies to a species of pantheistic 
 ' nature worship. The deity which presides over Northern 
 art is not fashioned in the image of humanity. It is com- 
 pounded of that elemental rhythm which models the surface 
 of the earth, tints the far reaches of the sky, ruffles the waves, 
 and stirs the foliage of birch or pine. 
 , That the language of this art may possess general appeal, 
 that it may attain that universality of application with 
 which the nations of the South have endowed their concep- 
 tion of the human form has been the aim, conscious or uncon- 
 scious, of the Northern artist. In the following pages you 
 will be enabled to judge how far this result has been 
 achieved. Whatever the verdict, there is one fact that 
 stands plainly forth, namely, the fact that the Scandinavian 
 artist, once he finds himself, seldom lacks the tenacity to be 
 Rational In theme and treatment. "Forward and home," 
 was the inspiring slogan of that courageous coterie which in 
 the middle eighties of the last century forsook Munich and 
 Paris to return to the Northland, and happily, "forward and 
 home" has since been their watchword. 
 
 The picture of Scandinavian art you will gather from the 
 ensuing pages is a threefold presentment. You have here- 
 with unveiled before you the artistic features of Sweden, 
 Denmark, and Norway. Each section has been traced by a 
 practised hand. While the touch varies a trifle, the result 
 will not fail to fuse itself Into a composite portrait of the 
 aesthetic physiognomy of the Scandinavian people. It is but 
 natural that the art of painting should receive major con- 
 sideration. Aside from certain monuments of historical inter- 
 est, aiThlte£turejsjmm]g;aTa^^ and sculp- 
 ture Is not as yet widely cultivated. The art of Scandinavia 
 Is polojristic. While it took these fresh-vlsloned Northern- 
 ers some time to outgrow the sombre tonality of museum and 
 gallery, they eventually recaptured their rightful heritage 
 of clear, tonic color and high-keyed harmony. It was Indeed 
 
INTRODUCriON 15 
 
 not for n;ui<2;li( that they cnjoyctl in Ii-aiicc the chstinction 
 of being known as la belle ecole blonde. 
 
 I'he story of Swedish art as outhned by Mr. Carl (J. 
 Lauriti forms a full-length portrait. Ihc hackgroiind is ^^^JiSif^i^ 
 amply lillctl in, and none of the important accents is missing. -- — " 
 Protected by the Court and patronized by the nobility, the 
 artistic taste of Sweden was from the beginning ecjectic. 
 Brilliant, responsive, and full of rapidly assimilated impres- 
 sions from the outside world, Swedish painting of the 
 eighteenth century is replete with the artificial grace of the 
 reign of rococo. Names such as Gustav Lundberg, Alex- 
 ander Roslin, Nils Lafrensen the younger, and Peter Adolf 
 Hall were less known in Stockholm than in Paris, where they 
 contributed their quota to the delicate yet imperishable 
 bloom of a deathless age. While there was sounder stuff 
 in their predecessor, the Hamburg-born David Ehrenstrahl, 
 they typify the auspicious Inception of aji art that has always 
 appealed to the aristocratic classes, and which has been prac- 
 tlsed~with distinction by more than one representative of 
 the royal family. 
 
 The baroque poraiposity of Ehrenstrahl and the rococo 
 radiance of Lundberg and his associates were succeeded by 
 the pseudo-classicism which dates from the French Revolu- 
 tion, and by the extravagant though sincere nature worship 
 of which Jean-Jacques Rousseau was the fervid apostle. 
 Wertmiiller's Danae, In the National Museum, and the 
 poetic landscapes of Ellas Martin, revealing manifest traces 
 of the Influence of Gainsborough and the English elegiac 
 school, are indicative of the tendencies of the period. The 
 English affiliation established by Martin was strengthened 
 by Karl Fredrik von Breda, who studied with Reynolds. 
 Breda returned to Stockholm with a richer tonality, a more 
 expressive line, and an emotional warmth that foreshadow 
 the dawn of romanticism. His likenesses of the prominent 
 personages of the day furthermore possess a sense of style 
 and a talent for character delineation that entitle them to 
 high rank in the category of Peninsular portraiture. 
 
 Strange as it may seem, the one outstanding figure in the 
 
16 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 eighteenth and early nineteenth century art of Sweden was 
 not a painter, but the. sculptor Johan Tobias Sergei. Swedish 
 painting has in fact not yet produced its Sergei. The model- 
 ler of the Faun, in the National Museum, was a man of ex- 
 traordinary endowment and rare force of character. Too 
 robust a soul to succumb to the emasculated classicism of the 
 day, he worked out his artistic destiny in typically independ- 
 ent fashion. Older than Canova or Thorvaldsen, he never- 
 theless remained younger in spirit, in vision, and in his 
 veracious rendering of form during a period when plastic 
 expression was notably deficient in vigor and sincerity. 
 
 Midway between the older and newer schools lingers the 
 refined, mobile silhouette of Egron Lundgren, the Swedish 
 Constantin Guys, who like Guys, was attracted by English 
 life, social and military, and who did some of his best work 
 while in the British capital. Lundgren was a cosmopolitan 
 product. With his responsive line and delicate eye for color, 
 he was a posthumous child of the age of rococo. When the 
 rest of the world was turning to historical subject, drab peas- 
 ant theme, or landscape darkened by heavy shadows from 
 the venerable Fontainebleau oaks, Lundgren's vision 
 remained vivacious and contemporary. He possessed the 
 true aristocratic instinct for style, and nothing In Swedish art 
 compares In grace and sensitive charm with these spirited 
 water-color sketches. 
 
 While Egron Lundgren was transcribing with sparkling 
 verity the pageant of mid-century life In London or Luck- 
 now, in Paris or Madrid, the balance of Sweden was, as has 
 been Intimated, engaged in the sober task of creating a 
 national school of art. The vogue of frigid neo-classiclst 
 and false romanticist was succeeded by the genuine outdoor 
 sentiment of such pioneer landscape painters as Edvard 
 Bergh and Alfred Wahlberg. The reposeful vision of the 
 nature intimlsts was supplemented by the story-telling genre 
 of August Jernberg and Ferdinand Fagerlln, and the earnest 
 attempt to translate native myth and fable Into paint was 
 exemplified In the canvases of Blommer and Malmstrom. 
 The most Imposing talent of the day was, however, Johan 
 
INTRODUCnON 17 
 
 r'rcclrik I l()ckcii. 'riiouj^Ii iiiihiiccl wllli llic trc;iclc tonality 
 of the romanticists, I lockcrt nianagctl to express himself with 
 vigor and conviction. His large, ettectivc canvas entitled 
 The Palace Fire, 1697, is an ei^och-making work in the 
 history of Northern art. 
 
 The foregoing men constitute certain important high- 
 lights in a general survey of Swedish painting. For its defin- 
 ite sequence you have the discriminating exposition of Mr. 
 Laurin, who follows its progress from its brilliant, sporadic 
 beginnings to the substantial achievement of the contem- 
 porary school. IHs^nly within the present generation that 
 Swedish art has come into its own. With the return from 
 France, from Paris, and from Grez, of the intrepid band 
 who resolutely opposed the Academy, and the formation, in 
 1886, of the society known as the Konstnarsforbundet, 
 Swedish art assumes its rightful position in the forward 
 march of European taste. The influence of Diisseldorf, 
 which had been superseded by that of Munich and Paris, 
 gave place to a passionate love of native scene and char- 
 acter, and a determination to become national alike in theme 
 and treatment. With eyes for the first time open to the 
 beauty of the homeland, and a technique fortified by famil- 
 iarity with the message of latter-day naturalism and impres- 
 sionism, the Swedish painter was not long in giving proof of 
 his new-found power. 
 
 In the vanguard of the modern movement looms Ernst 
 Josephson, equipped with a masterly breadth of draughts- 
 manship and a Manet-like faculty of placing the figure upon 
 canvas. By the side of Josephson stands the dextrous, cos- 
 mopolitan Anders Zorn, who brings to the altar of art every 
 gift save the gift of soul. And along with Zorn come Lars- 
 son and Liljefors, names familiar to lovers of Swedish art 
 the world over. The preceding men are transitional figures, 
 whereas with the rigorous Nordstrom, the sober-minded 
 Wilhelmson, and notably with Hesselbom, Fjeestad, Kreu- 
 ger, Prince Eugen, and Eugen Jansson we are confronted 
 with tendencies more stylistic than naturalistic or impres- 
 sionistic. The art of these painters and their younger col- 
 
18 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 leagues, such as Axel Torneman, Is subjective and synthetic 
 in spirit. It is not representation they seek butjie£Dration, 
 and their work is notable for its vigor of outline and appro- 
 priate employment of color spaces. Beginning as modest 
 lyrists, they have managed to endow their creations with 
 monumental significance. 
 
 The contribution of this particular group, which is the 
 most homogeneous unit in contemporary Swedish art, brings 
 us to the debatable threshold of expressionism, which has 
 already been crossed by Isaac Griinewald, Gosta Sandels, 
 Einar John, Leander Engstrom, and kindred apostles of out 
 and out modernism. The older men belong to a definite 
 school, the men of the middle period participated in certain 
 well defined movements, but these latest recruits to the cause 
 give free range to a luxuriant individualism. The extreme 
 manifestations of their art will doubtless, however, be modi- 
 fied by the benign caress of time, for there is nothing 
 like time to ameloriate the rigors of radicalism whether 
 aesthetic or social. 
 
 The leading charactertistic of this work, be it conservative 
 or experimental. Is its sense of nationalism. Its fidelity to 
 native theme. Each of these artists has his favorite sketch- 
 ing ground which he makes indisputably his own. Liljefors 
 finds Inspiration in the forest life of Uppland or among the 
 skerries of the Smaland coast. Nordstrom evolves an aus- 
 tere, stone-age mysticism out of the Iron mountain ranges 
 of Lapland and the shadowed hillsides of Bohuslan, while 
 upon the blue waters of Stockholm harbor, fringed with Its 
 crescent of amber lights, Eugen Jansson breathes a luminous 
 lyricism that for sheer poetic intensity is without parallel In 
 the annals of contemporary painting. Nor is all modern 
 Swedish art serious-minded, for with the drawings of Albert 
 Engstrom, the characterful statuettes of "Doderhultaren," 
 and the diverting evocations of Ossian Elgstrom and John 
 Bauer we are led into a world where actuality gives place to 
 humorous exaggeration or the touch of creative fantasy. 
 
 Whether In the stillness of snow-crusted forest with 
 Fjaestad and Schultzberg, among the Lofoten Islands with 
 
INrRODLlC'I ION 19 
 
 Anna Bobcr^-, or on tlic terrace ol I'rincc luifj;cn's \ ilia at 
 Valclcinarsiulde, you instinctively feel that each ol these 
 painters approaches his theme with sincerity and conviction. 
 The particuhir is here not infrequently inlused with a sig- 
 nificance that is general, and that which was local becomes 
 typical. With the clarification of the modern palette Swed- 
 ish painting has taken on fresh chromatic brilliancy. Fhis 
 art is more Sweciish than was formerly the case. The 
 national race consciousness has grown stronger and more 
 eloquent alike of the outward vesture of nature and of that 
 inner vision which fashions all things to its appointed 
 purpose. 
 
 It is unnecessary in any degree to anticipate the able 
 exposition of Mr. Laurin. His account of the development 
 of Swedish architecture from the ecclesiastical period to the 
 latest creations of Ferdinand Boberg, Gustav Clason, Rag- 
 nar Ostberg, Carl Westman, and others is notably instruc- 
 tive. His survey of Swedish plastic art, which carries us 
 from the Giant Finn of Lund Cathedral to the neo-renais- 
 sanee yet modernistic compositions of Christian Eriksson 
 and the varied inspiration of Carl Milles, is of equal merit 
 and interest. You gather in fact from Mr. Laurin's text a 
 general impression of flexibility and creative fecundity that 
 augurs well for the future of Swedish art. 
 
 It may not be amiss to note by way of recapitulation, 
 that art In Sweden did not long remain the exclusive property 
 of the upper classes. It was not restricted to park and pal- 
 ace, to the aristocratic confines of Gripsholm or Drottning- 
 holm, but, reinforced by a basic peasant virility, It became a 
 thing of the people and for the people. Carrying its bright- 
 ness into cottage and home, bearing its message from Malmo 
 to far off KIruna beyond the arctic circle, it chants the vis- 
 ible glory of Svea. At first a plaything and apanage of roy- 
 alty and a powerful ring of nobles — of the Hedvlg Eleon- 
 oras and Axel Oxenstlernas of Swedish history — it finally 
 won universal suffrage. 
 
20 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 II 
 
 There could be no stronger contrast than that afforded 
 by a comparison between the art of eclectic, cosmopolitan 
 Sweden and the home-loving production of the Dane. If 
 the art of Sweden is extensive, that of Denmark represents 
 an intensive development in close conformity with the polit- 
 ical and social traditions of the country. The lyric quality 
 already noted in the art of Sweden is also present in that of 
 Denmark, only it is not a poignant cry of passion or disillu- 
 sion. It more often takes the form of gentle mysticism or 
 the simple charm of a fireside lullaby. Just as you find In 
 Danish literature no Verner von Heldenstam or no Oscar 
 Levertin, so you encounter In contemporary Danish painting 
 no Eugen Jansson or no Karl Nordstrom, the Integrity of 
 whose vision Is tinged by a deep-seated pessimism, a touch of 
 cosmic austerity. 
 
 As you turn to Director Hannover's sympathetic presen- 
 tation of Danish art you will not fail to gain an Impression 
 of homogeneous development. Danish art Is Indigenous. 
 The treasures of early Danish painting and sculpture did 
 not arrive in stately fashion from foreign lands as was the 
 case with Gustav Ill's collection of statuary. They sprang 
 from the happy hearts and healthy sensibilities of a people 
 who had no restless visions of grandeur and world conquest, 
 a people fervently attached to their serene little country. 
 The Danes are addicted to an amused scepticism when it 
 comes to matters beyond their Immediate range of sympathy. 
 The tendency was manifest at an early stage of their cultural 
 development, and It has doubtless served to protect them 
 from follies and exaggerations in various fields of activity. 
 
 Yet it must not be assumed that Danish art attained 
 maturity without assistance from the outside world. Den- 
 mark, like Sweden, sent abroad, chiefly to France, for her 
 first architects and sculptors, while not a few of her painters 
 journeyed to Rome or elsewhere In order to acquire that 
 broader experience which was deemed essential to a proper 
 practice of their profession. The fact nevertheless remains 
 that these digressions did not materially alter the course of 
 
TNIRODUCTION 21 
 
 Danish art. As Director Hannover observes, there was no 
 genuinely Danish painting before Eckersberg, and Eckers- 
 berg himself had the sagacity not to be adversely influenced 
 either by David in Paris or the specious neo-antique espoused 
 by his countryman Thorvaldsen in Rome. Saving Pilo and 
 Carstens but few of these men renounced their national 
 affiliations. And as you study Constantin Hansen's portrait 
 group depicting seven leading Danish artists, all former 
 pupils of Eckersberg, foregathered in Hansen's Roman 
 studio, you spontaneously assume that they are thinking and 
 speaking of that endearing country to which they were 
 shortly to return and whose more familiar aspects they were 
 destined to celebrate. 
 
 Their preceptor, Christoffer Vilhelm Eckersberg, called 
 the father of Danish painting, just as the Hamburger Ehren- 
 strahl was known as the father of Swedish painting, and the 
 Norwegian, Johan Christian Dahl, was later to become 
 recognized as the parent of Norwegian painting, was a re- 
 markably endowed artist. Temporarily Interested In Italian 
 subject, he found his true sphere of activity In depicting local 
 theme — landscape, marines, and views of ships and shipping 
 In the vicinity of Copenhagen. His gallery of portraits, In- 
 cluding that of Thorvaldsen In the Kunstakademlet, Is also 
 of particular Importance. Everything he left In fact pos- 
 sesses a tranquil verity of vision and statement that no 
 change of taste can ever discount. 
 
 You do not need. In a preliminary survey of early nine- 
 teenth century Danish painting, to go beyond the three 
 typical figures of Eckersberg, Kobke, and Marstrand. Each 
 In his way reflects a distinct phase of the national temper- 
 ament, and between them they offer a complete picture of 
 native life and scene. At a period when the rest of Europe 
 was absorbed In the cultivation of a passionless pseudo- 
 classicism, the clear-eyed professor who dwelt In modest 
 quarters at the Academy In Kongens Nytorv was content 
 to transcribe reality with patient exactitude. It was upon a 
 foundation of substantial objectivity that he based the struc- 
 ture of modern Danish art. Following him comes Christen 
 
22 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 Schjellerup Kobke, who supplemented the constrained vision 
 and handling of the older men with a fresh, sunlit beauty, a 
 brighter tonality, and a freer technique. The figure, not 
 landscape, was Marstrand's preoccupation, and he in turn 
 discarded the arid formalism of Abildgaard and Jens Juel 
 and brought to Danish painting a humor, a grasp of char- 
 acter, and a breadth of style that proved an infinite boon 
 to the art of the day. 
 
 The successive steps in the evolution of Danish painting 
 from the constriction of its early stages to the freedom of its 
 new-found worship of light, color, and form are too com- 
 prehensively indicated by Director Hannover to require 
 more than passing mention. Following the eclipse of clas- 
 sicism and the tinsel romanticism of the Diisseldorf period, 
 came the ringing appeal to the nationalist consciousness 
 enunciated by Hoyen, whose propensity for aesthetic preach- 
 ment even rivalled that of Ruskin. This movement, which 
 paved the way for Dalsgaard, Exner, Vermehren and similar 
 exponents of peasant genre, failed to achieve significant re- 
 sults for the reason that its devotees were lacking in technical 
 proficiency. It was, in fact, not until the advent of the Paris 
 trained talents that Danish painting was able to overcome 
 that professional provinciality which had been its handicap 
 from the outset. 
 
 If the school of Eckersberg taught the Danish artist what 
 to paint, it was the school of Skagen that taught him how to 
 paint. Naturalistic at first, and by turns impressionistic and 
 luministic, it was the flexible, acquisitive Peter Severin 
 Kroyer who was the inspiration of the little colony of artists 
 who set up their easels along the sunlit dunes of the Skaw 
 and for the first time let into Danish painting the magic of 
 light and air. More potent as an influence than as an endur- 
 ing master, Kroyer, with his cosmopolitan cachet and 
 dazzling manipulative dexterity, was the dynamic force of 
 the movement. Whether in his vine-screened cottage at 
 Skagen or in his sumptuously appointed studio in Bredgade, 
 where used to take place those memorable evening musicales, 
 he was always to the fore. Red-faced and white flanneled. 
 
INTRODUCnON 23 
 
 he acted as the hcacon, the Skagcn Tyr, of the group, and 
 once he pointed the way, the rest proceeded to flood Danish 
 art, indoor as well as out, with the same tonic radiance. 
 
 A few paces from Kroyer's studio in Bredgade came to 
 h\'c a man of different stamp, not a versatile talent, eager to 
 attack any pictorial prohlem, hut a modest, retiring soul who 
 shrank from the glare of day, who preferred the dimness of 
 sparely furnished rooms or the mystic film of twilight on 
 grey-green roof or dark castle wall. In Vilhelm Hammers- 
 hoi Denmark produced an apostle of aesthetic quietism 
 beside whom even Whistler seems restless and sophisticated. 
 A product of neurasthenia this tremulous, penetrant work 
 may be, yet it bids fair to survive the legacy of many a more 
 emphatic talent. Along with Hammershoi should be men- 
 tioned Ejnar Nielsen, whose severe, achromatic vision, 
 somewhat indebted to the Italian Primitives and the pallid 
 serenity of Puvis de Chavannes, possesses a lineal purity and 
 a tonal restraint that lend It unique significance. 
 
 The subdued, grepuscular panels of Vilhelm Hammers- 
 hoi, and the not Infrequently pathological Inspiration of 
 Ejnar Nielsen, constitute an Intermezzo In the forward 
 progress of Danish painting, which, having acquired light 
 through the efforts of Kroyer, next proceeded to add color 
 through the chromatic opulence of Zahrtmann, and form 
 through the vigorous plasticity of WlHumsen. One of the 
 most original figures in Danish art, and the possessor of a 
 richly subjective color sense, Kristlan Zahrtmann Is also 
 notable as a helpful and Inspiring preceptor. Zahrtmann's 
 Skole which has fostered such genuine talents as Johannes 
 Larsen, Peter Hansen, and Fritz Syberg, has exercised a 
 fruitful Influence upon current Danish and also Norwegian 
 painting. It has taught the lesson of nationalism through 
 the development of a more conscious sense of individuality 
 and a more definitely localized sphere of Interest. 
 
 In the matter of individuality there Is, however, no figure 
 In Danish art whether in painting, sculpture, architecture, or 
 decorative craftsmanship comparable with Jens Ferdinand 
 Willumsen. The entire struggle for freedom from conven- 
 
24 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 tion and from the stuplfying effect of academic somnolence 
 centers in the fecund personality of Willumsen. Everything 
 Willumsen touches acquires the precious boon of life and 
 form. A protean genius, he has attacked in succession all 
 phases of current artistic activity. Nor has he failed to 
 leave his impress whether it be upon the starkly simplified 
 facade of the Frie Udstilling building or a bit of polychrome 
 pottery. Combative as well as creative, Willumsen waged a 
 valiant battle for aesthetic liberty, and it is mainly through 
 his efforts that the younger men of to-day owe their compar- 
 ative immunity at the hands of a none too reverent public. 
 
 The recent developments of contemporary Danish art 
 synchronize with similar manifestations in Sweden and Nor- 
 way. The movement has been away from naturalism and 
 impressionism and in the direction of decorative synthesis. 
 The amazing fertility of the late Thorvald BindesboU, the 
 Danish William Morris, and the pre-Raphaelite inspiration 
 of the brothers Skovgaard have aided in the fostering of a 
 new group. A richer tonality, a more opulent feeling for 
 mass, and a frank desire to combine beauty and utility are 
 among the chief characteristics of the younger generation 
 of painters, sculptors, architects, and designers. A species 
 of new romanticism, an awakening to the subjective and 
 stylistic possibilities of color and form has superceded the 
 objectivity of the older men. 
 
 Danish art of to-day has gone a long way from the simple 
 verity of Eckersberg and Kobke, and the patient observation 
 of Lauritz Ring, who still resides In his flower-fronted cot- 
 tage at Roskllde, a picturesque reminder of the past. Con- 
 temporary Danish painting even possesses Its expressionists 
 and synchronlsts — some designate them as dysmorphists — 
 who periodically enliven the exhibitions of Den Frie and the 
 newer secessionist organization known as Gronningen. Yet 
 despite its advanced pretentions the work of such men as 
 Harald Glerslng, Edvard Wele, Sigurd Swane, Aksel Jor- 
 gensen, William Scharff and their colleagues remains essen- 
 tially Danish. It Is Danish just as the art of Willumsen, the 
 aesthetic anarch of a decade or more ago, was reluctantly 
 
IN'rRODUCriON 25 
 
 iicknovvlcdgotl (o he Danisli. Thiit which imlccd wc first note 
 in the production of these innovators are the departures 
 from precedent, the exaggerations. On subsequent acquaint- 
 ance we perceive that the difference between them and their 
 predecessors has been all too slight. 
 
 It Is the art briefly outlined in the foregoing paragraphs, 
 together with the architecture of Martin Nyrop, H, B. 
 Storck, anci Hans Holm, and the sculpture of Willumsen, 
 Freund, Hansen-Jacobsen, Kai Nielsen, and the Iceland- 
 born Einar Jonsson, that reflect the present-day character of 
 Danish aesthetic development. The illuminating presenta- 
 tion of the subject by Director Hannover is so comprehen- 
 sive that it merely remains to summarize one's general im- 
 pressions. Danish art, like the Danish landscape or Dan- 
 ish literature, possesses the faculty of not striving to trans- 
 cend certain definite limitations. Dramatic intensity is 
 jibsent. Yet while It Is true that Danish letters boasts no 
 Strlndberg, no von Heldenstam, and no Levertin, It may well 
 claim Its Herman Bang or Jacobsen whose work, suffused 
 with tender mysticism and lightened by flashes of humor, is 
 typical of the modern Danish spirit. 
 
 And so It Is in painting. When Kobke depicts a boat- 
 landing party with the Dannebrog fluttering on the fresh 
 morning breeze, when Lundbye paints a wide-horlzoned 
 stretch of his beloved Sjgelland, when Kyhn devotes himself 
 to views of Jutland, or Skovgaard senior masses in monu- 
 mental forms the beeches of Dyrehaven, we have something 
 exclusively Danish. The same is true of Ring, Syberg, and 
 Phillpsen In their records of rural life and scene, nor Is It 
 otherwise with Julius Paulsen In his delicate landscape noc- 
 turnes or VIggo Johansen In his particular province, for 
 who has pictured the intimacies of domestic existence with 
 more sympathetic Insight than Johansen. There is no pre- 
 tense here. It is all consistent and contained. We are far 
 from the Salon machine concocted to astound a jaded 
 public. 
 
 Danish art of to-day, having overcome certain early disa- 
 bilities, reflects a wholesome equability of temper and a gen- 
 
26 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 erous measure of material well-being. This art is rich in 
 tone and texture and discreetly sensuous in spirit. The splen- 
 did assembly hall of Martin Nyrop's Raadhus radiates light 
 and color, while Willumsen's playful putti disport them- 
 selves with true abandon. Midway between the brilliant 
 eclecticism and lyric exaltation of Sweden, and the stormy, 
 os^ianesque grandeur of Norway, stands the instinctive 
 moderation, the natural amenity of Denmark. Having 
 achieved a definite emotional and social stability, the Dane 
 can well afford to remain himself, and to smile indulgently 
 upon a stressful, unquiet world. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Entering the arena of art at a later date than Swede or 
 Dane, the Norwegian possessed the priceless assets of 
 youth, abounding energy, and freedom from precedent that 
 enabled him to express himself with unhampered vigor and 
 directness. The first thing that impresses one on viewing a 
 representative collection of Norwegian painting, sculpture, 
 or decorative art is its aspect of freshness and general ab- 
 sence of fatigue. You may note a certain overconfidence, but 
 you will rarely encounter echoes of empty traditionalism or 
 a point of view that savors of academic anaemia. 
 
 The history of modern Norwegian art covers but a scant 
 century of consecutive effort, yet within that period the Nor- 
 wegian painter has nevertheless been able to place himself 
 on even terms not alone with his Peninsular neighbors, but 
 fully abreast of the broader currents of Continental artistic 
 development. The realization that he started later, and 
 consequently had more to achieve, proved an incentive rather 
 than a detriment. And in order to diminish all disparity the 
 Norwegian merely had to draw upon an unexploited wealth 
 of vitality, aesthetic and physical. 
 
 The text of Director Thiis which you will herewith peruse 
 is a model of constructive exposition. Working in a more 
 or less virgin field, a field that he himself has largely cre- 
 ated, Director Thiis is In a position to contribute pioneer 
 criticism, and of this opportunity he takes full advantage. 
 
INTRODUCTION 27 
 
 The profile of the period preceding the dcchiration of 
 national independence in 1814 is bound to appear more or 
 less sketchy on account of the paucity of data at hand, yet 
 e\'cn this relatively remote epoch in the history of Nor- 
 wegian art has its well defined tendencies and its outstand- 
 ing personalities. Though for the most part of anonymous 
 authorship, the early ecclesiastical or secular sculpture, paint- 
 ing, and handicraftsmanship display characteristics that 
 were destined to reappear at a subsequent date. New art is 
 invariably conditioned by latent aesthetic instincts. The 
 decorative fantasies of Gerhard Munthe are based upon 
 century-old saga motifs; and it is by no means improbable 
 that the hypersensitiveness of Edvard Munch, that feeling 
 of cosmic fear which pervades his work, harks back to the 
 primal awe of primitive man in the presence of the insolu- 
 able enigma of nature. 
 
 Out of this somewhat dusky half-light emerges the rugged 
 silhouette of Magnus Berg, a richly endowed craftsman who 
 passed most of his life in Copenhagen, and left a legacy of 
 deftly carved ivory groups displaying marked baroque influ- 
 ence. It is Director Thiis's placing In relief of such figures as 
 Berg, and rescuing from obscurity such comparatively un- 
 known men as Mathlas Stoltenberg, the provincial Nord- 
 land portrait painter, and Lars Hertervlg, an imaginative 
 nature mystic who recalls our own Ryder or Blakelock, that 
 lends his text Its particular value. The Gudes and Tide- 
 mands, like the Thorvaldsens, have been too persistently 
 exploited. The public deserves to know something of less 
 conventional types, and no one presents their respective 
 cases with more authority than the scholarly, militant 
 Director of the National Gallery of Norway. He is amply 
 qualified for such a task, having already done much to force 
 acceptance of Munch and to win proper recognition for the 
 Norwegian plastic genius Gustav Vigeland. 
 
 It Is In fact this same militancy of spirit that distinguishes 
 Norwegian art and letters In general. The leading figures 
 stand starkly forth as though rough-hewn from the native 
 rock. And to those given to Indulging in symbols, the view 
 
28 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 of Dahl's storm-tossed birch tree buffeted by the wind yet 
 clinging to its stony base may well seem typical of the entire 
 course of Norwegian art. Cast in heroic mould, these men 
 have forged their way to the front through sheer power and 
 gersistence. There is not, even to this day, in Norway such 
 a thing as an academy of art, royal or national, and technical 
 instruction has necessarily been difficult to obtain. The 
 pioneers were largely self-taught. Berg was a simple rustic 
 who began life as a woodcarver. Dahl was the son of a 
 humble fisherman and ferryman of Bergen. These men 
 were not protected by kings and nobles as were the Swedes, 
 nor were they reared amid the security of a solidly estab- 
 lished social order as were the Danes. Almost without 
 exception they fought their battles single-handed, and many 
 of them are still indulging in this same salutary pastime. 
 
 Such conditions have not been without effect upon the 
 development of the arts in Norway. You meet in this work 
 a degree of individualism not apparent in the production of 
 Sweden or Denmark. There are of course marked affin- 
 ities between one artist and another, or one group of artists 
 and another, yet each man stands firmly upon his own feet. 
 The art of Norway does not fall into the category of a 
 sharply defined school, as for example is the case with the 
 art of Holland or of Denmark. Its progress is uneven. It 
 does not proceed upon its course with placid uniformity. It 
 advances intermittently, not to say explosively. There was 
 something meteor-like in the rapid rise to fame and Euro- 
 pean position of Johan Christian Dahl, the father of con- 
 temporary Norwegian painting, and on more than one 
 occasion the world has been startled by the sudden eruption 
 of a fresh-born Norwegian genius of letters or art. 
 
 When Dahl eventually located in Dresden as professor 
 of landscape at the Kunstakademie, pallid neo-classicism had 
 been superseded by a romantic nature poetry and a taste for 
 theatric peasant genre. While it was impossible even for 
 this sturdy son of West Coast fisherfolk to escape the pre- 
 tense of the period, it is to his credit that, during long resi- 
 dence abroad, he never ceased to remain Norwegian at 
 
IN rkODUCI ION 29 
 
 lic;irt. 1 \c (V\(\ not clc\()tc his energies to ihe portrayal of 
 moonlit ruins on the Rhine or the fateful Lorelei. Jivery 
 summer he journeyetl homeward where he passed the time 
 sketching among the fjords antl mountains of his native 
 land. While his work remained romantic, it never lost con- 
 tact with reality. It pulsates with dramatic passion, with 
 genuine bardic power, yet it is based upon actual observa- 
 tion. And what is true of Dahl is even more true of his suc- 
 cessor Fearnley, and of the deeply lyrical Cappelen who died 
 while still in his twenties. 
 
 From the outset these men displayed a vigorous intensity 
 of statement that to this day has remained typical of Nor- 
 wegian painting. Even the panoramic Gude and the popu- 
 lar exponent of peasant life, Adolf Tidemand, had their 
 moments of genume veracity. And once the specious glam- 
 our of poetic sentiment had been dispelled, and the Nor- 
 wegian painter was permitted to see nature In her true 
 aspect, this faculty came more prominently to the fore. The 
 older men down to the time of Amaldus Nielsen and Ludvlg 
 Munthe studied In Diisseldorf. The succeeding generation 
 drifted to Munich and Paris. In due course the pictorial 
 Insincerity of Schlrmer and Lessing and the anecdotal inan- 
 ities of Knaus and Vautier vanished with the Increasing 
 vogue of an art based upon a closer study of nature and a 
 more accurate comprehension of existing visual phenomena. 
 Teutonic romanticism gave place to Gallic rationalism, to an 
 art that endeavored to place the eye upon a parity with the 
 mind, to supplement sentiment and Imagination with first- 
 hand observation. 
 
 Erik Werensklold was the earliest Norwegian painter to 
 sense the impending change and adjust himself to the new 
 order of things. In 1879 he saw the memorable French 
 exhibition In Munich, and straightway wrote to his col- 
 leagues that the Bavarian capital was dead as an art center. 
 With ready receptivity he realized that the forward move- 
 ment pointed away from the studio claptrap of PUoty and 
 Lofftz toward the sturdy terrestrlalism of Gustave Courbet 
 and the fresh graphic vision of Edouard Manet, His advice 
 
30 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 was fortunately followed, and between 1880 and 1883 most 
 of the progressive Norwegian painters foregathered in 
 Paris to admire and emulate the grey-green harmonies of 
 Cazin, the sober peasant vision of Bastien-Lepage, or the 
 rude proletarian touch of Roll. Eilif Peterssen, Hans 
 Heyerdahl, Werenskiold himself, Fredrik CoUett, Frits 
 Thaulow, and Edvard Diriks formed the vanguard of the 
 new movement. And one by one they returned to their 
 native country bearing with them the inspiring message that 
 precipitated a veritable revolution in the province of pic- 
 torial representation. 
 
 The Norwegians espoused the gospel of naturalism in all 
 sincerity, each pursuing his pathway with independence of 
 spirit. That same tendency which in Sweden initiated a 
 school of synthetic landscape interpreters, and in Denmark 
 fostered a genuine decorative renaissance, aroused in Nor- 
 way a different set of reactions. In particular it gave birth to 
 a group afflicted with social and pathological sympathies. In 
 literature this coterie included Hans Jasger, Arne Garborg, 
 Gunnar Heiberg, and Knut Hamsun, and in art found its 
 leading exponents in Christian Krohg and Edvard Munch. 
 Robust and defiantly objective looms the massive form of 
 Krohg, while in the shadowland of an acute subjectivity 
 lingers the solitary, enigmatic apparition of Munch. 
 
 Though Krohg, the epic apostle of Zolaism in paint, has 
 undergone numerous vicissitudes, his militancy of temper 
 and mental vigor remain unimpaired. Seated in the garden 
 of his fjord-side home at Drobak, grizzley and primeval, he 
 seems to epitomize the stressful epoch of which, with pen 
 as well as brush, he was for years the living incarnation. 
 The complexion of Norwegian art has altered during the 
 last decade. Of the actual pioneers several have passed 
 away. Yet Diriks has not entirely deserted Drobak for 
 Paris, while upon the pine-crested heights of Lysaker, over- 
 looking the upper reaches of the Christiania fjord, still reside 
 Eilif Peterssen, Gerhard Munthe, and Erik Werenskiold 
 whose talented son Dagfin carries promisingly forward the 
 paternal tradition. 
 
IN I'RODUC IION 31 
 
 I'lic rigors of naturalism were followed by the delicate 
 irradiance of iinpressionisni, which in due course was suc- 
 ceeded by the new romantic spirit of which the late I lalfdan 
 Egedius was the initial exponent. Many of the younger 
 men, the generation of the nineties, including Erichsen, 
 Folkestad, Kavll, Onsager, and Wold-Torne received their 
 professional training in Copenhagen, mainly under Zahrt- 
 mann, and their work consequently reflects not a little of the 
 stylistic and coloristic traditions of the contemporary Danish 
 school. Holmboe, a somewhat older man. Is also allied to 
 the decorative romanticists, while Harald Sohlberg adds to 
 the main characteristics of the movement a visual restraint 
 and a concentrated emotional Intensity that entitle him to 
 a place apart from the rest of his colleagues. 
 
 In a measure a product of the naturalism of the early 
 and middle eighties of the past century, and also represent- 
 ing a sharp reaction against naturalistic tendencies, stands 
 Edvard Munch, the unchallenged head of the modern 
 movement in Scandinavian art. The enthusiasm with which 
 Director Thiis pens his apologia for Munch is by no means 
 misplaced, though it Is safe to say that Munch's position in 
 European painting and graphic art is not yet adequately 
 appreciated In his own country. Edvard Munch is a born 
 pictorial fantast. From the recesses of a responsive con- 
 sciousness he evokes images plastic and graphic the like of 
 which cannot be met outside the pages of Poe and Baudelaire 
 or the portfolios of Fellclen Rops and Henri de Toulouse- 
 Lautrec. The inspiration of Munch is not however South- 
 ern, it Is purely Nordic, You may possibly recall the Berlin 
 of the early nineties on viewing some of the initial graphic 
 studies, but never the Boulevards. The significance of this 
 art lies In its affinity, Its power of identification, with the vis- 
 ible universe. In these broadly brushed canvases and strongly 
 accented lithographs we are made to wander by dark waters, 
 under pale, far stars and over mountains toward the rim 
 of the world where we stand transfixed with tragic appre- 
 hension. 
 
 It is part of Munch's deep-rooted pessimism that In his 
 
32 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 work he should reduce the human equation to mhior propor- 
 tions when brought face to face with the inscrutable physi- 
 ognomy of nature. Alike in his paintings, mural decora- 
 tions, or in the field of graphic expression Edvard Munch 
 remains the commanding figure in Northern art. He is the 
 apotheosis of that tendency which is farthest removed 
 from the fixed form of the Greeks and Latins. The potency 
 of this art lies not in its capacity for definite realization but 
 in its magic power of suggestion. We have here moved 
 beyond the radiance of the meridional sun into sub-arctic 
 twilight where fantasy wins its silent, almost imperceptible 
 victory over fact. 
 
 Under the asgis of Edvard Munch have sprung into con- 
 sciousness a number of artists more or less directly influ- 
 enced by him, though revealing the approved Norwegian 
 capacity for independent expression. They share his free- 
 dom from the tyranny of form, his suggestive coloration, 
 and his sympathy with the modern movement whether in 
 Scandinavia or on the Continent. Of this group Henrik 
 Tund and Ludvig Karsten are the most prominent repre- 
 sentatives, while Per Krohg, the progressive son of a father 
 who in his day was equally advanced, carries the programme 
 of modernism still farther along its vaguely charted path- 
 way. One and all they are effective draughtsmen and exu- 
 berant colorlsts. Displaying familiarity with Manet, 
 Cezanne, van Gogh, Henri-Matisse, and Picasso, they con- 
 stitute the advance guard of Norwegian painting. 
 
 The complexion of Norwegian art in fact changes with re- 
 freshing rapidity, for whereas formerly we felt in the work 
 of Fearnley and Cappelen the beating of the wings of roman- 
 tic aspiration, to-day we no less distinctly sense the stir of aes- 
 thetic radicalism. A scant decade ago the outstanding figures, 
 apart from Munch, were Lund, with his swift psychological 
 insight and Manet-like saliency of stroke, and Karsten, whose 
 canvases revealed a chromatic vigor and a freedom of 
 draughtsmanship new to their generation. In 19 14, how- 
 ever, occurred the debut of a new group known as De f jorten, 
 among whom were Sorensen, Heiberg, Per Deberitz, Thyge- 
 
INTRODUCriON 33 
 
 sen, and J\c\()Kl. All arc, of course, ardent modernists, and 
 during the past hall dozen years not a lew ol them have 
 found their iinal emancipation in abstract formulae. For 
 the rigorous realism of the eighties, the neo-romanticism of 
 the nineties, the delicate shimmer of impressionism, and the 
 intervening manifestations of a questing creative conscious- 
 ness have meanwhile merged into that broad category which 
 may best be characterized as expressionism. 
 
 You see the work of these artists in the current exhibi- 
 tions, and you meet the men themselves, now in the cafe of 
 the Grand Hotel, now in Copenhagen, or next in Paris where 
 they sip their liqueurs or modest bocs at the Cafe de la 
 Regence, just as the former generation of Northern artists 
 used to frequent the Cafe de I'Hermitage. What they have 
 to say about, and in, paint they say with assurance. So much 
 downright, unspoiled capacity for pictorial expression do 
 they display, that one Is constrained to conclude that it may 
 be just as well, after all, that Norway should still boast no 
 official academy of art. For, had it such an institution. It Is 
 by no means certain that these truculent young radicals would 
 condescend to darken Its threshold. 
 
 We shall leave to Director Thiis the congenial task of 
 tracing the artistic physiognomy of Norway's most distin- 
 guished sculptor, Gustav Vigeland. His predecessors in 
 the field, prominent among whom were Julius Middelthun, 
 Brynjulf Bergslien, and the stressful and by no means subtle 
 Stephan Sinding, are likewise thrown Into characteristic relief 
 upon Director Thiis's pages. The story of Norwegian sculp- 
 ture is brief, as is also that of Norwegian architecture. It Is in 
 painting, and in the minor handicrafts, particularly weaving, 
 that the greatest progress has been made. And here again 
 you will note the same strength of color that you find on 
 canvas. For while the Swede is notable for the gift of 
 decorative synthesis, and the. Dane exhibits a highly devel- 
 oped sense of form, color is the chief contribution of the 
 Norwegian. 
 
 In surveying Scandinavian art as presented throughout 
 the ensuing pages, you will readily discover the lyric 
 
34 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 mood already mentioned, for it is manifest almost every- 
 where in the production of these Northmen to whom emotion 
 has not infrequently proved of more significance than 
 mere substance or form. Detached, and in a measure iso- 
 lated though the artistic activity of these peoples has perforce 
 been, their contribution in certain instances transcends that 
 which is merely local in appeal. With the work of such men 
 as Sergei, Thorvaldsen, and the troubled, aspiring Munch, 
 this art attains true universality of utterance. And yet, while 
 such manifestations constitute its moments of supreme ex- 
 pression, it everywhere commands respect through its genuine 
 creative fecundity, and above all through its virile, organic 
 nationalism. It is in brief by bringing forth the native rich- 
 ness of spirit, and not relying upon atelier and academy, that 
 Scandinavian art has won its present position in the larger 
 pageant of pictorial and plastic aspiration. 
 
A SURVEY OF SWEDISH ART 
 
 By 
 CARL G. LAURIN 
 
 Author of Konsthistoria, Sweden Through The 
 Artist's Eye, Etc. 
 
A SURVEY OF SWEDISH ART 
 
 By Carl G. Laurin 
 
 I 
 
 THE ECCLESIASTICAL PERIOD 
 
 NUMEROUS relics of ancient times bear witness to 
 the high peasant culture possessed by Sweden thou- 
 sands of years before the Christian Era. The finely- 
 shaped "swor3s and the spiral ornaments on buckles and 
 shield-plates of the Bronze Age reveal the presence of artis- 
 tic taste and skilled craftsmanship in our country before the 
 Persians encountered the Greeks. At a much later period, 
 the Germanic peoples, under impulses from classic civiliza- 
 tion, evolved an arabesque form of ornamentation, which 
 spread southward to Italy with the Lombards, and north- 
 ward to England and Ireland. From Erin's Isle the ara- 
 besque was again transplanted to the North, where it under- 
 went a varied development, as may be seen in the decorative 
 convolutions on certain rune stones, found principally in 
 central Sweden, and executed in the eleventh and twelfth 
 centuries. Erected at a time when the Romanesque school 
 dominated the continent, these runic monuments often show 
 Romanesque influence in the style of their ornamentations, 
 and the same is true of the old Norse forms of decoration 
 that were revived in the boldly fantastic, marvellously well 
 executed portals of the Norwegian wooden stave-churches as 
 well as in the remains of the Swedish. The first churches In 
 Sweden, like the houses and temples of pagan times, were 
 of wood. 
 
 After 1 100, stone churches became more and more com- 
 moXTn tTTe twelfth century, Lund Cathedral was dedicated, 
 
 37 
 
38 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 The crypt of. Lund Cathedral with the Giant Finn embracing one of 
 the columns 
 
 though it has, of course, been altered and repaired several 
 times since its erection. Built by Canute the Holy, it was 
 designed after the Romanesque temples of the Rhine district. 
 It was thoroughly repaired in the beginning of the sixteenth 
 century under the supervision of the Westphalian master- 
 builder, Adam van Diiren, and during the nineteenth cen- 
 tury it was subjected to a crude restoration. The choir is 
 adorned with richly carved Gothic stalls, executed about the 
 year 1400. The magnificent crypt, resting on columns with 
 square capitals, extends beneath the chancel and transept. 
 The oldest sculpture of the cathedral is the so-called Giant 
 Finn, who embraces one of the columns of the crypt. It is 
 considered by many to represent Samson. In the last decade 
 of the twelfth century, Gumlosa Church in Skane, about 
 twenty kilometers northwest of Kristianstad was dedicated. 
 It was covered by a cross-vault, and was built of brick, with 
 the tower and the roof ornamented by corbie-step gables. 
 These latter, which were added subsequently, constitute, 
 naturally enough, a characteristic of brick architecture, and 
 are often found on the church buildings that rise on the 
 
A siiRvr:v ()!'' swi:i)isii art 
 
 39 
 
 w:niii<^ grain liclcls ol Skniic or gleam among the beech wood- 
 hiiuls of Sjslland. Now and then, these edifices were given 
 a round form, but more often they were constructed with a 
 single rectangular nave. The walls of the small country 
 churches were as thick as fortresses, and during these times, 
 when there was a constant state of war, they were in fact 
 sometimes used as forts. The steeple was not considered a 
 necessity, and several of our foremost abbeys and cathedrals 
 had no steeples, but when it became the custom in many 
 country districts, especially in Gotland, to erect towers for 
 defense, known as castellets, it was ultimately found prac- 
 tical to build these towers adjoining the church. The Keep 
 in Halsingborg, a remnant of the defenses of the city, prob- 
 ably dating back to the twelfth century, is one of the few 
 secular constructions from olden times in Sweden. 
 
 In the region of Vastergotland, where Christian Swedish 
 culture first made its appearance, the abbey _of Varnhem 
 indicates a French arrangement of choir and chapels. The 
 monastery of Varnhem was founded about 1150 by monks 
 
 / 
 
 
 a . 
 
 \ / 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 JL ^fl^^^*'«s^ 
 
 ■1 
 
 
 „...^J3^^^^^%W :.... -* 
 
 The abbey of Varnhem completed in the thirteenth century 
 
40 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 The choir in the abbey of Varnhem presaging the Gothic 
 style 
 
 of the Bernardine order. On the plain below Billingen, the 
 white walls of the venerable church gleam through the ver- 
 dure. The edifice was not completed until the middle of 
 the thirteenth century, and its interior presages the introduc- 
 tion of the Gothic style. The Gothic cathedral of Skara, 
 with its abruptly terminating choir, has been much altered 
 in the course of its manifold reconstructions. The original 
 building, like the present one, was characterized by triforia. 
 In the city of Sigtuna, on Lake Malaren, there were a num- 
 ber of churches erected in the twelfth century In the Roman- 
 esque style, but unfortunately these are now In ruins. 
 
 Without doubt, Gotland was the Swedish province where 
 
A SURVKY OF SWEDISH ART 
 
 41 
 
 The lower story of the peculiar double church of the Helgeandsorden 
 at Visby, now a ruin 
 
 the art of building attained its highest development during 
 the Middle Ages. The active mercantile relations of the 
 island with Russia and northern Germany, the presence of a 
 wealthy German-Swedish middle class in Visby, and the 
 abundance of sandstone and limestone were factors in pro- 
 
42 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 / 
 
 ducing a richer architecture than that on the mainland. The 
 g olden period f alls in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, 
 and many a stately church sprang up between the corbie-step 
 gables of the burghers' houses, behind the defiant city wall 
 with its bartizans and earth-bound towers. The peculiar 
 double church of the Helgea ndsorden dates presumably 
 from the beginning of the thirteenth century, and reveals the 
 mingling of Romanesque and Gothic forms characteristic 
 of the period. It is an octagonal, centralized construction, 
 
 Dalhem Church typical of the country churches in Gotland 
 
A SURVKY ()I< SWIsDISII y\I<'l" 
 
 43 
 
 I'he portal of Etelhem Church with the union 
 of Romanesque and Gothic characteristic of Got- 
 land churches 
 
 with two Stories connected by flights of stairs and by an 
 opening two meters wide in the floor of the second story. 
 In all probability, one p%rt was intended for the sick and 
 the poor, the other for the wealthy supporters and friends 
 of the Order among the merchant aristocracy of Visby. 
 Unfortunately the Helgeandskyrka, like all churches of 
 Visby — with the exception of the St. Maria Cathedral — is a 
 ruin, though tolerably well preserved. The Gothic choir of 
 St. Karin belongs to the end of the fourteenth century, and 
 must therefore have been built immediately after Valdemar 
 Atterdag sacked the city in 1361, when the Danish ships 
 were loaded with several barrels of shining Visby coins 
 minted with the figures of the lamb and the lily. The 
 
44 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 were enlarged or re- 
 
 majority of the churches on Gotland 
 built during the Gothic period. 
 
 In the country districts of Gotland the churches are better 
 preserved. Dalhem Church, dedicated in the beginning of 
 the thirteenth century, has a tower that is typical of many of 
 the country churches of Gotland; the lower part Is Roman- 
 esque; the upper part has been added later and has pointed 
 
 View of the interior of Etelhem Church showing the central column 
 
A SURVEY OK SVVJa)ISn ART 
 
 45 
 
 arches. In its interior it is a hall cluirch, resting upon 
 slender cohinins with the square capitals characteristic of 
 northern luirope. In several churches the nave was covered 
 by four cross vaults, resting upon one central column, as in 
 the Etelhem Church, As an example of the Gotland portals 
 with their union of Romanesque and Gothic forms, and with 
 a lintel resembling the Romanesque ornamentation in wood, 
 the portal of Etelhem Church may be mentioned. 
 
 The nave of Linkoping Cathedral showing English influence 
 
 Gotland belonged to the bishopric of Linkoping, and 
 with the help of the Gotlanders, who were skilled in stone 
 work, one of the most stately cathedrals of the land was 
 erected in the city of Linkoping. Its predominating style, 
 however, was English. It took a long time to build Lin- 
 koping Cathedral. It is said to have been begun shortly 
 after the year 1200, and the construction went on during the 
 whole of the thirteenth century, the first half of the four- 
 teenth — the work was interrupted by the Great Plague — 
 and the fifteenth century. The west towers, which were a 
 
46 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 The south portal of Linkoping Cathedral showing the influence of the 
 Gotland church buildings 
 
 part of the plan, were never erected. The church had a 
 greater richness of ornamentation than any seen before In 
 our land. The interior consisted of a three-naved body, 
 forming a hall-church with a later Gothic choir and ambu- 
 latory. The construction of the choir was begun In the 
 early part of the fifteenth century by a Master Gierlac from 
 Cologne, and was completed about a hundred years later by 
 other "Cologne master-men." The magnificent south por- 
 tal betrayed clearly a Gotlandic Influence. 
 
 On the plain of Uppland, Sweden's largest cathedral 
 edifice, Uppsala Cathedral, stands as the foremost example 
 of Swedish brick architecture In the Gothic style. Numer- 
 ous fires, restorations, and finally a complete reconstruc- 
 tion in 1 885-1 893 have considerably changed the old 
 church, but the Interior, the plan, and certain details still 
 remain from the medieval period. The foundations were 
 laid during the second half of the thirteenth century, and 
 during the whole of the following century papal indulgences 
 were granted to those who contributed gifts for its erection. 
 The cathedral was not dedicated until 1435, and was not 
 even then entirely finished. The plan is northern French. 
 It is a three-naved basilica, that is, It possesses a central 
 
A suRVKV oi' swi':nisii Airr 
 
 47 
 
 body provided with windows and consecjucntly higher than 
 the side naves. A row of chapels extends around the whole 
 church — an arrangement typical of the Baltic region. The 
 choir has the characteristic Trench form with an encircling 
 ambulatory and a row of chapels, the central one of which 
 contains the stately Sarcophagus of Gustavus Vasa, made 
 in the Netherlands. The fresco paintings added in the thir- 
 ties of the nineteenth century are painted by Johan Gustav 
 
 Sculpture on a console in Uppsala Cathedral representing Jews being 
 suckled by a sow 
 
 Sandberg, and treat of the historical events in the life of 
 Gustavus Vasa according to the conceptions prevalent in 
 that period. The interior of the church measures 107 
 meters in length, 27 meters in height, and is for the most 
 part newly decorated. 
 
 Among the more noteworthy remains from medieval 
 times still seen in the church are the consoles, originally 
 pedestals for statues that have since disappeared, which 
 now adorn the pillars near the choir-ambulatory. The 
 sculptures that grace the consoles were in all probability exe- 
 
48 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 cuted by Gotlandic sculptors about 1350, and represent 
 naively, but with considerable faithfulness of description, 
 medieval legends and symbols and even a brutal anti-Semitic 
 raillery. Jews and pigs are seen tumbling over one another 
 with obvious friendliness, an illustration that calls to mind 
 the coarseness of medieval sermons, spiced for the special 
 benefit of the congregation. The French sculptor, Etienne 
 de Bonneuil, and his journeymen worked on the cathedral 
 the last years of the thirteenth century. Back of the high 
 altar, near which Archbishop Jons Bengtsson Oxenstierna 
 swore at one time not to exchange armor and sword for 
 the bishop's hat and staff until he had driven Karl Knutsson 
 out of the land, stands the "Gilded" silver shrine of St. Eric 
 — the present one executed by a Danish goldsmith during the 
 reign of Johan III — containing the bones of the saint, which 
 were brought here from Old Uppsala in 1273. The pulpit, 
 carved by the sculptor Burchardt Precht after drawings by 
 Nikodemus Tessin the Younger, was set up early in the 
 eighteenth century and is a master example of the most luxu- 
 rious baroque, well suited to the pompous and endless 
 sermons of the Carolinian age. Precht carved also the 
 magnificent altar-piece in the baroque style, which adorned 
 the church for almost two hundred years, until it was re- 
 moved at the time of the restoration, and replaced by a 
 new one in the Gothic style of 1890. This remarkable 
 work of art was sculptured by Precht strongly influenced 
 by the design of the altar of St. Ignatius by Padre Pozzo; 
 it Is now in the Vasa Church in Stockholm. The exterior of 
 the cathedral has undergone, if possible, yet greater 
 changes. About the year 1400, two enormous brick towers 
 of the North German style with buttresses were erected. In 
 the course of time, the spires have had a great variety of 
 forms. During the seventeenth century, the church had 
 spires in the baroque style and a smaller spire or ridge- 
 turret directly over the intersection-point of the roofs. The 
 fire of 1702 did violent damage to the cathedral. In the 
 restoration which followed thereupon, the arch-buttresses 
 and ridge-turret were removed, and the architect Harleman 
 
A SUKVI'A' Ol" S\Vl':i)ISII AR'I' 49 
 
 erected those tower-caps wlucli o:i\c tlicir characicristic 
 stnmp to the Uppsala ol Liiinc aiul (icijcr. The recoii- 
 stnieted huilchno-, wliich was coinpletccl in the nineties of 
 the hist century, is an attempt to give the church again a 
 kind of French-Gothic appearance in the cheapest and quick- 
 est way by removing the alterations that have accrued 
 through the centuries. The old, venerable tower-caps were 
 torn down, the tower facades were redone, and phiahe and 
 fountains were done In cement, since In our day we could 
 not "afford" to use cut stone for the first church of the 
 kingdom. In contrast with this thin and cheap cement- 
 Gothlclsm, the beautiful south portal, erected early In the 
 fourteenth century at the expense of Chancellor Ambjorn 
 Sparre, produces an effect of unusual charm through the 
 beauty of Its sculpture and the richness of Its material. 
 
 Two Important brick churches are the old cathedrals of 
 Vasteras and Strangnas, which have been several times re- 
 built, and which In the latter half of the fifteenth century 
 received new choirs. The recently restored Strangnas 
 Cathedral, with Its picturesque tower In the baroque style 
 and Its red brick walls rising out of the verdure, Is certainly 
 through Its location and also In other ways one of Sweden's 
 most beautiful cathedrals. 
 
 Most notable among the churches of the late Middle 
 Ages Is the abbey of Vadstena, built of limestone with the 
 choir toward the west, according to the directions of St. 
 BIrgltta, as prescribed and revealed to her by Christ. The 
 fifteenth century — the chapel was dedicated In 1430 — was 
 the golden age of the abbey and convent. The bluish-grey 
 limestone walls of this towerless church were surrounded 
 by the most luxuriant vegetation, for the monks and nuns 
 of the Briggittine order were zealous gardeners and pos- 
 sessed an appreciation of the beauties of nature. Many 
 believers visited the beautiful convent-chapel on the shore 
 of Lake Vattern and found solace In the sight of the Holy 
 Virgin's milk, a precious relic which was preserved there. 
 The interior is supported by simple, octagonal pillars, and 
 the roof is made up of graceful, ribbed vaulting. 
 
50 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 Baptismal font executed in Gotland, about the year 1200, 
 
 used in Tingstad church in Ostergotland. The reliefs 
 
 around the cuppa represent the Three Wise Men and 
 
 other incidents from the childhood of Christ 
 
 Sculpture and painting were very little developed in 
 Sweden during the Middle Ages. The sculpture on the 
 portals of the cathedrals has already been mentioned. 
 There was not much art in the ordinary Swedish country 
 church during the Middle Ages, but sometimes the baptismal 
 font would be a real work of art, with a cuppa, or bowl, 
 embellished with carved arabesques or reliefs. The sacred 
 vessels were also of noble form and decked with precious 
 stones. Pictures of Mary and the saints, all sculptured in 
 wood in adherence to the prevailing tendencies of art on 
 the Continent, were not uncommon. Large carved crucifixes 
 were sometimes suspended in the triumphal arch, the vault 
 of the chancel. Now and then, during the earlier Middle 
 Ages, the altar in Sweden was beautified also by a sculp- 
 tured tablet of wood or metal, the antemensale. This form 
 of altar-decoration was succeeded during the fourteenth 
 
A suRVJa' oi- s\vi':i)isii aki si 
 
 century by tabernacles placc-d back of tlie altar with lifrurcs 
 of the madonna and the saints. Toward tlie end of the 
 fifteenth century and the bc^rinninjr of the sixteenth, taber- 
 nacles of unusually inagnilicent workmanship were imported 
 from the Netherlands. In these so-called mystery taber- 
 nacles, the figures, formerly so rigid, were brought together 
 dramatically to reproduce situations from Sacred History, 
 arranged in groups reminiscent of scenes from the Mystery 
 Plays, and installed in small niches. The figures were 
 carved in wood, and were painted and gilded, so that the 
 whole assumed a character of wrought gold in conformity 
 with the essence of the Gothic style. All this was seen when 
 the tabernacle was open; when it was closed, only the paint- 
 ings on the outside door were exposed to view. 
 
 A number of magnificent tabernacles were also imported 
 from Germany, of which the most Important was completed 
 in the year 1468 in Liibeck for the Storkyrka in Stockholm. 
 It is now preserved in Statens Historiska Museum. One of 
 the most beautiful German tabernacles is one ornamented by 
 painting and sculptures, which was executed early in the 
 sixteenth century and is now found in the Stadskyrka of 
 Koping. Here, however, the figures were set up one by 
 one, just as in the older altar cabinets. Even individual 
 madonna figures were inserted in tabernacles with painted 
 doors; for example, the unusually charming madonna, 
 which is preserved in Sorunda Church in Sodertorn, where 
 Mary, clad in gold brocade with a golden crown, is sur- 
 rounded by the four mother virgins. Saints Barbara, Doro- 
 thea, Catherine, and Margaret, painted on the doors. This 
 work of art was executed in Liibeck about 1480. In the 
 preservation of such partly destroyed and often dispersed 
 and slighted works of art as baptismal fonts, crucifixes, and 
 tabernacles, which form so important a part in our country's 
 history of art and aesthetic beauty, the well-directed, prac- 
 tical, and energetic measures of Docent J. Roosval and Pro- 
 fessor S. Curman have earned the gratitude of our nation. 
 
 In the so-called triumphal arch, the arch which separates 
 the choir from the nave, there often hung what was termed 
 
52 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 The madonna tabernacle in Sorunda church in Sodertorn, where 
 
 the Virgin Mary is surrounded by the four mother virgins. Executed 
 
 about 1480 in Herman Rode's workshop in Liibeck. 
 
 a triumph crucifix, and the most artistically finished of these 
 is a figure of the crucified Savior, with the symbols of the 
 Evangelists on the four ends of the cross, executed in painted 
 wood about 1440. The well-nigh naturalistic treatment of 
 the design calls to mind the Spanish wood sculptures of the 
 seventeenth century. It has been hanging in the abbey of 
 Vadstena since medieval times. 
 
A SURVEY ()l< SVVi:i)ISIl ARl 
 
 53 
 
 The triumph crucifix in the abbey of Vadstena, called "Salvator i 
 
 Wadstena," supposed to have been made by a German master about 
 
 the year 1440 
 
 Giistavus Adolphus was accustomed to say that, "in 
 Sweden there were above others three great masterpieces: 
 the Knight St. Goran in Stockholm, the altar painting in 
 Linkoping (by the Dutchman Hemskerk), and the Salvator 
 
54 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 St. Goran and the Dragon, sculpture in wood by Berndt Notice, from 
 about the year 1489. In the Storkyrka at Stockholm 
 
 in Vadstena." The foremost example of medieval Swedish 
 sculpture is the enormous statue of St. Goran and the 
 Dragon, paid for by national subscription, and set up, in 
 1480, in the Storkyrka in Stockholm by Sten Sture the Elder 
 
A SURVEY Ol- SWJ'.DISI 1 ART 55 
 
 to conitucnioratc his \'Ictory at Bruiikchcr^, 1471.* 1 he 
 statue, which is executed in wood and painted, was carved 
 by the German artist, Berndt Notke. In a youthful spirit of 
 combat, the patron saint of warriors attacks the dragon with 
 his sword, and the terrible monster, from whose skin pro- 
 tuberances have grown like moose horns, roars, and in his 
 death-struggle clutches with one of his claws the broken 
 lance of the saint. The kneeling rescued maiden reminds 
 us of the noble Swedish women who, while the battle was 
 raging on the slopes of Brunkeberg Ridge, sent up fervent 
 prayers for the life and victory of their knights. 
 
 The Storkyrka in Stockholm, built by Birger Jarl and 
 first called hykyrkan (the village church) was sacred to the 
 patron saint of sea-farers, St. Nicholas. The interior, 
 which has been finished with great taste and care, is one of 
 the most beautiful church interiors of our country. Besides 
 the above-mentioned St. Goran and the Dragon, the temple 
 is adorned by a magnificent altar-piece made of silver, ivory, 
 and ebony, which was presented to the church in the middle 
 of the seventeenth century by the royal councillor, Adier 
 Salvius, replacing the old tabernacle made in 1460-1470 
 which is now preserved in Statens Historiska Museum. Be- 
 fore it stands a seven-armed, medieval, bronze candlestick of 
 enormous size, a gift from the middle of the fourteenth 
 century of King Magnus Eriksson. A number of pomp- 
 ously gilded epitaphs from the late Renaissance Illumine the 
 solemn brick vaults. Strangnas Cathedral received at the 
 close of the fifteenth century, from Bishop Kort Rogge, a 
 
 * The figure of St. Goran (St. George) was allowed to stand for nearly 
 four hundred years in the Storkyrka where "the great Goran" aroused the 
 interest of all church attendants, and not least of the country people who 
 came to Stockholm. Carl Larsson tells us what a strong impression the 
 fantastic group made upon him as a boy. In 1866 the statue was moved 
 to the National Museum, where it was set up in a dark and very unsuitable 
 place, and stood there in obscurity until 1907, when it was reclaimed by 
 the Storkyrka. In 1912 a bronze copy of St. Goran was set up on Kopman- 
 brinken in Stockholm. The princess was added in 1913. From the stand- 
 point of beauty, the arrangement of this whole group is, I dare say, the 
 happiest that any work of sculpture, placed out of doors, has received in 
 our land. 
 
56 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 Altar tabernacle in Strangnas Cathedral with sculptures representing 
 
 Christ being taken down from the cross. Made in Brussels about 
 
 the year 1490 
 
 tabernacle in painted wood sculpture, which was executed 
 in the Netherlands. 
 
 In the thirteenth century people commenced to decorate 
 the walls of the churches, and the mural paintings in Rada 
 Church in Varmland, from the century following, arc still 
 preserved. During the fifteenth century, mural painting in 
 
A SURVFV ()\< SWI':i)ISII AK'I' 
 
 57 
 
 Unicorn pursued by the Angel Gabriel, painting in the ceiling of 
 Osmo Church in Sodertorn 
 
 churches became very common. The paintings on the ceil- 
 ing of Osmo Church in Sodertorn date from the middle of 
 this century. One of these represents the popular legend 
 of the unicorn, when pursued by the angel Gabriel equipped 
 with dogs and hunting-horn, taking refuge with the Holy 
 Virgin. 
 
II 
 
 THE CASTLES OF THE VASAS. AFTER THE 
 THIRTY YEARS' WAR 
 
 DURING the reign of the Vasa kings, the Church was 
 obscured by the royal power. Communion cups and 
 silver crucifixes found their way into the State 
 treasury, monasteries were suppressed, and church-building 
 — there was already a superabundance of churches — ceased. 
 The economical rule of King Gosta did not permit art to 
 flourish. The fortified castles and palaces of the realm, 
 which had fared badly during the War of Liberation, had 
 to be put in good condition first, before one could consider 
 their artistic adornment. Kalmar Castle and the Royal 
 Palace in Stockholm were repaired during the last years of 
 Gustavus Vasa's reign, but, despite their interior renovation, 
 they maintained their stern medieval exterior. The archi- 
 tects and artists of this period were mostly Gennans and 
 Dutch men, which was natural enough, since the Swedish 
 bourgeoisie, both at that time and during a large part of 
 the seventeenth century, was mixed with a very considerable 
 German and Flemish-Dutch element. 
 
 In the year 1537, Gustavus Vasa built Gripsholm Castle, 
 which was enlarged by Charles IX during the last years of 
 the sixteenth century. Ponderous brick walls enclose two 
 irregular courtyards, the smaller bounded by four round 
 towers with walls three or four meters thick, where the 
 deep embrasures are like small rooms, from which the 
 Malaren bay and the castle park may be seen. The room in 
 the tower from which Duke Charles looked out over his 
 Soderm.anland has been preserved without any changes; the 
 wooden wainscoting of the walls have a Renaissance char- 
 
 s8 
 
A SURVEY OF SWEDISH ARI 
 
 59 
 
 Vadstena Castle on Lake Vattern, built by Gustavus Vasa. View 
 showing one of the richly ornamented gables that were added later 
 
 acter, but are simple in form; the white ceiling is decorated 
 with a vine-ornamentation, painted by an artisan from 
 Strangnas, and the bed, engirded by pilasters of the Renais- 
 sance style, is built into the wall. To this bed there came 
 
60 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 often, no doubt, gloomy thoughts, when the austere duke 
 brooded over Sigismund, who was born in Gripsholm, or 
 remembered how his brothers, Eric and Johan, with hearts 
 full of hate, had imprisoned each other in this castle. 
 Queen Hedvig Eleonora made Gripsholm her home during 
 her long widowhood. She enlarged the castle, but it under- 
 went yet greater alterations during the reign of Gustavus 
 III. The substantial church tower was then renovated to 
 form a coquettish theatre in the Gustavian style, where the 
 members of the court and the royal family appeared in the 
 performances. Several rooms were fitted up in the charm- 
 ing style of the eighteenth century; silk shoes tripped on the 
 narrow stairways, and the gay laughter of the court ladies 
 chased away all gloomy memories from the castle. In the 
 nineties of the last century, the castle was restored. 
 
 Although Vadstena Castle, built in 1545, was intended 
 first of all to serve as a military base in case of an attack 
 from the south, it became in several respects Sweden's most 
 important Renaissance palace. Built of greyish stone, with 
 high and richly ornamented gables, added during the first 
 
 King Eric XIV's room in Kalinar Castle, decorated ^vith a relief 
 frieze representing hunting scenes in painted stucco 
 
A Sllk\'i:V Ol' SWI'IDISII AKI 
 
 dcciulc of the seventeenth 
 century, :\nt.\ with its Dor- 
 ic portals ol stoiic aiiis- 
 tically carx'ed, it produces 
 an impression resenihling 
 the mansions of the (ier- 
 man-Dutch princes. 
 
 A third castle, which 
 shows Sweden's early 
 Renaissance, the so- 
 called Vasa style with its 
 union of medieval archi- 
 tecture and Renaissance 
 ornament (compare the 
 style of Francis I, in 
 France, for we were al- 
 ways a few decades be- 
 hind Central Europe) is 
 "the key of Sweden," 
 Kalmar Castle. In the 
 apartment de luxe of the 
 castle lived Eric XIV, 
 and here the gifted prince 
 could receive his counts 
 and barons in royal fash- 
 Ion. It is claimed that 
 the king himself, who 
 
 was interested in art, contributed with his own hand to the 
 decoration of King Eric's apartment, where a panel with 
 Corinthian columns, a relief-frieze with hunting figures In 
 painted stucco, and doors inlaid with different kinds of wood 
 formed a suitable frame for the court of the brilliant Renais- 
 sance monarch. 
 
 The wealthy and splendor-loving Danish nobility built 
 in Skane, especially during the sixteenth and the first half 
 of the seventeenth century, a number of magnificent castles 
 and strongholds, of which some are still preserved. Such 
 are Glimmingehus, of which the foundation was laid in 
 
 Fountain set up in the court of 
 Kalmar Castle by Johan III, the 
 work of Dominicus Pahr and Ro- 
 land Mackle 
 
62 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 Svenstorp castle near Lund in Skane, built in 1596 
 
 1499; Borgeby near Lund; Vittskovle, which Is situated a 
 short distance from Kristianstad and mirrors its proud walls 
 in the water of the canals; Skarhult near Eslov; and most 
 notable of all, Svenstorp in the vicinity of Lund, constructed 
 about 1590, and the most stately and the most nobly con- 
 ceived of these castles. Trefaldlghetskyrkan in Kristian- 
 stad, completed In 1628, Is also built In this Danish brick 
 Renaissance style. 
 
 Johan III had a real mania for architecture. He added 
 to the decorations of Kalmar Castle, and set up In the court 
 a fine fountain, the severe Doric forms of which are 
 enlivened by escutcheons and grinning faces, the whole 
 crowned by a dolphin. King Johan, concerning whom 
 Johan Messenlus said, 
 
A SURVI'lV Ol' SWI'IDISII Akr 63 
 
 "Well 'K()/il(l lir, (IS I liavr Iranicd, 
 Slorkhohii into Rome diid /'cuicc have liinictl," 
 rcpairctl the (ircy Immiits' oltl temple, the Ritithirhoh)! 
 Church in Stockhohii, and huilt its present choir in the Gothic 
 style. This church had heen constructed at the end of the 
 thirteenth century by Magnus Ladulas, who is buried there. 
 Johan's chief interest, however, was to enlarge and beautify 
 the Royal Palace in Stockholm. Its inner court was given 
 an appearance more "in conformity with the time" by the 
 construction of the Green Corridor and the large flight of 
 steps with the baldachin and Trumpeters' Corridor. The 
 exterior, with its smooth walls, and the proud tower Tre 
 Kronor, retained its medieval character for a hundred 
 years more. 
 
 On the barren Swedish soil, the art of painting grew 
 slowly, and when we entered into direct relation with the 
 Continent through the Vasa kings, an importation of art 
 and artists was the only way in which artistic activity could 
 be promoted. Thus the Dutchman, Verwilt, came during 
 the last years of Gustavus Vasa's reign, and assisted in the 
 interior decoration of Kalmar Castle during the reign of 
 Eric XIV. He designed also the. cartoons for the woven 
 tapestries, which were then made in Sweden, and of which 
 two are preserved in the National Museum. They treat 
 themes from mythical history, one picturing the story of 
 King Sveno and the other that of Magog. Baptista van 
 Uther acted as court painter to Johan III. 
 
 The foundations of Jakob's Church in Stockholm were 
 laid during the reign of Johan III, but it was not fully com- 
 pleted until the middle of the seventeenth century. The 
 German Church in Stockholm Is one of the most inspiring 
 In Sweden, thanks to the faithfulness with which the old 
 artistic interior is preserved. Moreover It is surrounded 
 by verdant trees In the midst of urban houses, and possesses 
 beautiful wrought Iron gates. The church with Its network 
 of ribbed vaulting was finished about 1640. The vaults are 
 of the late Gothic style, but the altarplece, the pulpit of 
 ebony and alabaster, and the showy royal gallery with Its 
 
64 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 The portal of Erik von der Linde's house in Stock- 
 holm, built at the time of the Thirty Years' War 
 
 glass walls, constructed in 1672, as well as the portal, are 
 of the German baroque. In 1890 the German Church was 
 extraordinarily well repaired. 
 
 Private houses in Stockholm retained the pointed gables 
 of medieval times during the seventeenth century, as the 
 copper engravings of Dahlbergh's Snecia antiqua show, but 
 the ornamentation reveals a taste for an exuberant form of 
 the baroque with the addition of a bourgeois touch. A 
 typical example of a wealthy citizen's home in Stockholm 
 during the days of the Thirty Years' War is the House of 
 Erik von der Linde at 68 Vasterlanggatan. Linde, himself 
 a native of Holland, became a Swedish nobleman, and his 
 
A sLiRVi:v oi^' s\vi;i)isii arv (.5 
 
 son I.ars luul the honor ol hciii^ hooii coiiipaiiloii to Charles 
 X Cjustaviis. I'he I rout ot tlie mansion is adorned by a 
 magnificent portal, where the busts of Neptune and Mer- 
 cury indicate that the owner had acquired riches through 
 commerce and trade. On the doorposts luscious fruits are 
 carxed — an expression of the Rubensian joy of hving and 
 k)ve of sumptuousness that marked the age. The side which 
 faces the Kornhamnstorg still retains, in spite of alterations, 
 its bower (biirsprak) , a form of extension which was par- 
 ticularly popular in Germany, In the Linde house it is 
 supported by comical sea-gods, rendered with that Northern 
 humor which north of the Alps so often breaks through the 
 studied forms of the Renaissance and gives a tinge of medie- 
 valism. That the house in its day had been costly can be 
 concluded from the assertion of the builder that "nobody 
 shall know what my house and my son Lasse have cost me." 
 The Petersen House near Munkbron in Stockholm was built 
 about 1650 upon the site where the historian Erik Gorans- 
 son Tegel, the son of Goran Persson, had his spice shop in 
 the early part of the century. An addition was built, during 
 the latter part of the nineteenth century, on the side facing 
 the sea. Often the ends of the crampirons were allowed 
 to appear on the plastered facade and were ornamented. 
 Decorative devices in metal were not seldom seen. 
 
 When the Swedish magnates, laden with booty, returned 
 from the long German war, they found their poor wooden 
 houses or their clumsy stone fortresses small and uncom- 
 fortable, and, spurred on by foreign examples, they now 
 commenced to build castles and mansions which corre- 
 sponded with the growing prestige of the nobility and with 
 the more peaceful and orderly conditions within the country. 
 The construction of Axel Oxenstierna's mansion Tido In 
 Vastmanland, on the shores of Lake Malaren, was begun 
 soon after 1620, but was not completed until about 1650. 
 Tido consists of a main building and also, like the castles of 
 the French grandees, of lower wings, which adjoin a third 
 low building or wall, and encircle the paved courtyard. 
 Through a stately stone portal in the style of the late Renais- 
 
66 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 sance, ornamented by coats-of-arms, the heavy, seventeenth- 
 century carriages rolled in and stopped In front of the big dou- 
 ble flights of steps. As befitted the great chancellor, the walls 
 of the castle apartments were adorned with Gobelin tapes- 
 try and gilt leather hangings, and the doors — real treasures 
 — were Inlaid with different kinds of wood and provided 
 with artistically made locks. TIdo showed both In Its exte- 
 rior and Interior that a new age had arrived. Instead of 
 the Irregular medieval structures, where the exterior signi- 
 fied only defiant strength, there began to appear castles In 
 which a symmetrical design and noble, well-balanced pro- 
 portions were Intended to infuse in the spectator subservient 
 sentiments of admiration and respect. 
 
 About 1650 the palace Makalos was built in Stockholm 
 between Kungstradgarden and Strommen. It belonged to 
 the husband of Ebba Brahe, Jakob De la Gardle, and with 
 Its steep roof and rich sandstone ornaments, was the finest 
 private house In the city. Later it was used as arsenal and 
 dramatic theatre. It was destroyed by fire in 1825. 
 
 During the reign of Christina, the Dutchman, David 
 Beck, resided a few years In Sweden. He painted the por- 
 trait of Queen Christina, and also left us a strong and 
 subtle picture of General Gustav Horn, which proves that 
 he studied to good purpose under Van Dyck. The French- 
 man, Sebastien Bourdon, In his portrait of Christina — in 
 simple black dress with white collar — has rendered In a 
 distinguished manner her pale, aristocratic Vasa features 
 with the large, greyish-blue eyes. His portrait of Chris- 
 tina's half-brother, the Count of Vasaborg, the son of 
 Gustavus Adolphus and Margareta Slots, shows the same 
 merits. Christina had a profound Interest In art. Her 
 collection of paintings was considerable, and an immeas- 
 urable aesthetic capital was removed from the land when 
 she took away her Correglo, Titian, and Veronese canvases. 
 
 Many castles of real magnificence from the viewpoint of 
 our conditions are pictured in Suecia antiqiia et hodierua by 
 the celebrated general and architect Erik Dahlbergh, the 
 most superb and costly work de luxe that has ever been 
 published In our land. Several of the castles reproduced In 
 
A suKvi:v oi" s\vi:i)isii \k i 
 
 (^1 
 
 Drottningholm Castle neai- Stockholm, the central part designed by 
 Tessin the Elder for Queen Dowager Hedvig Eleonora 
 
 good copper engravings from sketches by Dahlbergh, ren- 
 dering even the artistically trimmed hedges of the parks 
 and symmetrically grouped platbands, have never been 
 built; for the Crown reduction of Charles XI compelled 
 many an ambitious building-plan to stop on paper. Siiecia 
 antiqua appeared in 171 6. 
 
 One of the most splendid castles, filled with a super- 
 abundance of booty from the Thirty Years' War, was Gen- 
 eral Karl Gustav Wrangel's Skoklgster with its magnificent 
 vestibule supported by joined Ionic columns. It is situated 
 on the fairway between Sigtuna and Uppsala, was built by 
 a native of Stralsund, Nikodemus Tessin the Elder, and the 
 Frenchman, Jean de la Vallee, and finished in 1679. Among 
 the Elder Tessin's many and important buildings was Axel 
 Oxenstierna's Palace (now the central office of the Statis- 
 tical Bureau) near Storkyrkobrinken, and the former Riks- 
 bank In Stockholm, reminiscent of the Roman palaces. 
 Tessin the Elder made the first drawings for the Carolinian 
 mortuary chapel known as Karolinska Kapellet. The other 
 chapels In the Riddarholm Church were constructed about 
 1650. 
 
68 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 The central part of Drottningholm Castle was built, in 
 conformity with the wishes of the art-loving Dowager Queen 
 of the Realm, Hedvig Eleonora, by Tessin the Elder. 
 Precht sculptured Hedvig Eleonora's magnificent golden 
 bed-chamber. Tessin also designed Borgholm Castle on 
 Oland. This building, begun in 1654, is now the most 
 beautiful ruin in Sweden. In Kalmar Cathedral, dedicated 
 1682, Tessin the Elder furnished an example of a central 
 church in the baroque style, although the cupola, which is 
 essential for such a building, was never constructed. 
 
 The zealous orthodox movement which characterized the 
 latter half of the seventeenth century in our land, not least 
 during the severely ecclesiastical rule of Charles XI, re- 
 sulted in a large number of church buildings. The majority 
 of our churches then received altar decorations and pulpits 
 in the rich and florid forms of the time; in the year 1671 
 Katarina Church in Stockholm was dedicated, and in 1658 
 the foundations were laid of the Hedvig Eleonora Church 
 in the eastern suburb of the city. Both these, as well as the 
 Ulrica Eleonora or Kungsholm church, which was built in 
 the decade of 1670 and named after the pious wife of 
 Charles XI, are central churches in the baroque style. 
 
 The most beautiful architectural creation of the century 
 is Riddarhuset (the Hall of Knights) in Stockholm which, 
 however, was not completed early enough to be occupied 
 during the most brilliant period of the Swedish nobility. 
 Two architects, emigrants from France, Simon de la Vallee 
 (killed in 1642 by Erik Oxenstierna in a fight on the public 
 marketplace in Stockholm) and his son, Jean de la Vallee, 
 were the designers of this palace, which was constructed in 
 a kind of French-Dutch baroque. The foundations were 
 laid in 1642 from drawings by Simon de la Vallee, but Jean, 
 who also built the beautiful palace, formerly the Town Hall, 
 owned by First Lord of the Treasury Gustav Bonde, later 
 altered this plan and, together with the Dutchman, Ving- 
 boons, became the real creator of the edifice. It was not 
 before 1680, when the supremacy of the nobility was really 
 nearing its close, and the nobles were compelled to bend 
 
A SlIRVJa' Ol' SVVJ'IDISII ARr 
 
 69 
 
 Riddaihuset (the Hall of Knights) in Stockholm, designed by Simon 
 de la Vallee and his son, Jean de la Vallee, completed in 1680 
 
 the neck under absolutism, that the Estate took possession 
 of the building. The red brick walls are partitioned by 
 pilasters of sandstone, which, according to the new baroque 
 ideas, pass through both stories. Very beautiful Corinthian 
 capitals support a frieze, bearing an Inscription which runs 
 around the building and is composed of unusually well- 
 formed letters. The boldly curved copper roof by Jean de 
 la Vallee is crowned by chimneys constructed like altars or 
 sending out clouds of smoke from bomb-like structures which 
 rest on pedestals adorned with trophies. The roof, sup- 
 ported by consoles and graced by decorative statues. Is 
 broken by a gable on each side. Luxuriant garlands of fruit 
 carved in stone separate the two stories, and beneath the 
 windows and in the segment-arched or triangular gable-bays 
 over the tops of the windows, grin the grotesque, decorative 
 heads so well loved by the creators of the baroque style 
 north of the Alps. In the large assembly hall of Rlddar- 
 huset, Ehrenstrahl painted In 1674, the same year that he 
 himself was raised to the peerage, a gigantic celling com- 
 position representing The Graces In Counsel before the 
 
70 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 Throne of Svea ; and, now following, now deviating from 
 these high precepts, the Swedish noblemen deliberated in 
 this building about the welfare of Sweden until that mem- 
 orable December day in 1865, when patriotism and gener- 
 osity were strong enough to make them sacrifice their 
 privileged condition of their own free will. 
 
 David Klocker, enobled under the name of Ehrenstrahl, 
 was born in Hamburg. In his pompous portraits of the 
 kings of the Palatine House, of his patroness Queen Hedvig 
 Eleonora, and of the ladies and gentlemen of the Swedish 
 nobility, we see the princes and rulers of the age known as 
 "The Period of Greatness," a little heavy perhaps in their 
 pomposity, very uneven in artistic presentation, but always 
 instinct with power and boldness. Ehrenstrahl has painted 
 half a century of Swedish greatness. He became "the 
 father of the Swedish art of painting." 
 
 The young Klocker started — and this is almost symbolic 
 of his art^as a chancery clerk in the negotiations connected 
 with the Peace of Westphalia. The young German was 
 noted for his beautiful penmanship, and there is an inner 
 connection between the strokes and flourishes which he 
 added to the graceful and bombastic diplomatic phrases and 
 his own artistic temperament. He studied first in Amster- 
 dam, came to Sweden in 1651, and the following year 
 painted the equestrian portrait of Karl Gustav Wrangel, 
 In the latter part of this decade he studied the contemporary 
 baroque paintings in Italy. In 1661 he was called to Sweden 
 and then painted in uninterrupted succession, sometimes 
 carelessly and sometimes carefully, a countless number of 
 portraits. Among these are Georg Stiernhielm, 1663 ; Erik 
 Dahlberg, 1664; and the three Charleses: the talented and 
 corpulent Charles X Gustavus and his son, the surly and duti- 
 ful economist, Charles XI, in Roman fancy dress, with luxur- 
 iant locks and fluttering mantles, curbing strongly built 
 chargers; and, finally, Charles XII, though only as a child. 
 Ehrenstrahl's Crown Prince Charles (XII) and his Brother 
 and Sister Playing with the Lion of Gothia* shows the 
 
 *Here, one of the three original integral parts of Sweden. 
 
A SLIkVJa' OF SWl-:i)ISlI ART 
 
 71 
 
 Crown Prince Charles (XII) and His Sister and Brother Playing 
 
 with the Lion of Gothia. Painting by Ehrenstrahl, in the National 
 
 Museum at Stockholm 
 
 princely children tumbling about most graciously with the 
 dangerous lion, which in all humility rejoices at the honor. 
 If we imagine his portraits placed in a seventeenth cen- 
 tury salon, among ponderous, richly sculptured baroque cab- 
 inets with projecting mouldings, and hung above pompous 
 mantlepieces of imitation stone in the castle apartments, 
 these pictures, in spite of a certain awkwardness, have a dec- 
 orative value which transcends the purely historical. Ehren- 
 strahl's colossal painting The Crucifixion, 1695, and The 
 
72 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 Last Judgment, 1696, are now to be found in Stockholm's 
 Storkyrka, where he himself is buried. In Gripsholm his 
 painting of The Well-masters in Medevi, who pour out 
 water for the bathing guests, 1683, is preserved. With this 
 work he introduced genre painting into Sweden, and, strange 
 to say, animal painting also, for in his rendering of the 
 woods and the birds he contributed something distinctly 
 new and Swedish. It is dilettantish, to be sure, but it is exe- 
 cuted in a fresh and almost modern way. His Self Portrait, 
 with allegorical figures, in the National Museum, bears the 
 following inscription in his own hand setting forth the pur- 
 pose of his art, portraits, and allegories: "This painting is 
 executed in the year 1691 by His Royal Majesty's Court- 
 Intendant, David Klocker Ehrenstrahl, in his sixty-second 
 year, and is intended to represent how, out of love for the 
 art of painting, he seeks to exalt with his fantasy, the im- 
 mortal honor of the higher authorities." 
 
Ill 
 
 THE CAROLINIAN AGE 
 THE ROYAL PALACE 
 
 NIKODEMUS TESSIN the Younger was the son 
 of Nikodemus Tessin the Elder, mentioned in the 
 preceding chapter. It was prophetic of the royal 
 favor he was destined to enjoy all his life that he was carried 
 to the baptismal font by Queen Maria Eleonora, the widow 
 of Gustavus Adolphus. He learned sketching from his 
 father, but maintained that the direct impulse to enter the 
 field of architecture came to him at seventeen from the 
 Queen Dowager of the Realm, Hedvig Eleonora, who made 
 her influence felt so often and so happily on behalf of Swe- 
 dish art. The young man arrived in Rome at the age of nine- 
 teen, eager to learn, and was received with great kindness 
 by Queen Christina, through whom he gained admittance 
 to the artist most eminent in Rome at the time, Cavaliere 
 Bernini. Concerning the latter Tessin testified that "with 
 a special disposition and care he gave me all the informa- 
 tion I could desire, both In the choice of the best works and 
 In the censuring of the designs for my studies which I made 
 myself." 
 
 He returned to Stockholm, and upon the death of his 
 father in 1681, was appointed architect of the Royal Palace. 
 It thus fell to his lot to continue the construction of the 
 Drottningholm country palace and Its extensive park. In 
 order to carry on studies for the rebuilding of the old and 
 venerable Royal Palace In Stockholm, which Charles XI 
 had planned, Tessin went abroad again in 1687, this time In 
 company with Burchardt Precht, a gifted German sculptor 
 in wood who had settled In Sweden. 
 
 73 .- .- - . - -- 
 
74 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 Nikodemus Tes- 
 sin the Younger 
 designed the pom- 
 pous carved and 
 gilded Kings' Pews 
 which were exe- 
 cuted in wood by 
 P r e c h t, and in- 
 stalled, 1684, in 
 the Storkyrka. 
 Tessin also made 
 the drawings for a 
 pulpit, sculptured 
 by Precht, which 
 was presented to 
 Uppsala Cathedral 
 by Hedvig Ele- 
 onora in the year 
 of the battle of 
 Poltava. Through 
 these works of art 
 in particular, baro- 
 que sculpture, as 
 practised by Tes- 
 sin and Precht, 
 came to exert a 
 strong influence 
 upon the adorn- 
 ment of our Swed- 
 ish churches. 
 
 Concerning the 
 two travelers' visit 
 to Versailles, Tes- 
 sin writes, that 
 Louis XIV "let the honor come to me that all waters in the 
 whole Versailles have played for me." Europe's greatest 
 landscape gardener, Le Notre, conducted him "from 
 one pleasure-grove to another," and Tessin declares, 
 
 The pulpit in Uppsala Cathedral, carved 
 
 by Burchardt Precht after drawings by 
 
 Tessin the Younger 
 
A suKVJ-:v oi-' swi'iDisii Akr 75 
 
 he "can nc\ cr lully dcsci-ihc tlicir iiia^iiilicciicc." J he two 
 \'ersailles artists, Charles i.ehruii and Berain, the hitter 
 Tcssin's ideal in the field of ornamentation, also interested 
 him keenly. It is certain that what he learned there was of 
 the greatest moment, both in the construction of the Palace 
 and the designing of the parks which Tessin afterwards laid 
 out in Sweden. In Rome, where he proceeded from Paris, 
 Tessin again imbibed among palaces and baroque churches 
 that disposition for bigness which was to characterize his 
 greatest work, the Royal Palace, and immediately after his 
 return to his native country he began, 1688, the drawings for 
 the north facade. Before undertaking the construction of 
 the Palace in earnest, however, he erected several buildings 
 of great value to Swedish architecture, for example, Gustavi- 
 anum in Uppsala and Steninge in Uppland. This beautiful 
 castle, which was built at the close of the seventeenth cen- 
 tury, became a model for many of the Swedish mansions 
 erected during the eighteenth century and was called "a 
 villa In the noblest sense of the term." Its dimensions were 
 moderate, but the architectonic form all through was per- 
 fect. He fitted out his own house, now the Governor- 
 General's Palace In Stockholm, with rare taste and beauty, 
 and the magnificent salons were decorated In the pompous 
 and elegant style of Louis XIV, often with features borrowed 
 from the above-mentioned Berain. The Tessin palace was 
 presented by King Gustavus III to the city of Stockholm to 
 serve perpetually as the official dwelling of the governor- 
 general. Of special Interest Is the construction of the court- 
 yard, where the background consists of a loggia of con- 
 tracted perspective. When we see this, we are reminded of 
 the tendency to stage effects which constituted a character- 
 istic trait of the baroque. Tessin had a European reputa- 
 tion, and his plans for the rebuilding of the Louvre, which 
 were shown to Louis XIV In 1705, were the source of admir- 
 ation In France, We may be glad, however, that his pro- 
 posal, like that of Bernini, was not accepted, and that Les- 
 cot's Louvre was allowed to stand. 
 
 The old royal palace, where Gustavus Vasa and Gustavus 
 
76 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 Adolphus had lived, had fallen more and more into decay 
 during the seventeenth century. As noted above, Nikodemus 
 Tessin the Younger was commissioned by Charles XI to 
 build a new one, and the north wing was already completed, 
 when a fire broke out in May, 1697, at the very time when 
 the body of Charles XI was lying in state. Tessin then made 
 new drawings and immediately began the erection of the 
 new palace. Its massive walls had already risen to consid- 
 erable height when the building had to be discontinued; for 
 money and people were pouring out of the land because of 
 the war, while Charles XII led Sweden nearer and nearer 
 toward the brink of destruction. 
 
 In 1728, the year that Nikodemus Tessin the Younger 
 died, the work was again taken up, now directed by his son, 
 Karl Gustav, whose contribution to Swedish art was to be 
 of great import. Later the work was directed by Karl 
 Harleman, who was particularly active in behalf of the orna- 
 mentation; but during this time the progress of construction 
 suffered from lack of funds due to the unwise and poorly 
 planned offensive war against Russia in 174 1. At last, in 
 December, 1754, Adolphus Frederick and his gifted queen 
 could move into the new palace, although the northwest wing 
 was not completed until 1760. Lejonbacken (so named 
 after the bronze lions modeled by the Frenchman Foucquet 
 in Stockholm and set up in 1704) was completely laid out in 
 1830, and the Palace had then cost 10,500,000 rix-dollars, 
 an enormous sum when we consider the hard times in which 
 it had been procured and the current value of the money. 
 
 The Royal Palace is one of the most beautiful buildings 
 in the whole world. In simple, lofty grandeur the noble 
 square of the palace rises above the city. The enormous 
 quadrangle has four lower wings. The most imposing part 
 is the fagade opposite Norrbro, which is 217 meters long. 
 It is divided into three stories, with an entresol above the 
 lowest. The upper part of the windows is supported by 
 consoles, as was customary in the Roman neo-Renaissance. 
 A small balcony rests on the cornices of a stately Doric por- 
 tal. Two genii of fame are enthroned above the door to 
 
A SURVJ'Y OK SWi'lDlSIl AKl 
 
 71 
 
 The Royal Palace at Stockholm, designed by Nikodemus Tessin the 
 Younger 
 
 this balcony, an adornment which gives life to the stern sur- 
 faces. The roof slants inward toward the courtyard, and 
 the facades are crowned by a balustrade; hence the outer 
 roof, as in the Italian models, is not visible. On the side 
 facing Logarden, which is perhaps the noblest in its virile 
 beauty, Corinthian pilasters, resting upon a lower story in 
 rustic-work, run through the two upper stories, a feature of 
 the baroque style which is duplicated in the gigantic half- 
 columns of the central part of the south facade, forming a 
 kind of triumphal arch at the main entrance of the palace. 
 This side is ornamented, besides, with reliefs and four beau- 
 tiful bronze groups, representing the abduction of women, 
 modeled by Bouchardon. The west fagade is adorned with 
 huge caryatids and medallions of Swedish kings. On this 
 side lies the outer ballium with its two wings ; the south, the 
 Governor's wing; the north, that of the Palace Guard, where 
 Gustavus III, on an August day in 1772, persuaded the offi- 
 cers to take part in the revolution. 
 
 The imposing main stairway leads up from the west vault, 
 illuminated by tasteful bronze lanterns. These are sup- 
 ported by fat cupids, modeled by the Frenchman, Jacques- 
 Philippe Bouchardon, according to the prevailing French 
 
SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 The Great Gallery in the Royal Palace at Stockholm 
 
 method of sculpture, and instinct with Hfe and grace. The 
 grand staircase is flanked by Ionic and Corinthian cokimns 
 and pilasters. Nor are the effective perspectives, so fre- 
 quent in baroque architecture, missing. Kronberg's paint- 
 ings, executed in the decade of 1890, are fitted into the 
 ceiling. The galleries and halls of the palace are furnished 
 in the heavy elegance of the baroque style, with paintings on 
 the ceilings, richly designed groups in plaster of Paris rest- 
 ing on the mouldings, and with heavy gilding. Other rooms, 
 with their decorations often carved in masterly fashion out 
 of unpainted wood, their shell ornaments, and lattice designs, 
 indicate the rococo which in Sweden, however, had hardly 
 time to become established, before the so-called Gustavlan 
 style (Louis Seize) with its returning classic features and its 
 white and gold was generally adopted. The Palace pos- 
 sesses a collection of uncommonly beautiful Gobelin tapes- 
 tries, which, paneled in the walls and depicting in subdued 
 colors French gallant episodes, formed a rich background 
 for the festivals at Gustavus's court. 
 
A SUkVJ'lV Ol SWJ'DISII AkI 
 
 ?J 
 
 Rococo door in the Queen's Red Salon in the Royal Palace, by Adrien 
 Masreliez 
 
 The palace courtyard with its huge gate-frames of rustic- 
 work conveys a strong impression of simple greatness. The 
 
80 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 south portion of the palace is occupied by the hall of state 
 and the Slottskyrka, and beautiful flights of steps lead up to 
 both of these from the vault underneath. The Slottskyrka, 
 with its vault adorned by Taraval's ceiling painting, its pom- 
 pous pulpit, and its theatrical but effective altar-piece, where 
 Christ in the Garden appears between rent temple-fagades 
 in high plaster-relief by Larcheveque, is excellently adapted 
 to the magnificent building of which it is a part. This Palace 
 was built with Herculean efforts, worthy the Sweden of 
 Charles XII; it is as big as the bold dreams in Sweden's 
 golden age of power, when its foundations were laid; its 
 construction was continued with the most tenacious persever- 
 ance, when the soap-bubble of external greatness burst; and 
 finally it was beautified with exquisite art, when Sweden 
 began, for the first time, to occupy an important place in the 
 science and culture of Europe. 
 
 The foundations of the so-called Karolinska Kapellet at 
 Riddarholm Church, which became the final resting-place of 
 the Palatine Charleses, were laid according to drawings by 
 the elder Tessin, but the structure as a whole is the fruit of 
 Nikodemus Tessin the Younger's studies in Italy. It is our 
 country's most notable edifice in the baroque style. Smooth 
 sandstone columns with Doric capitals embrace the semi- 
 circular windows, and an attic with round windows rests 
 upon a triglyphical architrave. The chapel is built of sand- 
 stone and is covered by a copper-clad cupola. This is sur- 
 mounted by a golden crown, supported by a pedestal of ex- 
 ceptionally tasteful form. Vases and memorial tablets, re- 
 liefs and martial emblems are found in great numbers, and 
 upon a cloud reproduced in stone is seen a genius holding a 
 crown. The chapel contains the Sarcophagus of Charles 
 XII, where the club and lion's skin indicate the Herculean 
 work of his life. This sarcophagus was fashioned In 
 Amsterdam in 1735 after drawings by Nikodemus Tessin 
 the Younger. An attempt was made In 19 16 to replace it 
 by a new one — a grotesque idea. The building was com- 
 pleted in 1743 by Karl Harleman. 
 
 An architectural school grew up, fostered in the concep- 
 
A SURVEY OF SWEDISH Ak'I' 
 
 H] 
 
 Karolinska Kapellet, the Carolinian mortuary chapel in 
 Riddarholm Church in Stockholm, designed by Tessin 
 the Elder, but not completed until 1743 
 
 tions of Tessin; the indigenous crafts received guidance from 
 foreign artists; and, encouraged by the court, cabinet-mak- 
 
82 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 A yellow soup tureen from the Rorstrand factory in the latter 
 part of the eighteenth century. Now in the National Museum 
 
 ing, manufacture of glazed ware and porcelain, and other 
 industrial arts, began to flourish. In 1726 the Rorstrand 
 faience factory was established, but the product did not 
 become satisfactory until 1758, when the shops of Marie- 
 berg entered into competition. The yellow, round faience 
 soup tureen, which is reproduced here, comes from the fac- 
 tories of Rorstrand. The faience of both Marieberg and 
 Rorstrand was much admired at the beginning of the twen- 
 tieth century by those interested in art. Not only its dec- 
 orative form, but also the somewhat coarser and more virile 
 character of its surface, proved attractive as compared with 
 other rococo porcelain. The Frenchman, Guillaume Thomas 
 Raphael Taraval the Elder, who had been called to decorate 
 the Royal Palace with ceiling paintings and lintels, through 
 his instruction in drawing to young Swedish art students, 
 gave the impulse for the birth of the Academy of Arts, 1735. 
 
A SURVia' OV SW1^I)IS1I ART 
 
 S3 
 
 Chest with veneer of beech, birch, and maple, bronze fixtures, and 
 
 marble plate. Made by Georg Haupt, about 1779. In Nordiska 
 
 Museet at Stockholm 
 
 During the whole of the eighteenth century the Royal Palace 
 was the center of Swedish art. 
 
 In the gloomy years of war in the beginning of the 
 eighteenth century, Swedish culture, especially art, declined, 
 and it was a long time before the country recovered from the 
 effects. The Carolinian age was satisfied with crudely exe- 
 cuted paintings that often revealed the hand of the artisan. 
 It was a Hamburg artist, David von Krafft, summoned to 
 Sweden by his maternal uncle Ehrenstrahl, who fixed on can- 
 vas, in austere, dark portraits, the features of the inflexible 
 warrior-king, both as a young, rather gawky, fighter, and as 
 an older man with bald crown and hair whitened 
 by adversities. 
 
 Among the artists and portrait-painters who were active 
 in Sweden and painted the celebrated men of the first part of 
 
84 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 the eighteenth century was Martin Meytens the Elder, born 
 at the Hague. His straightforward and dignified portrait 
 of the author of Atlantica, Olof Rudbeck the Younger, is 
 a good type of a gentleman from Sweden's Period of Great- 
 ness. His son, Martin van Meytens the Younger, was born 
 in Stockholm but spent most of his time abroad; in France 
 and Austria he painted members of the very highest society. 
 Besides his elegant Portrait of the Artist in the Academy of 
 Arts, we have in Sweden from his hand the stately group 
 The Grill Family. 
 
 Georg Desmarees was also a pupil of the Elder Meytens. 
 Among his portraits may be mentioned those of Nikodemus 
 Tessin the Younger and Arvid Horn in a rather pompous 
 style, and the more austere and realistic picture of the wife 
 of Admiral Appelbom, painted in 1723 and now in the 
 National Museum. Mikael Dahl chose his field of opera- 
 tion in England. Dahl was a pupil of Ehrenstrahl, but dur- 
 ing his residence in England he came under the influence of 
 the Van Dyck portraits which he saw there. A softer ele- 
 gance is noticeable in the almost feminine portrait of 
 
 The pleasure palace China, near Stockholm, designed by Karl 
 Fredrik Adelcrantz 
 
A SURVJ<:Y ()1- SWEDISH ART 
 
 85 
 
 Charles XII — not painted from life, however, — which is 
 now in the National Museum. This influence is still more 
 apparent in Dahl's paintings of women, a good example 
 
 being the portrait, now pre- 
 ser\ed in (jripsholm, of the 
 young Queen Anne of Eng- 
 land, pale, with dark, waving 
 locks and a loosely fitting, 
 low-necked silk dress. 
 
 During the middle of the 
 eighteenth century, the honest 
 portrait-painter Olof Arenius, 
 a pupil of David von Krafft, 
 was active in Sweden. The last 
 type of the somewhat bom- 
 bastic German-Italian baroque 
 style was Georg Engelhard 
 Schroder. As portrait paint- 
 er of the court, he put on 
 canvas the ruddy, swollen 
 features of Frederick I. The 
 fashion painter of the period 
 1 740-1 760 was Johan Henrik 
 Scheffel, among whose numer- 
 ous portraits those of Linne 
 and of the poetess Hedvig 
 Charlotta Nordenflycht de- 
 serve special mention. 
 
 Karl Fredrik Adelcrantz is 
 perhaps the most eminent 
 architect during the latter 
 half of the eighteenth century. 
 The "patriotic goddesses of song" to whom Gustavus III 
 dedicated his favorite creation, the Opera, had their habi- 
 tation erected by Adelcrantz. Arvfurstens Palats Is the Tor- 
 stensson palace rebuilt by Erik Palmstedt — who had just 
 finished the Exchange — and gives a picture of how the old 
 Opera House looked. But the old auditorium, whose walls 
 
 The tower of the Storkyrka 
 in Stockholm, rebuilt by 
 Johan Eberhard Carlberg 
 
86 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 were decorated by Adelcrantz with exquisite taste in white 
 and gold, and which in their day had vibrated both with the 
 "report of Anckarstrom's pistol"* and the silver tones of 
 Jenny Lind, is gone forever. Adelcrantz made the draw- 
 ings for Norrbro, of which the foundation-stone was laid 
 in 1787, and which was completed in 1806. Its mighty 
 arches, constructed of granite blocks, emphasize by their 
 massive beauty the thinness and poverty of our modern 
 iron bridges. The Adolphus Frederick Church in Stock- 
 holm is built after plans by Adelcrantz like an equibranchl- 
 ated Grecian cross with cupola, but the small dimensions and 
 especially the consequent low position of the windows 
 weaken the impression which the visitor experiences in sim- 
 ilar Italian churches. In the luxuriant verdure of Drottning- 
 holm park gleams the small, red-painted pleasure palace, 
 China, its rococo forms intermingled with Chinese orna- 
 ments. At the time when it was built (1763) Chinese por- 
 celain, then called East Indian, was in great vogue, and so 
 was China's industrial art in general, for it harmonized in 
 several respects with the super-refined, sumptuous taste of 
 the rococo. The coquettish pleasure palace, a plaything for 
 adults, was also a creation of Adelcrantz. 
 
 The Storkyrka in Stockholm, which had been rebuilt by 
 Johan Eberhard Carlberg, was completed in 1743. The 
 tower Is one of the most tasteful and beautiful In the church 
 architecture of the period. 
 
 A reference to the murder of Gustav III by Anackarstrom, 1792. 
 
IV 
 
 FRENCH AND ENGLISH INFLUENCES IN THE 
 GUSTAVIAN AGE 
 
 IT was Inevitable that Swedish art, during the reigns of 
 Frederick I, Adolphus Frederick, and Gustavus III, 
 should be stamped with French characteristics. The 
 temper of the age, the confirmed French sympathies of 
 Louise Ulrica and Gustavus III, as well as the influence of 
 Nikodemus Tessin the Younger's son, the discriminating art 
 patron, Karl Gustav Tessin, sufficiently explain this move- 
 ment. Nevertheless, the close of the eighteenth century 
 gave expression to many of the most distinctive traits of 
 the Swedish temperament: festive exuberance, a taste for 
 display and pomp and, underneath it all, a lightheartedness 
 tinged with sadness such as we find in Bellman's songs. 
 More important than the external influence of patrons and 
 princes was the fact that during all this time artists directed 
 their attention toward Paris, availing themselves of the 
 opportunity to use the excellent French teachers and to 
 acquire that firm technique which was the backbone of con- 
 temporaneous French art. 
 
 The first Swedish painter to become known in Paris was 
 Gustav Lundberg, whose pastel paintings — a genuinely 
 rococo form of art — won the admiration of his time. The 
 portrait of a lady, which is reproduced here, is unfinished 
 but, nevertheless, charming. It is that of Mile. Hanck, later 
 the wife of Assessor Schroder, who "because of her beauty 
 was received by Her Majesty Louise Ulrica, who provided 
 for her education," This lovely lady, painted just before 
 1750, has often been depicted by Lundberg's crayons, but 
 
 87 
 
88 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 Portrait of the wife of Assessor Schroder, unfinished pastel by Gustav 
 Lundberg, in the Academy of Art at Stockholm 
 
 never more beautifully than in this portrait. The technique 
 of the pastel brings out the softness of a coquettish woman's 
 face, glancing roguishly from beneath the broad-brimmed 
 straw hat. It is reported that Lundberg was wont to fall 
 in love with his model, and that he then painted his very 
 best, and if so, we may assume from this portrait quite a 
 tender passion. Lundberg was accepted in Paris as early 
 
A SURVEY OF SWEDISH ART 89 
 
 as the third decade of the century and studied with the 
 famous Venetian woman pastel-painter Rosalba Carriera, 
 who is excellently represented in our National Museum, 
 notably by the pastel portrait of the Swedish-born Roman 
 senator, Nils Bielke, in typical rococo colors, blue and silver. 
 
 Lundberg was in vogue at the court, where the young 
 Swede had the opportunity to initiate the exiled Stanislaus 
 Leczinski, father-in-law of Louis XV, into pastel-painting. 
 His reputation was established when Karl Gustav Tessin, 
 during the years 1739- 1742, guarded the interests of Sweden 
 at the French court and of Swedish art among artists and 
 art dealers. Tessin procured for Lundberg a place in the 
 French Academy of Painting, from the members of which 
 the Count had ordered several portraits of his beautiful 
 young relative, Froken Charlotte Fredrika Sparre, then a 
 resident in Paris. Karl Gustav Tessin himself had had his 
 portrait painted in excellent manner by Lundberg; the pic- 
 ture is now in the possession of Baron Bo Leijonhufvud. 
 Lundberg has also painted a fine portrait of his colleague 
 Boucher. 
 
 During his sojourn in Paris, Tessin purchased pictures by 
 almost all prominent contemporary French painters, espe- 
 cially by his favorite Boucher, but also by Lancret, Chardin, 
 and others. This Swedish aristocrat, with his inherited taste 
 and his intense interest in art, through these purchases of 
 French and, not less, Dutch masterpieces, laid the founda- 
 tion for the collection of paintings, engravings, and sketches 
 In the National Museum. 
 
 Still more illustrious than the position of Lundberg was 
 that occupied In the metropolis by Alexander Roslln. From 
 the middle of the eighteenth century, Roslln was the painter 
 of high society In Paris, and he amassed a large fortune by 
 his portraits of the Parisian aristocracy. From the year 
 1756 dates the charming potralt of Baroness Neubourg- 
 Cromlere, so fresh and typical of the time, with the black 
 half-mask in one hand and the fan In the other, the dainty 
 figure dressed In a light silk gown. Many Roslln connois- 
 seurs consider this painting the artist's masterpiece. "Qui 
 
90 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 Baroness Neubourg-Cromleie, by Alexander Roslin. 
 Alfred Berg, Stockholm 
 
 Owned by 
 
 a figure de satin doit etre peint par Roslin," was the com- 
 ment in France. Such a silky smooth face he has painted 
 in the superb portrait of Himself with his Wife. The 
 beautiful Suzanne, who was a French artist in pastels, is busy 
 finishing a portrait. Her peach-colored complexion is 
 enhanced by the light-green silk of her dress, and the fea- 
 tures are refined by a touch of gentle dreaminess. He has 
 
A SURVEY OF SWEDISH ART 
 
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 Portrait of the Artist and His wife, Painting In Pastel, by Alexander Roslln. 
 At Fano in Uppland 
 
 immortalized himself, behind her, smiling with that stereo- 
 typed smile of a man of the world which was so character- 
 istic of the rococo and of his whole art. 
 
92 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 Roslin was famous for his great ability in reproducing silk 
 and satin and for creating a general impression of elegance. 
 For his defective reproduction of character he was violently 
 attacked by Diderot, who in the sixties wrote brilliant criti- 
 cisms on the Salons, the annual art exhibitions. During a 
 visit to Russia in 1775, Roslin had the opportunity to paint 
 the Empress Catherine and the great men of Russia. The 
 portrait of Catherine was considered a good likeness, but 
 the noble lady herself maintained that it made her look like 
 "a Swedish kitchen maid." His admirable head of the 
 elderly Linne, in the Academy of Sciences, seems to chal- 
 lenge to a certain extent the censorious remarks of Diderot, 
 for the features of the venerable old man beam with kind- 
 ness, and his clear eyes, which had been permitted to "peep 
 into God's secret council-chamber," sparkle with that bright 
 outlook on life which was one of the most charming traits 
 of the eighteenth century. As an excellent example of drap- 
 ery painting the splendid Portrait of Gustavus III at Grips- 
 holm occupies a high place. The portrait emphasizes the 
 weak, almost effeminate quality of the King's figure. Gus- 
 tavus III is dressed in a bluish-violet costume worked in 
 silver and wears an ermine mantle. Roslin has often 
 painted Gustavus and his brothers, and has, in a masterly 
 way, reproduced the old acetous visage of Louise Ulrica, 
 at the time when the Queen, on unfriendly terms with her 
 son, was designated by the insolent members of the court 
 as the lady "beyond the fence." The lustrous side of the 
 famous Swede's art appears in the picture of Gustavus III 
 and his brothers, which was exhibited at the Paris Salon in 
 177 1. This is a brilliantly painted picture of the three ele- 
 gant princes, who in their gold-embroidered coats, their 
 breasts gleaming with stars and decorations, discuss the plan 
 of a campaign, while with obliging condescension they turn 
 their smiling faces toward the spectators. C. R. Lamm in 
 Nasby has the largest number of Roslin paintings in any 
 private collection. 
 
 Nils Lafrensen the Younger spent the time from 1760- 
 1790, with the exception of a few years, in Paris where he 
 
A SURV1:Y OV SWEDISH ART 
 
 93 
 
 Three Women Musicians, gouache by Nils Lafrensen the Younger. 
 National Museum at Stockholm 
 
 In the 
 
 was known under the name of Lavreince. His art also was 
 to an exceptional degree Parisian. He had in common with 
 Fragonard a wide range of subjects, though he was far from 
 
94 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 equalling him either in power to express the storms of pas- 
 sion or in the brilliant brush work in which this master of 
 rococo was preeminent. It was in salon pictures that Lafren- 
 sen excelled. He was most at home in the beautiful Louis 
 seize rooms, where the windows went down to the floor, so 
 that one might see more of nature which Rousseau had just 
 taught people to admire, where the gobelin covered chairs 
 and sofas with oval backs and straight legs were occupied 
 by charming countesses and baronesses, who dogmatically 
 discussed chemistry and physics, the rights of man, and not 
 least, the philosophy of love. Among these pictures from 
 the world of salons, which were often reproduced in copper 
 engravings after paintings by Lafrensen, the following well- 
 known engravings deserve special mention: L'assemblee au 
 salon, a representation of that pleasant social life which 
 flourished during I'ancien regime, and, Qu'en dit monsieur 
 I'abbe? where the advice of a gallant abbot is sought in a 
 question of taste concerning dress, this important matter 
 being decided, according to the custom of the time, at the 
 morning toilet of the young lady. 
 
 Lafrensen preferred to paint in gouache. One of Lafren- 
 sen's most beautiful gouache paintings is that in the 
 National Museum, representing Three Women Musicians, 
 who sit in a room of the Gustavian style decorated with light 
 green draperies. His women have a feminine grace, and 
 the small scale common in his pictures gives a stamp of in- 
 timacy to these amiable sheperdesses of the salon, who 
 laughingly tell one another their secrets, compare their 
 charms, and revel in the tortures of their admirers. Lafren- 
 sen did not return home to settle in Sweden until 1791. He 
 then occupied himself for the most part with miniature 
 painting. Next to Hall, mentioned below, he is our fore- 
 most miniature painter. Among his portraits the gouache 
 of Gustavus III in a Swedish costume of red and black is 
 best known. 
 
 In miniature painting a Swede, Peter Adolf Hall, won, 
 during the seventies and eighties, the greatest fame, and was 
 called in Paris, where he made his home, the "Van Dyck of 
 
A siiRvi:v ()i< swi:i)isii a\<\- 
 
 95 
 
 Portrait of Fru Hall with Sister and Daughter. Min 
 signed "hall, 1776." In the Wallace Collection in L 
 
 ature 
 London 
 
 miniature." His miniatures of contemporaries, painted on 
 ebony, gained general approbation because of his firm and 
 light touch. In the National Museum are preserved his 
 portraits of Gustavus Ill's friend the Countess d'Egmont, 
 with refined features wasted by illness; his broadly painted 
 Portrait of Himself; and the excellent picture of Sergei in 
 Swedish costume. The miniature of Fru Hall with Sister 
 and Daughter was purchased for 19,000 francs for that 
 unique collection of eighteenth century art, the Wallace Col- 
 lection in London. 
 
 Miniature art was very popular during the whole of the 
 eighteenth century. It appealed to the prevailing taste for 
 the pretty, and at the beginning of the century was much 
 used on the snuff-boxes which were so fashionable at the 
 time. During the latter half of the same century, the period 
 of tender declarations of love and friendship, the collecting 
 of miniature portraits became a mania. 
 
96 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 The man who may be said to have been the real creator 
 of the Gustavian style was the architect, Jean Erik Rehn, 
 who, after studies in France, adapted the style of Louis XVI 
 to our conditions, and exerted an excellent influence through 
 his designs for Haupt's furniture and Rorstrand's porcelain. 
 His fine taste is especially noticeable in Louise Ulrica's 
 library at Drottningholm, which was fitted up by him. 
 
 Among the many excellent artisans in Sweden during the 
 eighteenth century, the royal court cabinet-maker, the car- 
 penter-artist Georg Haupt occupies the first place. He 
 was born and died in Stockholm, but received his education 
 in France and England. Bureaus, writing-tables, and secre- 
 taries, executed by Haupt in the Gustavian style and inlaid 
 with wreaths, flowers, musical instruments, or cupids, 
 aroused the greatest admiration during his life-time, and 
 are now in constant demand by Swedish collectors. His 
 masterpiece de luxe was the gigantic cabinet for minerals 
 which was presented by Gustavus III to the Prince of Conde 
 and is now preserved in the castle of Chantilly. With res- 
 pect to taste and technical perfection of room-fittings and 
 furniture, it is doubtful whether any age can compete with 
 the artificers of the seventies and the eighties of the eight- 
 eenth century. Even when compared with the larger coun- 
 tries possessed of old culture, Sweden occupies a very high 
 place in this field. 
 
 Karl Gustav Pilo, in his unfinished but magnificently beau- 
 tiful Coronation of Gustavus III, now in the National 
 Museum, has executed a masterpiece in the art of color. 
 The painting — three meters high and five and a half meters 
 long — is extraordinarily well composed. The sunlight plays 
 upon the gilded pews carved after drawings by Tessin the 
 Younger, and is refracted in the white silk and violet velvet, 
 giving a vibrating life to the great ceremony in the Stor- 
 kyrka. It is taken at the moment when Archbishop Beronius 
 and Lord High Chancellor Count Horn hold the crown over 
 the head of Gustavus. Pilo lived for a long time in Den- 
 mark, where, about 1770, he was for two years the director 
 of the Academy of Art. His unusually fascinating portrait 
 
A SURVEY OF SWEDISH ARI^ 97 
 
 The Coronation of Gustavus III, unfinished painting by Karl Gustav 
 Pilo. In the National Museum at Stockholm 
 
 of the doll-like form of Sofia Magdalena, which stands out 
 in a soft clair-obscure with something of an aristocratic fowl 
 in her eyes and in the position of her head, testifies to his 
 great gift as a colorist. 
 
9g 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 Sofia Magdalena, by Karl Gustav Pilo. In the collection of Count 
 von Rosen 
 
 Per Krafft the Elder, born in Arboga, studied under Ros- 
 lin In Paris and became afterward court painter In Warsaw. 
 After he had returned to Sweden, In 1768, he executed some 
 excellent portraits In clear, pleasantly harmonizing colors, 
 among which may be mentioned that of Emanuel Sweden- 
 
A SURVJ<:V Ol-' S\Vi:i)ISIl y\kl- 
 
 99 
 
 The Mechanic Daniel af Thunberg, by Lorens Pasch the Younger, in 
 the National Museum at Stockholm 
 
 borg and the bright-tinted picture of Bellman with the Lute, 
 In the Gripsholm collection. 
 
 The portrait painter Lorens Pasch the Younger was the 
 most eminent of the well known Pasch family of artists. He 
 was born and died In Stockholm. Lorens Pasch the Younger 
 became a pupil of Pilo in Copenhagen and of Boucher in 
 Paris. A pastel of Gustavus III, a faithful picture of the 
 elderly pastel painter Gustav Lundberg, both in the Acad- 
 
100 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 emy of Arts, and a good portrait of Louise Ulrica In 
 Rosersberg are among the best works of this industrious 
 artist. A rare firmness of character distinguishes the por- 
 trait Pasch made of the Mechanic Daniel of Thunberg. 
 Something of peasant ancestry and something of middle- 
 class uprightness and plainness is brought out in the picture 
 of this workman who had ennobled himself solely through 
 his own labor. The green ribbon of a Knight Commander 
 of the Order of Vasa stands out against the brown coat. 
 
 Danae and the Shower of Gold, by Adolf Uliik WertmuUer. In the 
 National Museum at Stockholm 
 
 Adolf Ulrik Wertmiiller was born In Stockholm of an 
 esteemed bourgeois family. He studied at the Academy of 
 Arts, and in the same year that Gustavus III was crowned, 
 set out for extensive travels abroad. He reaped greatest 
 benefit from his sojourn In Paris, where he enjoyed the kind- 
 ness of his relative Roslin, and himself acquired a good repu- 
 tation as a portrait painter. It was at the request of Gusta- 
 vus III that Marie Antoinette had a group picture of her- 
 
A SURVia' ()I< SWEDISH ART 101 
 
 self and her children painted by him. In 1786 she presented 
 the portrait to Gustavus III. With national pride it is signed 
 "Wertmiiller sucdois." In the last decade of the century 
 Wertmiiller set out for North America, where he had the 
 opportunity to paint the great Washington. After a visit 
 to his native home, he returned to the United States and put 
 on exhibition, in 1800, in Philadelphia, the unusually charm- 
 ing picture of Danae and the Shower of Gold, which was 
 executed in the new classical tendency of the time. An 
 American patron of art has presented the work to the 
 National Museum in Stockholm. Wertmiiller married in 
 America and died there in 1 8 1 2 upon an estate which he had 
 bought in Delaware, where Sweden possessed a colony in the 
 seventeenth century. 
 
 Per Horberg from Smaland, a self-educated artist who 
 studied a little In the eighties at the Academy of Arts in 
 Stockholm, attempting to imitate the academic painters of 
 the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, executed In a some- 
 what naive and stiff-handed fashion, a large number of altar 
 paintings, now preserved In the country churches of Oster- 
 gotland and Smaland. 
 
 Chardin's scenes from bourgeois life find a counterpart 
 In Sweden In the productions of Per Hillestrom the Elder. 
 His art Is of varying value, now dry costume pictures of an 
 exclusively historical Interest, now again well executed small 
 Interiors from the better middle class homes In Stockholm: 
 a mother instructing her children, old women telling for- 
 tunes in coffee grounds, servant girls testing eggs against the 
 light, or fair friends giving each other their confidences. 
 Most frequently a touch of old-fashioned honesty, of joy and 
 comfort of home, are found in Hillestrom's paintings. The 
 preference of the artist for a moderate scale befitting his 
 themes Is another good characteristic of his pictures. 
 
 A landscape painter who brought the new English concep- 
 tion of nature to Sweden was a nephew of the above-men- 
 tioned Haupt, a native of Stockholm, Ellas Martin. In 
 adherence to the English school of painting, with Its light 
 effects, colorlstic foundation, and deeper feeling for nature, 
 
102 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 At the Embroidery Frame, by Per Hillestrom. Owned by Froken 
 Fraenckel in Stockholm 
 
 Martin, who spent a long time in England, painted several 
 truly poetical landscapes, often of astonishing freshness and 
 with something of Gainsborough's clair-obscure. As a por- 
 trait painter, he appears to very good advantage in the pic- 
 ture of Bellman. Martin has designed the vignettes of the 
 latter's Temple of Bacchus and has, besides, engraved the 
 sketches for the well known book Journey in Italy, by the 
 art-philosopher and admlral-in-chief, Karl August Ehrens- 
 vard, in which the author sets forth, in brief, oracular terms, 
 
A SURVEY OK S\Vi:i)ISII ARI' 
 
 03 
 
 Landscape with Waterfall, by Elias Martin. 
 Museum at Stockholm 
 
 In the National 
 
 his one-sided and neo-ClassIc but often ingenious opinions 
 about art, nature, and people. Both Martin and Ehrensvard 
 were friends of Sergei. For Augustin Ehrensvard, the cre- 
 ator of Sveaborg, Elias Martin had painted views of this 
 fortress, and had also acted as instructor to his son, Karl 
 August. His brother, the copper engraver, Johan Fredrik 
 Martin, is known for his Views of Stockholm in large out- 
 line etchings with handpainted water-colors of excellent 
 artistic effect. 
 
104 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 Portrait of the Artist's Father, by Karl Fredrik von Breda. 
 National Museum at Stockholm 
 
 In the 
 
 Karl Fredrik von Breda went to England in 1787 for the 
 purpose of study and there enjoyed the guidance of Sir 
 Joshua Reynolds. He painted the portrait of Sir Joshua 
 as an admission-piece into the Swedish Academy of Arts. 
 Breda, who is one of the country's very best portrait paint- 
 ers, had acquired in England a warm and extremely effective 
 treatment of colors. After his return, in 1796, the aristoc- 
 
A SURVEY OK SWllDISIl ARF 105 
 
 racy, who \aliiccl the noble bearing he gave to his portraits, 
 sought the services of the young artist. Besides his powerful 
 technique, his broad brush, and sense of the picturesque, he 
 brought from England that feeling for nature which char- 
 acterized the last years of the eighteenth century. His por- 
 trait of the actress Teresa Vannoni, painted with warmth 
 and breadth, reveals, through dress and conception, that the 
 times of Gustavus were past; now people gave themselves 
 up to nature-worship in the parks, where at the altars erected 
 to friendship they consecrated tender sighs to the moon and 
 stars. Breda has produced the most substantial and valuable 
 in Swedish painting of the first half of the nineteenth century. 
 His Portrait of My Father, painted 1797, with Spanish 
 cane and the tall black hat that came originally from the 
 Anglo-Saxon lands, indicates the invasion of romanticism, 
 and produces an almost ghost-like effect with its pale face 
 and its figure, wrapped in a wide, black, Spanish cloak 
 against the background of a dark, stormy sky. From an 
 artistic viewpoint, it is an important work. During his later 
 period his portraits often received an unpleasantly reddish 
 tint. 
 
 During the decade of 1790, Per Krafft the Younger, the 
 son of Per Krafft the Elder, painted his best portraits, es- 
 pecially that of the architect Deprez, now in the Academy 
 of Arts. He received guidance from the great David. 
 Krafft adopted a more and more inflexible method of paint- 
 ing during the last part of his extraordinarily long artistic 
 career. 
 
SERGEL 
 
 THE first and greatest name in the plastic art of Sweden 
 is Johan Tobias Sergei. Born in Stockholm of German 
 parents — his father was a gold-embroiderer from Jena 
 — and educated in Sweden by French teachers, he received 
 his deepest art-impressions later in Rome from the old Greek 
 sculptures, which were the object of so much admiration 
 and not less of learned study, especially in Germany, during 
 the last decades of the eighteenth century. Sergei's indi- 
 viduality, however, was so strong that he was able to fuse 
 these different impressions in his art. He succeeded in 
 breathing warmth and life into his work, and was inspired 
 by the antique in a more profound way than was generally 
 the case with his contemporaries. For this reason his figures 
 do not become stiff and cold imitations. Over the marble 
 lies the rosy shimmer of the days of Gustavus, supple 
 strength in the male forms and softness in the female, widely 
 different from the smoothness of the Italian Canova or the 
 magnificent but cold reconstructions of Thorvaldsen. 
 
 During the years of his apprenticeship under the French 
 sculptor, Pierre Hubert Larcheveque, he assisted the latter 
 with the large altar-relief in plaster of Paris, Christ in the 
 Garden, for the Slottskyrka. Sergei received, besides, the 
 opportunity to assist in the rough work on the statue of 
 Gustavus Vasa, unveiled 1774, and that of Gustavus Adol- 
 phus, unveiled 1796, neither very successful. In these statues, 
 Larcheveque was not on a par with the excellent contem- 
 porary French sculptors, but it must be admitted that, in the 
 eighteenth century, with its defective historical sense, it was 
 
 106 
 
A SURVEY OF SWEDISH ART 107 
 
 almost impossible to obtain a picture of "old king Cjosta" 
 that was national and true to history. Larchevccjue's great- 
 est distinction consists in having been the teacher of Sergei, 
 and, in 1758, when but a youth of eighteen, Sergei was 
 allowed to accompany his instructor to Paris. There, with- 
 out a doubt, he received strong impressions from I'alconct 
 and Pigalle, the great French rococo sculptors, whose grace 
 and sensuous elegance were bound to exert an influence upon 
 the precocious young Swede. In 1767 Sergei went to Rome 
 and remained there until 1778. There the greatness of 
 antiquity was revealed to him partly by means of the previ- 
 ously mentioned scholarly currents in art. 
 
 The Faun, statuette in marble by Johan Tobias Sergei. In the 
 National Museum at Stockholm 
 
 In the year 1770 The Reclining Faun was finished. The 
 figure attracted general attention by its joyousness and stamp 
 of energy. Notwithstanding its small size — not quite a 
 meter in length — it produces a very striking effect through 
 Its animation and its pagan, exuberant joy of life. There are 
 
108 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 rare unity and buoyancy in this splendid work of art. In 
 accordance with the custom of Bernini and the Italian-French 
 sculptors, the marble is polished, A short time later Sergei 
 modeled the hero-type Diomedes and began work on a 
 group, Cupid and Psyche, originally ordered by Madame du 
 Barry but acquired by Gustavus III, when the death of 
 Louis XV prevented her from purchasing the statue. The 
 theme is taken from the old significant myth about Cupid 
 who is obliged to leave Psyche after she has sought, out of 
 curiosity, to ascertain his origin and name. Psyche's trem- 
 bling before the inevitable and Cupid's majestic repellent 
 gesture are combined in plastic harmony. Kellgren wrote : 
 
 Behold, alas! in desperation, 
 
 Before the god of love she lies. 
 
 In pardon-seeking supplication 
 
 For slighting her helov d's advice. 
 The magnificent group Mars and Venus was also modeled 
 in Rome, though carved in marble at a much later date. It 
 represents the goddess of beauty engaged in the battle about 
 Troy, as she sinks fainting into the arms of the god of war. 
 The contrast between masculine strength and feminine soft- 
 ness, the motif that was so popular with the neo-Renais- 
 sance and the rococo, appears here to excellent advantage. 
 Sergei returned home from Rome by way of Paris, where, 
 as an example of his art, he modeled his statue of Otryades 
 who, dying on the battlefield, inscribes upon his shield the 
 tidings of victory. This dramatic representation created a 
 lively sensation in the Academy where it was exhibited. 
 Among those present on this occasion was the famous sculp- 
 tor Pigalle, as also Pajou, Houdon, Chardin, and Roslin. 
 This work gained for Sergei admittance into the Academy. 
 Sergei returned to Sweden in 1778. On the way he vis- 
 ited London, where he met Reynolds. The classical treas- 
 ures that had been taken from the Parthenon by Lord Elgin 
 were not put on exhibition until 18 12; consequently Sergei 
 could not see them. He had no opportunity to see either 
 these works of sculpture or, for that matter, many of the 
 best Greek statues of the fifth and fourth centuries which. 
 
A SLIRV1:Y (W SWEDISH ART 
 
 109 
 
 Mars and Venus, marble group by Sergei. Owned by Count 
 A. F. Wachtmeister 
 
 according to the belief of our time, represent the culmina- 
 tion of classic art It was the weaker neo-antique that Sergei 
 and his contemporaries tried to imitate. Fortunately his 
 art contains much of the good French traditions. 
 
 In 1780 the King ordered the Venus which bears the 
 pretty rococo head of Countess Ulla von Hopken, nee von 
 Fersen. In this figure Sergei has immortalized one of Kell- 
 gren's "three graces." For the statue of Gustavus Adol- 
 phus, Sergei modeled during the decade of 1780 the group 
 
no SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 Axel Oxenstlerna Dictating to History the Deeds of the 
 Hero, a group which has only in our day been set up in its 
 right place at the base of the statue. The decorative genii 
 who bore aloft the monogram of Gustavus above the cur- 
 tain of the Opera, and have now been removed to the same 
 place in the new Opera House, also date from this period. 
 In another building, the Adolphus Frederick Church, also 
 the creation of Adelcrantz, Sergei executed a monumental 
 piece of work in moulded lead, namely the Memorial to the 
 Philosopher Rene Descartes, who died in Stockholm in 1650. 
 The theme of a genius lifting the veil of ignorance from the 
 globe and letting the torch of enlightenment flame over the 
 sphere was certain to make a strong appeal to Sergei, and 
 indeed this monument glows with life and possesses splendid 
 decorative qualities. Sergei executed also the altar-piece for 
 the same church, where The Resurrection of Christ is repre- 
 sented in high relief in plaster of Paris. Christ, a beard- 
 less youth of Grecian type, ascends toward heaven with out- 
 spread arms, surrounded by angels. The form-language of 
 the figures is classical, but the same is true of the first sculp- 
 ture of the Christian church. Yet the beautiful gigantic 
 relief is not Christian according to the conceptions of our 
 time. 
 
 In 1 7 83- 1 7 84 Sergei had the opportunity to accompany 
 Gustavus III upon his travels in Italy. In Rome Sergei was 
 royal councillor in matters of taste, and among other things 
 expressed his most passionate delight over the recently dis- 
 covered statue of the sleeping Endymion, which the king 
 later ordered to be purchased. Two paintings in the French 
 section of the National Museum are a reminder of Gustavus' 
 visit in Rome, one of them by Desprez representing Gusta- 
 vus III Attending Christmas Matins in St. Peter's Cathe- 
 dral, 1783. Vapors of incense float about Bernini's bronze 
 baldachin, as Pius VI raises the holy vessel where the miracle 
 of transsubstantiation takes place to the music of the bells. 
 The other painting is by Gagneraux. It shows the King 
 and his entourage, among them Sergei, inspecting the won- 
 derful collection of sculpture in the Vatican, escorted by the 
 
A SURVi:V Ol- SWI'IDISII Akl 
 
 111 
 
 Portrait of the Countess Charlotta Fredrika von 
 
 Fersen, nee Sparre. Marble bust by Sergei. 
 
 Owned by Baron Hopken 
 
 Pope. In Rome Sergei met the young Canova and Angelika 
 Kauffmann. 
 
 After his return home Sergei was employed chiefly in the 
 field of portraits. His splendid portrait busts and portrait 
 medallions of Sweden's most eminent men were highly val- 
 ued, and the admiration aroused by his noble art contributed 
 to elevate the standing of artists in the land. Particular 
 mention may be made of his realistic, strongly characterized, 
 bust of the Countess Charlotta Fredrika von Fersen, who as 
 a girl — Froken Sparre — had been with her relative Karl 
 Gustav Tessin In Paris, where several French artists had 
 reproduced her piquant features. Now, In 1787, she Is rep- 
 resented as an aged grande dame, still so pleasing and beau- 
 
112 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 i 
 
 i 
 
 ^ 
 
 ' ■"■^•- -f-w".. 
 
 
 "^ 
 
 
 b^. ^ - 
 
 fe' ' 
 
 :_M 
 
 Gustavus III, portrait statue in bronze by Sergei. 
 On Siceppsbron, Stockholm 
 
 tiful beneath the becoming widow's veil that she fully 
 deserves to be a mother to those young ladies who enrap- 
 tured the Stockholm of 1780, the "graces" Ulla von Hopken 
 and Countess Lowenhielm. 
 
 Sergei several times perpetuated the figure of Gustavus 
 III, and succeeded admirably — not least in "the living Gus- 
 taviad in bronze" on the Skeppsbro at Stockholm's Quay, 
 giving artistic unity of conception to the complex nature of 
 this King, who bore, "the laurels of the theatre in powdered 
 hair strangely combined with the real, true ones." It is a 
 Swedification of Apollo di Belvedere, ordered by the citi- 
 zens of Stockholm In 1790 and set up in 1802 on the spot 
 near Svensksund where the King landed as victor. Among 
 
A SUKV1-:V ()l< SWEDISH ART 113 
 
 the portrait medallions are the ji;ciii;il countenance of Kell- 
 <2;ren and the li<j;urc of lU'llman, (he wine-god of tile North, 
 with \ ine lea\ cs in his hair. In his pen sketches Sergei has 
 shown us the more intimate sides ol the poet Bellman, in 
 his morning-after mood, and he has also made many draw- 
 ings of himself and his noted friends, the admirer of the 
 antique Karl August Ehrensviird, the Dane Abildgaard, 
 and many others who frequented the artist's hospitable 
 home. In general, his sketches and washes, at times gro- 
 tesque, but always executed with a marvelous sense of the 
 picturesque, constitute a very valuable complement to his 
 productions as a sculptor. Sergei died on the 26th of Feb- 
 ruary, 1 8 14. Active at a time when pedantic imitation of 
 the antique began to be considered as the highest art, he 
 succeeded, thanks to his strong, healthy, and sensuous nature, 
 in developing his personality so that he stands out as the 
 foremost artist our country has possessed, and occupies an 
 uncontested place of rank in the European art of his time. 
 
VI 
 
 THE TRANSITION PERIOD 
 
 UNDER the influence of neo-Classic ideas, Swedish 
 architecture, toward the end of the eighteenth cen- 
 tury, began to be dominated by antique forms in 
 the exterior of the buildings as wellas in the interior dec- 
 orations. Meanwhile the materials employed became 
 poorer, while the power of invention lessened. 
 
 Olof Tempelman, a native of Ostergotland, built, in 1790, 
 the Chancery near Mynttorget, with its sober Doric temple 
 facade. For Gustavus III, who lived occasionally in a little 
 idyllic wooden house at Haga near Brunnsviken, Tempel- 
 man erected the so-called King's Pavilion, which was com- 
 pleted in 1790. The French-born Jean-Louis Desprez, who 
 was to have built the giant palace Haga for Gustavus III 
 in historical classic style, got no further than the foundation, 
 which was laid in 1786. In the same period Uppsala Con- 
 servatory was begun after drawings by Desprez in the 
 Doric style. Desprez was one of Sweden's best painters 
 of stage decorations; especially beautiful were his decora- 
 tions for the opera Gustavus Vasa which was performed in 
 1786, Desprez has painted also the magnificently com- 
 posed pictures Gustavus III Attending Christmas Matins 
 in St. Peter's Cathedral (see page 1 10) — the artist had made 
 the acquaintance of the King on his Italian journey — and 
 the Naval Battle of Hogland with cheering marines amidst 
 huge fluttering sails. The latter has been preserved In 
 Rosersberg Castle. Louis Adrlen Masrellez, son of Adrlen 
 Masrellez, born In Paris, painter, art-theorist, and decor- 
 ator, has decorated a number of rooms In the King's Pavil- 
 
 "4 
 
A sukvi'iv or s\vi:i)isii .\\<\ 
 
 1 13 
 
 Wall decoration in "Gustavus Ill's Divan" 
 Adrien Masreliez 
 
 at Haga , by Louis 
 
 Ion at Haga with some excellent, neo-antique ornamental 
 friezes which call to mind Raphael or the loggias of Pompeii. 
 Though the architecture of the first years of the nine- 
 teenth century Is marked by a certain arldness and frigidity, 
 
116 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 Salon in Rosendal Palace at Djurgarden, built by Fredrik Blom. 
 
 Furniture in the Empire style. Frieze, The Conning of the Asas, by 
 
 Hjalmar Morner 
 
 and though It suffers from a certain meagreness especially 
 with respect to material, nevertheless It does not lack dis- 
 tinction. Fredrik Blom built, during the decade of 1820, the 
 beautiful old Animal House near LlUa Nygatan In Stock- 
 holm, the Rosendal Summer Palace In Djurgarden park, 
 and the splendidly located Skeppsholm Church which has a 
 grandeur of form often lacking In the Swedish houses of 
 worship In the later nineteenth century. Karl Kristofer 
 Gjorwell was a son of the well-known author who has been 
 called "the patriarch of learned labors." In the Queen's 
 Pavilion at Haga and in the Military Hospital on Kungs- 
 holmen, especially in the latter, which was completed In 
 1834, he has attained that severe beauty which was the Ideal 
 of the empire style. 
 
 Among Sergei's pupils none equalled the master, although 
 Johan Niklas Bystrom has executed some good work, and 
 
A SLIKVJ'IV Ol' SWI'IDISII ARI' 
 
 117 
 
 Statue of the actress Emilia Hogquist, by 
 
 Johan Niklas Bystrora. In the Dramatic 
 
 Theatre at Stockholm 
 
 especially his group The Sleeping Juno with the Child Her- 
 cules at her Breast has a touch of greatness that is doubly 
 refreshing in view of the prevailing taste for the banal and 
 the insipidly sweet. There is often something weak and 
 impersonal, however, in his female figures, and it cannot be 
 
118 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 Thor, marble statue by Bengt Eiland Fogelberg. At the 
 National Museum, Stockholm 
 
 denied that Swedish sculpture about 1850, even though not 
 compared with great names like Rude, Barye, or Schadow, 
 had about it something reminiscent of big, chalky caramels, 
 the sugar being predominant in the work of Bystrom and 
 the chalk in that of Fogelberg. While he lived In Rome, 
 Bystrom's happy, hospitable home was a center of Swedish 
 artists. The well known Bust of Bellman in Djurgarden, 
 unveiled in 1829, is from Bystrom's hand. He has made a 
 delightful little statue which is undoubtedly a representa- 
 
A sLiKVi;v oi" s\vi':i)isii j\\<'i wj 
 
 tion of iMiiilic I higijuist in the role of Aventurine in 'I'he 
 Polka. It was in 1845 that the fascinating and idolized 
 actress appeared in this play — the last in which she took 
 part — and enraptured the audience by her grace in the polka, 
 a dance which was entirely new at the time. She died the 
 following year in Italy. 
 
 Bengt Erland Fogelberg is noteworthy chieHy for his 
 efforts to find a plastic form for the gods of Norse myth- 
 ology. The question of employing themes from Norse an- 
 tiquity in sculpture was zealously discussed at the begin- 
 ning of the century. Geijer wrote, in 1817, a treatise 
 "Concerning the Employment of the Norse Myths in Fine 
 Arts" in which he said that these themes ought to be made 
 use of, but warned against formlessness and exaggeration. 
 He shows himself surprisingly far-sighted in his censure of 
 the prevailing unnatural imitation of the antique, not least 
 in the domain of painting, where the life element, color, was 
 ignored, and the figures resembled "painted stone images." 
 In the exhibition arranged by the Gothic Society in 1818, 
 Fogelberg exhibited models for statues of Odin, Thor, and 
 Freyr, the latter being exchanged afterwards for Balder. 
 The statues were later cut In marble, and now stand on the 
 staircase In the National Museum. A somewhat theatrical 
 pose spoils the Impression of Balder, and this Is still more 
 true of Odin. Fogelberg has succeeded best with Thor; he 
 is a type of a Northern god, full of power and with conscious 
 pride in his bearing and yet with something of a peasant's 
 good humor about him. The statue of Gustavus Adolphus 
 In Gothenburg and Bremen, of Charles XIV Johan and 
 Blrger Jarl In Stockholm, all three unveiled In 1854, are 
 well known works of Fogelberg. His art has a certain dry- 
 ness, and does not attract or charm like that of Sergei's, but 
 the new types which he succeeded, after much hard labor, 
 in giving form have been of Importance In Swedish art. 
 
 Erik Gustav Gothe's rather tame art never rose to any 
 high artistic level. The dull statue of Charles XII In Kungs- 
 tradgarden In Stockholm, unveiled in 1821, and the perfor- 
 ated spire of the Riddarholm Church, for which he made 
 
120 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 The Ruined Castle, by Karl Johan Fahlcrantz. In the collection of 
 Thorsten Laurin 
 
 the drawings, are his best known productions. The latter 
 was erected after the beautiful old spire had burned 
 down. 
 
 In general, it may be said that the first decades of the 
 century are characterized by a prevalence of dilettantism and 
 extremely low standards in art. After the splendor of the 
 Gustavian age, Sweden had a period of self-satisfied and 
 Philistine mediocrity in the field of painting. All the more 
 absurd, therefore, seem the bombastic eulogies of the 
 Academy of Arts, when it condemns or comments in high- 
 sounding phrases the feeble art products of the time. 
 
 In Alexander Laureus, who was born in Abo and died in 
 Rome, we notice an agreeable change from the usual poorly 
 depicted allegories and the still more tedious "historical" 
 paintings of the time. In The Dance, executed in 1814, one 
 of Laurens's best pictures, the artist experiments with the 
 
A si!Kvi:v ()i- s\vi:i)isii Akr 121 
 
 effects of ciiiulle light, a problem in illiuiiination witii vvliich 
 he was much engrossed. The prevalent conditions at the 
 ball seem to be very simple, unpretentious, and even naive, 
 but the fresh-colored beauties in their simple white flutter- 
 ing dresses are enjoying it thoroughly, while the partners 
 in their tight-fitting garments hesitate between "Astrild" 
 and the goblet, as the punch-glass was so grandiloquently 
 called in those days. The cold, tame allegories and the 
 often wooden portraits of the highly esteemed Stockholm 
 artist Fredrik Westin and his colored and sweetish nude 
 figures, bedaubed with "Professor Westin's human paint," 
 aroused the enthusiasm of his contemporaries, a fact which 
 does not speak very well for their artistic judgment. 
 
 Karl Johan Fahlcrantz, born in Dalecarlia, was influ- 
 enced by the melancholy of Ruisdael and the evening sun- 
 light of Claude Lorrain, and became the painter of the 
 romantic landscape. A typical picture is The Ruined 
 Castle at the Foot of a Mountain. Warm, brown and 
 violet tones and a kind of universally musical atmosphere 
 are characteristics of this artist, who was so much admired 
 in his own time. Apropos of Fahlcrantz's paintings, Geijer 
 wrote the following profound words: "Painting is the art 
 of developing the inner light or of stealing the light of all 
 things, not only the external, but the light which beams 
 from within. All good painting is soul painting." 
 
 The first half of the nineteenth century was a "harmless" 
 period for art in our land. Among the few architects of 
 any importance was Axel Nystrom the Elder. He revised 
 and carried out Tessin's plans for Lejonbacken — the north 
 passage to the Royal Palace, so called from its two bronze 
 lions — and attained a great effect by the use of excellent 
 material, smooth-cut granite, as well as by firm, dignified 
 lines. The Bazar on Norrbro, razed when the Riksdag 
 building was erected, was by Axel Nystrom. 
 
 Interest in art and the desire to purchase it were at this 
 time negligible among the general public, and the few artists 
 to be found lived by themselves in Rome as academic 
 fellows, industriously wielding the brush on pictures repre- 
 
122 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 senting Italian beggars and robbers, romantic opera-figures 
 placed in a dazzling evening light. The paintings are char- 
 acterized in general by a mixture of aridness, gaudy color- 
 ing, and minuteness of detail, with little individualization. 
 Naturally, there were in the whole group of those who made 
 their living by painting some men of talent who felt 
 oppressed by the small town stagnation in the art life of 
 Rome, where in reality only sculpture flourished, and where 
 Thorvaldsen and Bystrom were hospitable hosts for the 
 young Scandinavian painters. There lived in the twenties 
 the witty dilettante Captain Count Hjalmar Morner whose 
 Stockholm Sketches, it is true, cannot be compared In an 
 artistic sense with those of Daumier and Gavarni, but are, 
 nevertheless, full of amusing and typical features. They 
 picture gentlemen who in thick overcoats drink their warm 
 toddies in the simple Stockholm taverns of 1830, or quiet 
 tea circles with musical entertainment, or lively ferry-women 
 with strong arms and fiery temperaments. His paintings — 
 among them the frieze The Coming of the i?^sir in the 
 Rosendal Palace — possess less interest. Considerably more 
 prominent as an artist was Morner's faithful friend and 
 comrade Sodermark. 
 
 Olof Johan Sodermark was, during the forties and fifties, 
 the best portrait painter in Sweden. When he was invited 
 to Rome by Bystrom, he had already distinguished himself 
 as a soldier and received the medal of honor for bravery 
 in the war with Norway in 18 14 — several painters of that 
 period were military men — and now aroused general atten- 
 tion by his carefully painted and delicately characterized 
 portraits. A combination of neo-ClassIc purity of form 
 and romantic sentimentality Is found In a portrait, typical 
 of the time, of Bystrom's friend Karollna Bygler in greyish 
 lavender silk dress with puffed sleeves, outlined against the 
 yellow satin of the sofa. Sodermark perhaps excelled most 
 in his portraits of men. The great men and women of 
 Sweden had their pictures painted by him. Among these 
 may be mentioned especially the portrait of Berzelius, the 
 conservative politician von Hartmansdorff, Jenny Lind as 
 
A suKVia' oi' s\vi;i)isii a\<\- 
 
 123 
 
 Portrait of Karolina Bygler, by Olof Johan Sodermark. In 
 the National Museum at Stockholm 
 
 Norma, and, finally, Fredrlka Bremer — one of the last por- 
 traits that Sodermark painted. 
 
 In the early part of the nineteenth century, Paris was 
 not so popular among the artists as before. A Swedish 
 painter, however, Per Gabriel Wickenberg, made a great 
 success there. He died young, but managed, through the 
 study of nature and of the old Dutch landscapes, to educate 
 himself so that he became an artist of real merit, even 
 though he could not compete in originality with the French 
 
124 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 Moonlight after Rain, by Per Gabriel Wickenberg. In the National 
 Museum at Stockholm 
 
 masters, Corot and others, who were not held in high regard 
 at the time. In his winter motifs and in his Moonhght after 
 Rain, in the National Museum, he avoids the theatrical 
 features which spoil the greater part of the contemporaneous 
 landscape painting, and his pictures belong to the truest 
 nature descriptions that Swedish art had produced up to 
 that time. 
 
 Gustaf Vilhelm Palm was the most esteemed landscape 
 painter among the Swedes who lived in Rome. His Italian 
 views have something harsh and glaring, but are animated 
 by his feeling for picturesque architecture. The reminis- 
 cences of Rome in 1840 became determinative of his long 
 artistic career. His landscapes from the Malaren valley 
 display a tone which reminds one of the Campagna and 
 Lake Albano. He was most successful in his Stockholm 
 view The Riddarholm Canal at the Middle of the Century 
 with Palmstedt's beautiful stone bridge over the canal — a 
 bridge, constructed in 1784 and razed in 1867 to make room 
 for that monster of bad taste which has disfigured the place 
 for half a century. 
 
A SURVj:V Ol' SWl'lDlSIl ART 
 
 125 
 
 The Nix and ^gir's Daughters, by Nils Johan Blommer. In the 
 National Museum at Stockholm 
 
 The animal painter Karl Wahlbom made an important 
 contribution to Swedish figure-painting. Wahlbom was 
 initiated into the old Norse sagas by his friend, the gymnast 
 and poet Ling, and drew the illustrations for Ling's poem 
 The ^sir. In his popular painting, The Battle of Liitzen, 
 1855, he shows his great ability to represent the different 
 movements of horses. His art marks a step forward in 
 technique. Nils Johan Blommer gave form to the themes 
 of the Norse folksong, and in his romantic painting The 
 Nix and vEgir's Daughters, 1850, in the National Museum, 
 he created a work full of poetic feeling, which — attractive 
 even to us^appealed in the highest degree to the tempera- 
 ment of the age. On the other hand, his well known Freja 
 Drawn by Cats, 1852, in the National Museum, is rather 
 too suggestive of a caramel-painting. 
 
 The Varmlander Uno Troili was the most prominent of 
 Sodermark's pupils, but an exaggerated distrust of his own 
 ability prevented him from taking the place he might have 
 
126 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 Fru Anne-Marie Hallstrom, by Uno Tioili, in the National Museum 
 at Stocliholm 
 
 filled. He studied in Italy, but learned most, perhaps, in 
 Paris. Troili's portraits have something firm and honest 
 in their execution, and the best of them show also an exqui- 
 site taste in the choice of color. A colored background 
 throws into relief his pictures of imperious squires and their 
 wives. During the fifties and sixties he was Sweden's best 
 portrait painter. His brush knew how to bring out the 
 monumental as well as the soulful. Among his works are 
 
A SUKVia Ol- SWl^DISII A\<i \17 
 
 Secretary Myliniiaii, (he linely characterized portrait of Vrw 
 Anne-Marie Ilallstrom (the mother of Professor I. ! lall- 
 stroni), with violet cap-strings against a black dress, painted 
 with the consummate skill which Troili lavishetl on his 
 draperies, and, finally, the charming picture of Kru Mont- 
 gomery-Cederhieliii, executed in 1861. 
 
VII 
 
 THE DUSSELDORF INFLUENCE. THE 
 HISTORICAL PAINTERS 
 
 THE decade following 1850 received its impress from 
 the painters who sought their education in Diisseldorf. 
 In this quiet little town on the Rhine there had been 
 formed a school of painters who tried to employ motifs from 
 contemporaneous life, and, like the seventeenth century 
 Dutch painters in genre, to depict peasant festivals, life in 
 country parsonages, weddings, and funerals. But in these 
 experiments there was always something of a stage effect, 
 of an altogether too obvious humor, while artistic consid- 
 eration was forced into the background by features designed 
 to catch the public eye with cheap effects. By its choice 
 of new subjects, however, and by pointing to the sur- 
 rounding reality, the school became of great consequence, 
 and it would be an injustice to forget the reawakening of 
 public interest in art which, despite all, was due to the 
 "Diisseldorfians." The Norwegian-born Swedish lieutenant 
 Karl D'Uncker with his Pawnshop, his Gambling-hall in 
 Wiesbaden, and his Third Class Waiting Room has given 
 us characteristic types and personages of the fifties and 
 sixties, more valuable, to be sure, in an historical than in a 
 profoundly artistic way, but even from the latter viewpoint 
 deserving interest. Bengt Nordenberg exemplifies the 
 peasant genre of the school by his excellent Tithe Meeting 
 in Skane, a tableau vivant characteristic of the whole move- 
 ment. Ferdinand Fagerlin, who was born in Stockholm in 
 1825 and died in Dusseldorf in 1907, surpasses the other 
 members of the school in the artistic qualities of his ex- 
 
 12S 
 
A slirvi<:y oi-' s\vi:i)isii art 
 
 129 
 
 Jealousy, by Ferdinand Fagerlin. In the National Museum at Stock- 
 holm 
 
 tremely detailed portrayals of the Dutch fishermen In their 
 home-life, which he represents with feeling and a technically 
 meritorious method. His beautiful and thoroughly well 
 executed Jealousy, in which a young Dutch sailor pays court 
 to a charming blonde, would perhaps have gained something 
 by the absence of the second, sad-hearted girl, who gives 
 the picture, according to the taste of our day, a touch of the 
 unpleasantly anecdotical; but with respect to technique and 
 color effect Fagerlin's production indicates an important 
 advance. His art, however, is quite naturally more German 
 than Swedish. August Jernberg, who was active during 
 the sixties and seventies, shows himself very sensitive to 
 color and for that reason more nearly on a par with the old 
 Dutch models. His street scenes from Diisseldorf and more 
 particularly his highly flavored and excellently painted fruit- 
 pieces and kitchen Interiors have that richness and strength 
 of color which are often lacking among the Diisseldorfians; 
 therefore, his pictures are valued more than others from 
 
130 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 The Borrower, by August Jernberg. In the Gothenburg Museum 
 
 this school. The genre painting The Borrower with a motif 
 from west Germany Is a little masterpiece, A landscape 
 painter of marked Individuality, though In some ways 
 typical of the fifties, at once superficial and possessed of 
 power that had a touch of genius, was a native of Ostergot- 
 land, Marcus Larson, who showed In his painting some of 
 the traits that Johan Nybom exhibited In poetry. He be- 
 
A SUkVia Ol' S\Vi:i)ISII Akl 
 
 i.-;i 
 
 Landscape with Waterfall, by Marcus Larson. 
 Museum at Stockholm 
 
 In the National 
 
 gan as a saddle-maker's apprentice. Then after years of 
 study in the Academy of Arts, travels at sea, and wanderings 
 in Norway, he began to paint pictures strongly Influenced by 
 the Diisseldorf artists whom he studied. But he was perhaps 
 still more deeply affected in Paris by the old Dutch land- 
 scapes, especially those of Ruisdael, which he saw in the 
 Louvre. Larson infused his love for the wildness and 
 melancholy of nature into paintings where we can see the 
 waves surging, the lighthouse twinkling, and the waterfall 
 hurling Its foam between the tall trunks of the pine trees, 
 while broken clouds scud across the sky. A distinct flavor 
 of the theptrlcal Is undeniable. The best of his pictures, 
 however, bear evidence of great talent. His striving for 
 effect, together with an unbridled and Inharmonious element 
 In his nature, prevented him, In spite of great promise, from 
 being thoroughly successful. Through his own fault, he was 
 
132 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 finally shipwrecked, both in his art and in his life. He 
 died in London in 1864. 
 
 During the reign of Charles XV, there was considerable 
 interest in Swedish art. The king, who was himself a 
 painter, encouraged and supported artists with a generous 
 hand. In his activity as a patron of art, the king received 
 much aid from his friend and teacher of painting, Johan 
 Kristofer Boklund, a native of Skane. Boklund, who had 
 made profound studies in Munich and Paris, had, as pro- 
 fessor at the Academy, the very best influence upon his 
 pupils, by whom he was especially liked because of his help- 
 fulness. His real field as a painter lay in the historical 
 genre — minor picturesque episodes In historical dress, such 
 as soldiers at their drinking bouts, marauders, and similar 
 things. Thanks to a rare capacity for work and a love of 
 art, his activity has been of very great importance, even 
 outside of his own artistic production from his position as 
 intendant of the National Museum and director of the 
 Academy of Arts. 
 
 The brother-in-law and nephew of Nystrom, Fredrik 
 Vilhelm Scholander, of Stockholm, soon became the leading 
 artist personality In architecture. The historical sense had 
 been more and more aroused in Europe; romanticism 
 turned people's thoughts to the Middle Ages, and a strong 
 Interest in the Gothic style of building was manifested in 
 almost all the countries of Europe. In Sweden, the "his- 
 torical styles" came into use principally through the pupils 
 of Scholander. As a teacher at the Academy of Arts he 
 exercised a strong Influence. All buildings at this time, even 
 those of a monumental character — with the exception of the 
 National Museum — were finished In fine plaster coatings, 
 with decorations in plaster of Paris, in such a way as to 
 simulate stone. Such a fagade looks dead beside one finished 
 In natural stone — although a well done plaster fagade, which 
 does not pretend to be anything else than what it is, has 
 both its raison d'etre and its beauty. Scholander's Syna- 
 gogue in Stockholm, completed In 1870, with Oriental 
 motifs deserves the approbation with which it was received. 
 
A SURVia Ol' SVVl'-DISlI A\<\ \X^ 
 
 It was the intention at first that lie shoultl erect the foremost 
 Swedish memorial building, the National Museum, but in 
 1849 the designs of the German architect Friedrich August 
 Stiller were accepted in preference. Stiller was a pupil of 
 Schinkel and was born in Thuringia. In accordance with his 
 plans the stately structure was erected in the Renaissance 
 style and covered with grey and reddish limestone. The 
 decoration of the interior, however, was directed by Scho- 
 lander. The Museum was dedicated at the time of the 
 Exposition in Stockholm, 1866. Scholander was also of 
 great importance in Swedish art as a painter, musician, poet, 
 and draughtsman. His remarkable feeling for the orna- 
 mental, a field In which his imagination is inexhaustible, is 
 especially well brought out in his excellent sketches illus- 
 trating Fjolner's Saga, written by himself and published In 
 1867, as well as In other saga sketches with architectural 
 and decorative motifs. 
 
 About the middle of the century, Swedish sculpture was 
 represented by Qvarnstrom and Molin. It was a barren 
 period In art, and the monuments and statues produced In 
 considerable numbers during this time did not attain the 
 highest level. In general, they are characterized by a cer- 
 tain correct tedlousness and a considerable portion of pose 
 and conventionality. Tegner In Lund, Berzellus In Stock- 
 holm, and Engelbrekt In Orebro by Carl Gustaf Qvarnstrom 
 were more the expression of the literary and historical 
 Interest of the time than of the artistic, and the same may be 
 said of the somewhat theatrical Charles XII In Stockholm, 
 unveiled 1868, by Johan Peter Molin. On the other hand, 
 the bronze group The Belt-duelllsts, exhibited In the Paris 
 Salon, 1859, Is by virtue of Its dramatic quality and excellent 
 characterization a work of sculpture well fitted to adorn 
 the beautiful spot near the National Museum In Stockholm. 
 It Is a truly original group with not only a Scandinavian 
 theme but a Scandinavian conception. Molln's Fountain 
 which was exhibited In plaster at the Exposition In Stock- 
 holm, 1866, and was later set up In Kungstradgarden, Is 
 of great decorative beauty. Even though the different 
 
134 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 im^s: 
 
 As.^.. ;?...^-4 
 
 
 
 /-■'' ■"' 'T 
 
 r ^- ' 
 
 ^ /S'^f^ 
 
 IndiJ 
 
 n Dancer, drawn by Egron Lundgren at a Festival in Lucknow, 
 1859. Owned by Froken Elsa Nordenfalk, Lovsta 
 
A SURVEY OF SWEDISH ARl 135 
 
 groups of mermaids and water deities that mark the site 
 of Stockholm between Lake Malaren and the sea are not in 
 themselves perfect, nevertheless the whole work of art, with 
 its bold elevation and mighty sweep of form, makes a fine 
 impression, especially when seen against a blue summer sky 
 with the water spurting over the cochleated edge. It is a 
 fine impulse that leads men to adorn public places with an 
 artistically formed fountain, which in the midst of the din 
 and noise reminds us of the peace and harmony of beauty, 
 itself a treasure of beauty which every citizen may proudly 
 call his own. 
 
 Egron Lundgren, though born in Stockholm, spent most 
 of his time in Italy, Spain, and England, and has recorded 
 his artistic impressions in a number of brilliant letters. 
 Quite naturally, he found the atmosphere in Sweden cold 
 and depressing, but he continued to feel a warm interest in 
 the artistic development of his native country. His greatest 
 success was in water-colors, and his pretty and artistic small 
 sketches and water-colors often reveal new points of view. 
 His style, both in drawing and painting, is sometimes sug- 
 gestive of Gavarni. There seems to exist a family likeness 
 among all his coquettish Spanish women, but their easy 
 grace won them a well deserved popularity with the public 
 and the critics. Egron Lundgren was really a rococo 
 painter born too late. He utilized color to the utmost, and 
 It was through color that he was able to conjure up new, 
 fresh aspects of the worn out Italian motifs. During the 
 Indian Rebellion of 1858, Lundgren accompanied the 
 British army and painted some of his best things In oils as 
 well as In water-colors, one of them being The Spy in the 
 National Museum. 
 
 The foremost representative of landscape painting was a 
 native of Stockholm, Edvard Bergh. He, also, studied In 
 Diisseldorf, but developed a genuinely Swedish conception. 
 He preferred to depict on large canvases landscapes of 
 middle Sweden, smiling scenes, where tall birches are re- 
 flected In Inland lakes, or where the cattle graze in the 
 pasture, and the sunlight filters In through the light green 
 
136 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 A Gate in the Birch Woods, by Edvard Bergh 
 
 foliage. Bergh's art was easy to understand and was well 
 liked. Its national stamp gives it an added value for us. 
 
 Johan Fredrik Hockert belongs to the painters whose art 
 does not easily grow old. We are often unjust toward the 
 products of a few decades ago. Living in the midst of a 
 reaction against the exaggerations or faults of which they 
 were guilty, we are prone to undervalue their merits. But 
 
A SURVEY OI- SWEDISH ARK 137 
 
 A Girl from Rattvik, by Johan Fredrik Hockert. In 
 the Fijrstenberg collection, Gothenburg 
 
 when it comes to Hockert, we see with pleasure that even 
 during this period, which was so barren of great art, there 
 were artists who painted with life and spirit, and were able 
 to create something permanent and of real interest to poster- 
 ity. Such was the work of Hockert. His Lapland Chapel, 
 in the museum at Lille, The Interior of a Laplander's Hut, 
 in the National Museum, exhibited at the Paris Salon in 
 1857, and his Girl from Rattvik, in the Fiirstenberg collec- 
 tion, do not appeal either to the risible faculties or the tear 
 glands, like many contemporaneous pictures of folk life; 
 they picture life quite simply, but in a personal way and 
 with warmth and color. Hockert studied in Munich, which 
 soon forced Dusseldorf into the shade, and surpassed his 
 
138 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 teachers in proficiency, especially after he had developed his 
 technique during a sojourn In Paris in 1851. There he 
 aroused attention and had the opportunity of selling to 
 French galleries. His art rises to greatness in his last pro- 
 duction, The Palace Fire 1697, one of the best paintings in 
 the Swedish section of the National Museum. High among 
 the flames we see dimly the casket of Charles XI, and in the 
 foreground the white-haired "Mother of the Charleses" 
 tottering along, supported by her grandchildren. There is 
 spirit and life in the thrilling action, and the picture is 
 painted with an unusual bravura, but it was chiefly through 
 his gift for coloration that he attained his prominent place 
 in the history of Swedish art. 
 
 The tendency toward the Old Norse, which already 
 existed in sculpture, and was further strengthened by new 
 and zealous archeological studies, now received champions 
 in the field of painting also. Loki and Sigyn and Thor's 
 Combat with the Giants by Marten Eskil Winge do not now 
 seem so imposing as they are colossal in size, but they are, 
 nevertheless, remarkable illustrations of what the sixties 
 meant by national art, and Winge's energy and enthusiasm 
 in the execution of the Northern themes was admirable. 
 
 The man who found the artistic form for this interest in 
 Old Norse was August Malmstrom. His father was a peas- 
 ant carpenter near Medevi in Ostergotland, who with great 
 and touching sacrifice gave his son an education as an artist. 
 Malmstrom studied at the Academy of Arts in Stockholm, 
 In Diisseldorf, and in Paris. Both in himself and In his art 
 there was much of a substantial and genuine Swedish quality. 
 He was the right man to give form to the old sagas. In 
 1859 he painted in Paris a picture which Is thoroughly Scan- 
 dinavian both in color and character, Ingeborg Receives the 
 Tidings of Hjalmar's Death; and about the same time 
 Malmstrom started on a theme with which he was to strug- 
 gle, In an artistic sense, his whole life. This was The Battle 
 of Bravalla, which Is presented In two different productions, 
 both of them excellent. The earlier and more romantic 
 belongs to the Stockholm Municipal Building; the other in 
 
A SURVEY OF SWEDISH ARf 139 
 
 HH' 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Ingeborg Receives the Tidings of Hjalmar's Death, by August 
 Malmstrom. In the National Museum at Stockholm 
 
 Nordiska Museet is more realistic and more Northern in 
 its character. Through his pithy sketches for Fridthjof's 
 Saga and the Saga of Ragnar Lodbrok, Malmstrom has 
 contributed in a still higher degree than by his painting to 
 give our people a true and full conception of our forefathers 
 during the Viking Age. He has also sketched episodes from 
 the Finnish War of 1 808-1 809, with an austere but appeal- 
 
140 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 ing faithfulness to nature. His series of oils painted In grey 
 tones Illustrating Runeberg's The Grave In Perrho, which 
 were presented by the artist to the Technical School In Stock- 
 holm, occupy the first rank among these war pictures. There 
 Is another side to Malmstrom, however, an element of 
 tenderness which Is sometimes In the best sense child-like. 
 His Dance of the Elves, exhibited In 1866, belongs to the 
 happiest incarnations of folk poetry, while his chubby 
 Country Children show the humorous bent in his character. 
 During the nineties, Malmstrom pictured in a number of 
 excellent water-colors that combination of meagreness and 
 grace In the Swedish landscape which is so dear to our 
 hearts. 
 
 Poplars, by Alfred Wahlberg. Owned by V. Biinsow 
 
 The ideas of the Fontainebleau School were put Into 
 practice In Sweden by Alfred Wahlberg, born in Stockholm 
 in 1843. He studied first in Diisseldorf, and among the 
 results of his studies there we find the magnificent composi- 
 tion. Landscape in Kolmarden, 1865, in the National 
 Museum. From the French painters In Paris he learned 
 
A SURVEY or SWEDISH ARF 141 
 
 how to look at nature in a simpler and more profound way, 
 and hereby a new element, dilHeult to deline, entered into the 
 Swedish landseape art — the spiritual quality known as sUim- 
 ning. Moonlight scenes, groups of trees, and views had 
 been painted before; now the artists strove to paint the soul 
 of the landscape and to fix on the canvas a transient moment 
 so that it would produce in the spectators a concentrated 
 sense of evening repose, of the threatening power of a storm, 
 of the frosty clearness of an autumn day, or the torturing 
 melancholy of the rain. A slight theatrical aspect, a me- 
 mento of the Diisseldorf period, still remains in his large 
 Moonlight Landscape with a river, in the National Mu- 
 seum, although the French School already asserts itself. 
 The sureness and elegance of Wahlberg's art have contrib- 
 uted much to open the eyes of the public to a truer and more 
 intimate landscape painting. An unusually good example 
 of Wahlberg's lyrical conception of nature Is a picture full 
 of sentiment known as Poplars. 
 
 Gustav Rydberg, himself a native of Malmo, painted the 
 lowlands of Skane and the beautiful country around RIngsjon 
 with a loving and discriminating touch. Olof Arborelius of 
 Orsa painted the luxuriant verdure of Dalecarlla and the 
 mining district Bergslagen with a freshness of handling 
 which increased with the years. Reinhold Norstedt pic- 
 tured the landscape of his native Sodermanland, Its estates 
 and castles with parks, avenues, and pastures, often bathed 
 In the moonlight and suffused with a soft melancholy. A Mill 
 near Spanga, The Eriksberg Castle and A Summer Landscape 
 In Sodermanland, In the Dramatic Theatre in Stockholm, 
 belong to this phase of his artistic talent. He has also painted 
 Stockholm, however, once In a picture of gigantic dimen- 
 sions, A Summer Night near Stockholm Stream, the 
 property of the Stockholm Municipal Building, where the 
 mighty outlines of the Royal Palace may be seen In the 
 background. In his canvas The Norstedt Printing Office on 
 a Winter Afternoon, he has revealed that subtle beauty 
 which a twilight hour may lend even business buildings, Iron 
 bridges, and street cars. Norstedt's art Is like Its parent. 
 
142 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ARL 
 
 A Mill Near Spanga, by Reinhold Norstedt. Owned by Carl G. 
 Laurin 
 
 Everything wild and passionate Is absent. He did not like 
 anything unfinished, and shunned what was rough as much 
 as what was sickly sweet. His pictures were small In size, 
 conceived In an artistic and well-rounded style, and painted 
 with an ardent, manly feeling, often with spirit, in spite of 
 the slow and careful execution of details. 
 
 During a residence of several years In France, Norstedt 
 became the one who appropriated to the fullest and deepest 
 degree the Ideals of the Fontalnebleau school an(^ trans- 
 planted them to Sweden. Not only the view of nacure but 
 also the purity of mind and dread of humbug, strife, and 
 turmoil, that were so characteristic of Corot, Rousseau, 
 and Millet, shine forth from the life and work of Norstedt, 
 and the same Is true of the personal delicacy of feeling which 
 is found in these French artists, and also of their musical 
 timbre. As an etcher of landscapes Norstedt is our fore- 
 most representative thus far. 
 
 It Is noted above that Munich began to take the first place 
 as a center of German art. Diisseldorf was outdone. The 
 historical painter Piloty in Munich was a popular teacher, 
 
A SllRVia' Ol' SWEDISH ART 143 
 
 during the sixties aiul seventies, of tliat historieal figure- 
 painting- whieh was so niueh in vogue at the time, a field in 
 which the I'renehnian Delaroche, in the thirties and forties, 
 and the Belgian Gallait, in the thirties, had won a luiropean 
 reputation. Whereas the Diisseldorf paintings resembled, 
 in many respects, scenes from comedies, the products of the 
 last named artists call to mind well staged tragedies. There 
 Is something vacuous and ostentatious In this art which had 
 Its authorization as an opposition to the colorless art at 
 the beginning of the century. It was this hollow method of 
 treatment of the historical themes which made "historical" 
 paintings suspicious; for the main point is how a subject is 
 handled, whether it be a still life or a battle. At all events, 
 we understand our age better than any other. Historical 
 reconstruction will always be false, and our time paints an 
 overcoat better than an armor, just as the Middle Ages 
 painted an armor better than a toga. We tire most quickly 
 of archaizing art, I. e., that painting, which, using a stale 
 method borrowed from the old masters, seeks with a feigned 
 naivete to obtain the same touching effect which the latter 
 unconsciously gave their paintings. 
 
 Georg von Rosen received his education from Plloty in 
 Munich and even more from H. Leys In Belgium, who imi- 
 tated the archaic in Holbein's style, Rosen soon reached a 
 finished artistic development. He was born in Paris but 
 came to Sweden at the early age of five, and Paris, strangely 
 enough, was to be the art center with which he had least in 
 common. It might almost be said that Rosen in his art 
 realized just what the Munich school tried in vain to express. 
 The historical and universally human have in him been fused 
 Into a unity. The sound, aristocratic art of Velazquez had 
 an influence in giving him his thorough technique. Rosen's 
 production has not been abundant, but it is of sterling 
 quality. King Eric's anguish of soul is reproduced in mas- 
 terly fashion in the large painting Eric XIV, Karin Mans- 
 daughter, and Goran Persson. Eric's scarlet garments 
 shine with royal splendor, and we see him wavering between 
 hate and love. On this canvas, signed 1871, monumental 
 
144 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 Eric XIV, Karin Mansdaughter, and Goran Persson, by Georg 
 von Rosen. In the National Museum at Stockholm 
 
 grandeur and exquisite color are united into a whole, and 
 the characters live their own lives woven of hatred, terror, 
 and love, but play no part for the spectator. The same 
 dramatic suspense is found in The Prodigal Son, in the 
 National Museum. Upon the ground, outside of a medieval 
 country home, with glowing evening skies in the background, 
 lies the ragged, despairing son on his knees before his 
 mother, who is just coming out upon the steps. In 1881, a 
 few years before The Prodigal Son, Karin Mansdaughter 
 Visiting Eric in Prison was put on exhibition in the Art 
 Museum in Copenhagen. The light from the tiny prison 
 window falls upon Karin's face. With beautiful eyes she 
 looks up to her gloomy husband. It is a great moment, but 
 full of bitter pain. 
 
 Rosen's etchings and sketches with themes from the six- 
 teenth century show an unusual ability to transport himself to 
 past ages. Among these are the copper etching The Chris- 
 tening and the masterly glass etching Ture Jonsson Returns 
 
A SURVI'A' OI" SWl'lDISII ART 
 
 145 
 
 Irom the National Asscmlily in Viistcras. 'I'lic artist is 
 perhaps most succcsslul ol' all in portrait painting, a licKl of 
 art in \\'hich oui^ time, with its sense ol the iiulixidual, is miieh 
 interested. \'ery im[)ressi\e and spirited is his l\)rtrait of 
 
 Portrait of Self, by Georg von Rosen. In the Uffizi Gallery at 
 Florence 
 
146 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 Himself in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. The portrait of 
 his father and that of Pontus Wikner are both among the 
 best productions of contemporary portrait painting. The 
 former pictures the old count and railroad builder in his 
 decorative fur coat, his eyes beaming with friendliness and 
 intelligence; and the latter, painted in 1896, several years 
 after Wikner's death, interprets the hunted, restlessly 
 searching expression of a countenance furrowed by thinking 
 and suffering of the soul. In his official portraits also Rosen 
 shows himself very eminent. That of Director General 
 Troilius with its mixture of ponderousness and kindliness 
 is a good example. The Portrait of Charles XV, with the 
 outstretched hand, is excellently characterized, as is also his 
 Oscar II, a picture which has a high value from a coloristic 
 viewpoint as well. Unfortunately, however, the latter has 
 been completely spoiled by subsequent retouching by the 
 artist. The monumental picture of Governor Baron af 
 Ugglas should be especially mentioned, as well as the strong, 
 slightly humorous head of A Farmer from Sodermanland, 
 in the National Museum. 
 
 Rosen's best known canvas from the closing period of 
 the century was The Resurrection of Queen Dagmar, painted 
 in response to an order from Denmark and hung in Freder- 
 iksborg. Here the artist depicts the gentle queen of Valde- 
 mar the Victorious, who has died during his absence and 
 who comes to life for a moment, through a miracle, to bid 
 her husband farewell. The painting was completed in 1899. 
 For decades the artist strove to picture the inexorableness of 
 Fate in an allegorical painting called Sphinx. In the figure, 
 a lion with a woman's head, he succeeded in producing some- 
 thing of the very scent of a beast of prey, while the superbly 
 painted face, with the beautiful, hard mouth, the delicate 
 nose, which seems to be smelling blood, and the terror-strik- 
 ing look of madness and pain, bear testimony to his great 
 art and psychological insight. 
 
 Julius Kronberg, born in Karlskrona, in 1850, also ex- 
 perienced the influence from Munich. By a thorough study 
 of the technique of the masters, he attained sureness in 
 
A SURVJiV OF SWEDISH ART 
 
 147 
 
 The Nymph of the Chase and Fauns, by Julius Kronberg. 
 In the National Museum at Stockholm 
 
 means of expression and discovered a brilliant, luscious 
 coloring. He made his reputation by The Nymph of the 
 Chase and Fauns, purchased in 1875 for the National 
 
148 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 Museum. It shows his art from its best side. Here we 
 meet an unexpected boldness and a vivid color that had not 
 been seen before. The nymph in her white beauty against 
 the warm, yellow silk, the play of sunbeams on the tropical 
 foliage and, not least, the merrily grinning fauns, full of the 
 love of life, called to mind the joyous coloring of the seven- 
 teenth century. The following year Spring was painted, 
 representing a beautiful young woman who flies through 
 the air on a stork, surrounded by flower-strewing cupids. 
 In Saul and David the kingly form of Saul is one of the 
 artist's best figures, while the decoration of the royal hall 
 shows his exquisite taste and wide knowledge in the domain 
 of industrial art. Kronberg's greatest works, however, are 
 the ceiling pieces above the main stairway of the Royal 
 Palace. Of the three allegorical paintings, the first pictures 
 Svea surrounded by the symbolical figures of Commerce, 
 Agriculture, and Industry; the second portrays the rose- 
 colored form of Aurora; while the third represents The 
 Ascension of the Soul. In a series of paintings with subjects 
 from Biblical history, Kronberg completed the decorations 
 of the cupola in the Church of Adolphus Frederick in Stock- 
 holm. The ceiling panels in the auditorium of the Dramatic 
 Theatre, representing Orpheus and the Muses, is distin- 
 guished by a magnificent composition, even though, like 
 several of his works, it suffers from a banal sweetishness 
 both in color and form. His portrait of the blind Professor 
 Hamberg and the strongly characterized portrayal of the 
 energetic aged profile of Consul Ekman show his many- 
 sidedness. Like Franz von Lenbach in Germany, Julius 
 Kronberg has made a large number of admirable copies 
 from Venetian and Flemish painters. 
 
 Within the domain of historical painting, which was more 
 and more neglected, Nils Forsberg, of Skane, after pro- 
 found studies in France, won distinction with his gigantic A 
 Hero's Death, a motif from the Franco-Russian War, and 
 was awarded a medal of the first class at the Paris Salon in 
 1888. The largest picture that Forsberg has painted up 
 to this time appeared at the International Exposition in 
 
A survi<:y ()i< swr:i)isii akf 
 
 149 
 
 Paris ill 1901). It represents (iiistavus Adolphus before the 
 Battle of Liit/.en, and has been presented to the Gothenburg 
 Museum, which is also in possession of P\)rsberg's Family 
 of Acrobats, a very skillfully executed figure painting. 
 
 French academic impressions from the seventies, which 
 were present in Forsberg's art, are found also in the work 
 of Gustaf Cederstrom, who was born in Stockholm in 1845. 
 His large canvas The Inmcral Procession of Charles XTI, 
 painted in 1878, is uni\-crsally known. Hie original is now 
 
 The Funeral procession of Charles XII, by Gustaf Cederstrom. 
 In the National Museum at Stockholm 
 
 in Russia, but a copy came to the National Museum in 1884. 
 In this popular painting the interesting motif has been 
 treated with loftiness and grandeur. The period of Charles 
 XII has often been pictured by this artist, whose cold scale 
 of colors seems suited to the winter atmosphere that lies over 
 those stern and hard times. But there was enthusiasm also 
 beneath the austere surface, and in his Magnus Stenbock on 
 the 27th of September, 1709, placed in the Provincial 
 Assembly Hall in Malmo, he has demonstrated his ability 
 to express this as well. In Cederstrom's large painting 
 
150 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 Narva, in the National Museum, a product which is rather 
 unsatisfactory from a coloristic standpoint, the artist has 
 shown the first and most brilHant act of the drama of 
 Charles XII. Cederstrom's woman Salvationist trying to 
 convert some bar-room habitues is one of his best paintings. 
 Carl Gustaf Hellquist, who died in Munich in 1890, was 
 a painter of historical themes who received much apprecia- 
 tion in Germany, where he spent most of his time. He lays 
 great stress on archeological details, and is sober and dry 
 in his coloring, but has painted some good pictures whenever 
 he has avoided that theatrical strain which has tainted so 
 many historical paintings. He is most successful perhaps in 
 The Religious Discussion between Olavus Petri and Peder 
 Galle. The Sacking of Visby is not wholly free from pose. 
 
VIII 
 
 THE OPPONENTS. NEW TENDENCIES IN 
 SWEDISH PAINTING 
 
 THE beginning of the eighties was a turbulent period 
 in the world of Swedish art. Many of the artists had 
 had their eyes opened to the rich growth of sculpture 
 and painting that flourished in France. They had eagerly 
 sought to utilize for their own ends the new suggestions 
 from Paris, and had learned the value of a closer and more 
 thorough study of nature and a broader method of painting. 
 They had become interested In painting the life that pulsates 
 round about us In fields and meadows, in drawing-rooms and 
 factories. Efforts were now made to paint the motif on the 
 spot — outdoor painting — and to obtain stronger light 
 effects. All this was pursued with youthful enthusiasm, and 
 when the results were exhibited at the Opponents' Exhibi- 
 tion In Stockholm in 1885, they were met by that mocking 
 laughter with which the new has always been greeted. 
 Among the "Opponents," who opposed the academic con- 
 ception and method of teaching, there were, at the close of 
 the century, many artists who were known and admired all 
 over Europe, and who, more than any of their predecessors, 
 had made Swedish art known and respected In the circles and 
 among the people who. In the course of time, have most 
 influenced European judgment of art. Many of the Oppo- 
 nents united in 1886 and formed Konstnarsforbundet. 
 
 Among all the Opponents, Ernst Josephson was perhaps 
 the most oppositional nature. Violence and weakness, tend- 
 encies at once revolutionary and romantic, were found In 
 him, and his contribution to Swedish art has been invaluable. 
 Ernst Josephson was born In a highly cultured Jewish 
 
 151 
 
152 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 family in Stockholm. In the beginning of the seventies, he 
 went through the Academy of Arts, and he afterwards 
 travelled in Holland, Italy, and France. At first he was 
 strongly influenced by the Dutch and Venetian schools of 
 art; then he went to Paris, where he received deep impres- 
 sions from Manet. When Josephson exhibited his portraits 
 at the Paris Salon in 1881, he was lauded in the foremost 
 art magazine of France, Gazette des Beaux-Arts, as one of 
 the greatest of contemporary portrait painters. It was 
 more difficult to obtain recognition in his native land. 
 
 Josephson was the man who took the initiative in the 
 above-mentioned opposition to the Academy, the result of 
 which was Konstnarsforbundet. The duration of his crea- 
 tive period was to be short; for as early as 1888, during his 
 art studies in Brittany, he was attacked by a mental disease. 
 An unusually rich and intense inner life lies back of his art, 
 and is revealed in his coloring as well as in his ideas. In 
 fact, this characteristic quality can be detected even in the 
 sketches which were made during his illness. Though hazy 
 and distorted, they often disclose the guiding light of genius, 
 while they are conventionalized in execution. 
 
 Josephson had learned much from Rembrandt and the 
 Venetians of the sixteenth century. He made a superb copy 
 after Rembrandt's Director of the Clothes Dealers' Guild, 
 and his first paintings bear witness to influences from the old 
 masters. In 1878 he painted Saul and David, with its warm 
 golden tone and its rich, deep pigments, calling to mind the 
 Venetian masters of the Renaissance. The painting has 
 been presented to the National Museum by a society called 
 Friends of the National Museum. 
 
 Josephson is excellently represented in the finely selected 
 and arranged collection of Klas Fahaeus in Hogberga, 
 Lidingo, where a whole wall is devoted to him. The eye is 
 at once arrested by the portrait of Fru Gustaf af Geijer- 
 stam, with its look of foreboding, while perhaps the most 
 noteworthy of all is the large painting Cheating Gamesters, 
 a mere sketch but masterly from a colorlstic and dramatic 
 viewpoint. Among Josephson's portraits are those of the 
 
A SURVFY OF SWKDTSII AR'V 153 
 
 The Journalist G. Renholm, by Ernst Josephson. In the National 
 Museum at Stockholm 
 
 two artists, his friend, Allan Osterlind, in the Gothenburg 
 Museum, and a splendidly characterized picture of Carl 
 Skanberg, the elegant, hunchbacked artist, pictured with a 
 Gobelin tapestry as background. It is especially in the por- 
 trait of the Swedish-French journalist Renholm, sketched 
 in his black suit against the cream-colored wall, that Joseph- 
 
SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 Spanish Blacksmiths, by Ernst Josephson. In the National Gallery 
 at Christiania 
 
 son has introduced a freedom and breadth and at the same 
 time a fresh modernity, which makes this production a mile- 
 stone in the development of Swedish art. The same quali- 
 ties and maybe more of the "joy of painting" are found in his 
 Spanish Blacksmiths, done in 1882 in Seville, and now 
 adorning the National Gallery in Christiania. Among his 
 portraits of women are Fru Bagge, nee Heyman, in a black 
 dress and with a bouquet of flowers, and the excellent portrait 
 
A sDKVia oi" s\vi:i)isii aki 
 
 155 
 
 Fru Jeanette Rubenson, by Ernst Josephson. Loaned to the 
 National Museum 
 
 of Fru Rubenson, at once conventionalized and realistic and 
 with a delightful mixture of Orientalism and Swedish sum- 
 mer pleasure. 
 
 Before illness broke his strength, he executed his large 
 and violently contested painting The Water Sprite which 
 is in the collection of Prince Eugen. It was painted in 
 Eggedal, a few miles north of Drammen in Norway, and 
 represents a young boy who in the midst of sunshine plays 
 his despair upon a golden violin. With its blue and green 
 tones, with the light body of the youth against the cliffs and 
 foaming cataract, this work represents Josephson's strange 
 
156 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 The Water Sprite, by Ernst Josephson. In Prince Eugen's home, 
 Valdemarsudde, Stockholm 
 
 union of realism and romanticism. It is a cry of anguish 
 and unsatisfied longing, of despair at the impossibility of 
 giving form to the emotions of the soul. This remarkable 
 
A survj:v oi" s\vJ':iMsii art 157 
 
 work ol art, at one tunc ollcrcd l)y its i^oyal owner to the 
 National Museum, wliicli relused it, was not acle(|iiately 
 appreciated e\en by Josephson's comrades among the Oppo- 
 nents. It is now set in a wall in what is possibly the most 
 beaLititul home in Sweden, that of Prince Kugen at Valde- 
 marsiidde in Stockholm. The artist has treated the same 
 theme more harmoniously in another smaller painting called 
 The Nix, presented to the National Museum by the 
 "Friends" of that institution. One seems to hear the mighty, 
 full-toned stroke of the bow, mingling with the roar of the 
 cataract, when the tawny, leaf-crowned boy plays in the 
 summer night. 
 
 Carl Hill, who died insane In 191 1, received strong im- 
 pulses in France from the impressionistic painting of light, 
 and has left some landscapes which show that Swedish art 
 suffered a great loss when he broke down so early. August 
 Hagborg and Hugo Salmson, who were also counted among 
 the Opponents, may be said to belong, through choice of 
 themes and technique and prolonged residence In France, 
 to French art. Hagborg Is fond of painting the people on 
 the shore of northern France, the silver-grey sky, and the 
 greenish-blue waves. Among his scenes from the seashore 
 may be mentioned Waiting, a fisherman's wife from Skane, 
 who with her child on her arm Is watching for her husband. 
 Hagborg won fervent admiration through his painting Low 
 Tide near La Manche. Hugo Salmson was Influenced by 
 Bastien-Lepage and other French painters of country folk 
 in the choice of his motifs from the villages in Picardy. His 
 White Beet Harvesters, In the Gothenburg Museum, painted 
 In 1878, shows this tendency. He has also found motifs for 
 many pictures in Skane, as In The Gleaners, In some well 
 painted Interiors of peasants' cottages, and In The Children 
 at the Gate In Dalby, which was purchased by the French 
 government, and Is probably the representation of Swedish 
 peasant life most popular on the Continent. 
 
 Per Ekstrom is an important landscape painter. Long a 
 resident In France, he received impressions from the French 
 landscape painters, impressions which, however, he has used 
 
158 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 in his own art with much independence. Ekstrom is a color- 
 ist, whether he paints the barren heaths of his native island, 
 Oland, or lets a red evening sun play with luminous beams 
 over glittering waters and greyish-violet cliffs. Carl Skan- 
 berg, through pictures distinguished not least from the view- 
 point of color, introduced, about 1880, a new freshness into 
 Swedish landscape painting. Especially the harbor motifs 
 from Holland and Venice are comparable with the best of 
 contemporary landscape painting, and perhaps the foremost 
 of all is the pearl grey, masterly canvas Santa Maria della 
 Salute in the Rain, which was presented by Ernst Joseph- 
 son to the National Museum. How airy, clear, and exqui- 
 site in color does not this painting appear compared with 
 G. V. Palm's hard, monotonously tinted pictures of Venice ! 
 The sterling art of Carl Larsson is typical of much that 
 was best among the so-called Opponents of the eighties. He 
 was born in Stockholm in 1853 ^^^^ began his career as an 
 illustrator. We have had few good illustrators in Sweden, 
 but in his drawings to the poems of Anna Maria Lenngren, 
 and not less in his genuinely Stockholmian sketches to Sehl- 
 stedt's Songs, he developed a combination of wit and essen- 
 tial Swedishness heretofore unequalled among us. Larsson 
 went to France, and there became engaged to Karin Bergoo. 
 His artistic talent burst into full bloom in the water-color of 
 a French Peasant Girl grinning in the sunlight among red 
 and yellow flowers, painted in 1883 and now in the National 
 Museum; in delicate and verdant garden pictures; and in the 
 water-color masterpiece Grez sur Loing, representing Fru 
 Anna Liljefors at the shore of Loing, now in possession of 
 Fru M. Levisson in Gothenburg. These motifs are taken 
 from Grez, a small town near the forest of Fontainebleau, 
 about seventy kilometers southeast of Paris. There lived 
 at the beginning of the eighties a large number of those 
 Swedish artists who have given the name "Opponents" an 
 honored place in the history of art, among them Carl Lars- 
 son, Karl Nordstrom, and others. A characteristic of Lars- 
 son was his restless productivity. Everything he has done 
 is instinct with energy and joy of life, and it is only when 
 
A suRvr:v oi' swi:i)isn ari" 
 
 159 
 
 Mother and Daughter. Water-color by Carl Larsson. Owned by 
 Ernest Thiel, Stockholm 
 
 genius is combined with such indomitable love of work that 
 it can lead, as with him, to great results. An example of 
 this is his revival of monumental fresco painting. Through 
 the generosity of a native of Gothenburg, P. Fiirstenberg, 
 he was able to make, in 1891, his first attempt at mural 
 painting in a girls' school in Gothenburg. Hereby Swedish 
 art not only gained some excellent new paintings to add to 
 its treasures of beauty, but an important beginning was made 
 in reintroducing art into life and, instead of storing it away 
 in museums, letting it shine — as during the Renaissance — in 
 everyday life, giving ideality to a place of daily toil. 
 
 Herr Fiirstenberg's art collection, established with pres- 
 cient taste and containing much of the very best of vital 
 Swedish art from the close of the century, has now been 
 presented to the Gothenburg Museum. Here are found 
 the three large decorative mural paintings by Larsson, de- 
 picting the three epochs in art. Renaissance, Rococco, and 
 
160' 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 Woman Sitting. Etching by Carl Larsson 
 
 Modern Art. These three are resplendent with color, and 
 the last mentioned, in its fresh, happy scale of colors, has a 
 typical air of the eighties. The foreground is occupied by 
 an artist modelling in clay the statue of a woman; behind 
 him is seen Larsson himself as an outdoor painter, with a 
 Japanese looking on to call to mind the admiration of the 
 new movement for Japanese art. In the background we see 
 Paris, the city where a more thorough technique was learned, 
 and a new, less conventional view of nature was inculcated. 
 
A SURVEY OF SWEDISH ART 161 
 
 Paris, the city of violet lights in an atmosphere filled with 
 chalk-dust. The half finished I^ffcl Tower rises beyond the 
 Seine, and a midday haze lies over the landscape. A warm, 
 red cactus Hower in the foreground has an exhilarating effect 
 like a cheerful trumpet blast. Beneath the painting Larsson 
 has sculptured in high relief a naked young woman, who 
 turns her back and the pretty, merry profile toward the 
 spectator; in her whole supple figure we find the joy and 
 youthfulness which the new art purposed to give. 
 
 In the Paris of 1880 there were many Swedes. There 
 Strindberg wrote his turbulent stories so full of spring feel- 
 ing, and there the Opponents learned to paint from good 
 teachers in an environment which was stimulating and ab- 
 sorbed in art. It was the second time that our art became 
 indebted to France; but the art of the eighteenth century 
 languished, when it was transplanted to our indifferent and 
 parsimonious fatherland. The fresh art of the eighties, on 
 the other hand, flourished and shot new, national shoots in 
 our land, encouraged by Swedish patrons of art, but also 
 vigorously combated in many influential circles, 
 
 Larsson executed a monumental achievement — not only 
 with respect to physical dimensions — in his gigantic frescoes 
 above the staircase of the National Museum. Carl Lars- 
 son learned from the art of Japan and the rococo, and 
 most assuredly appropriated impressions also from the 
 decorative paintings of Tiepolo; but in temperament he was 
 wholly a Swede, and these frescoes are not only an expres- 
 sion of Swedish generosity, but are Swedish In their concep- 
 tion and execution with an abundant measure of the splen- 
 dor and magnificence that we have loved from days of old. 
 The expense of the frescoes was defrayed from a fund 
 created by Froken Sofia Gieseke and the merchant J, H, 
 Scharp, who have thereby given proof of a patronage worthy 
 of the gratitude of all Swedish citizens and the emulation of 
 the wealthier among them. The six frescoes, three on each 
 wall, represent an equal number of episodes in the history of 
 Swedish art. All these episodes, with the exception of one, 
 are localized in the Royal Palace, around which Swedish art 
 
162 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 ■II I -ANTI'kA'S KVLPt\/R- SAM LINGEK? 
 
 Gustavus III in Logarden Receiving the Antique Statues He Had 
 
 Purcliased in Italy. Fresco by Carl Larsson, in the stairway of the 
 
 National Museum 
 
 centered during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. 
 Ehrenstrahl, the Father of Swedish Painting, for whom 
 Charles XI, the surly royal economist, is posing as a model, 
 is the theme of the first. The central part on the same wall 
 shows Nikodemus Tessin the Younger, the gifted architect 
 of the Royal Palace, who is giving over to Harleman the 
 task of completing the Palace. The aging Tessin is repre- 
 sented with monumental breadth against a background of 
 scaffolding and mural surfaces. To the right of this picture 
 Is seen the Frenchman Taraval's Painting School, where the 
 young Swedish artists who helped to decorate the Palace 
 
A SURVEY OF SWEDISH ART 
 
 163 
 
 received guidance in their art. As mentioned before, Tara- 
 val's school furnished the initial impetus for the establishment 
 of the Academy of Arts. The undulating lines of the rococo, 
 the instructive, guiding attitude of the teacher, and the set- 
 ting up of the model are all rendered effectively and in a 
 manner typical of the time. The left side of the opposite 
 wall is occupied by a picture from Louise Ulrica's library at 
 Drottningholm. The Msecenas Karl Gustav Tessin, the 
 grand-seigneur of European fame, is showing the queen, 
 who was much interested in art, his treasures of engravings 
 and sketches which he had brought home from Paris, and 
 which now constitute a precious 
 part of the collections of the mu- 
 seum. On the middle fresco Gus- 
 tavus III is seen in Logarden 
 receiving the antique statues he 
 had purchased In Italy. The words 
 "there was a glamour over the 
 days of Gustavus" stand out 
 vividly before our mind, when we 
 behold the festive joy which radi- 
 ates from the mural surface and 
 meets the spectator. To the right 
 of this fresco Sergei is repre- 
 sented working on his Cupid and 
 Psyche. Sergei's countenance has 
 something of a deeply brooding 
 nature; one can understand that 
 in this magnificent head were born 
 the visions of beauty later giv- 
 en form In marble. Original 
 composition, manly and confident execution, and the jubilant 
 tone of the mighty harmony of colors make these six fres- 
 coes, completed In the autumn of 1896, not only the largest 
 but also the best monumental painting that our country has 
 produced up to this time. In 1908 Larsson continued the 
 decoration of the grand staircase by adding his gigantic 
 work In oil, Thu Entry of Gustavus Vasa Into Stockholm, 
 
 Sergei at work on His 
 Cupid and Psyche. 
 Fresco by Carl Larsson, 
 In the National Museum 
 
164 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 Midsummer Eve, 1523. It is well placed over the door, 
 and shows Gustavus, a picture of Swedish vigor and health, 
 riding on his white horse bedecked with flowers. The draw- 
 bridge and the cheering multitude outside the city wall have 
 been used by the artist to create a composition of unusual 
 monumental effect. A work which was highly valued by the 
 artist himself, but is not held in great esteem by many of his 
 admirers, either from the viewpoint of color or contents, is 
 A Midwinter Offering, picturing an Uppsala king who sacri- 
 fices himself. In 19 15 it was sketched on an immense card- 
 board, and the artist intended that it should be executed in 
 fresco as a pendant to The Entry of Gustavus Vasa. 
 
 In an atelier in the North Latin School in Stockholm, 
 Larsson painted, in the summer of 1901, a fresco represent- 
 ing the pupils of the school gathered for Prayer in Ladu- 
 gardsgardet. The fact that he here has pictured his own 
 time in its own dress will give this painting an historical 
 value in addition to its great artistic merits. One of the 
 best things from a decorative point of view that Larsson has 
 ever done is the oil painting sunk into the white ceiling of 
 the lobby in the Dramatic Theatre. The Birth of the Drama 
 is the name of this imaginative ceiling-piece, in which a 
 female form symbolizing the poet's idea is seen amid the 
 three crowns gliding across the nocturnal sky, while in her 
 wake follow the human passions, nude and wonderfully well 
 drawn bodies of men and women. At one end we see the 
 poet, at the other the actor receives the embodied idea which 
 he is to reveal later to the spectators. 
 
 Larsson's pictures from his home, Sundborn in Dalecarlia, 
 have contributed most to making him a popular painter. He 
 shows himself in them an unexcelled portrayer of children, 
 while every piece of furniture seems to thrive in an atmos- 
 phere of humor and harmony. In these rumpled young- 
 sters, portrayed with the double keen-sightedness of love 
 and art, there is an effervescing joy and a kindly roguishness, 
 qualities which indeed characterize Carl Larsson's whole 
 artistic production. The group My Family, painted in life 
 size, deserves special mention. It represents Carl Lars- 
 
A SURVEY OF SWEDISH ART 
 
 165 
 
 son's wife and chil- 
 dren in the yard at 
 Sundborn, and is 
 found in the collec- 
 tion of Thorsten 
 Laurin in Stockholm. 
 The artist has paint- 
 ed his own person in 
 two remarkable por- 
 traits of himself, one 
 of them, in the Thiel 
 collection, in half 
 length, the other 
 showing him envel- 
 oped in a yellow 
 dressing gown. This 
 last portrait especial- 
 ly has an impressive 
 air. Carl Larsson pos- 
 sessed the prodigality 
 of genius to an un- 
 usually high degree. 
 Frescoes, oils, water- 
 colors, sketches, 
 lithographs, and etch- 
 ings of high value 
 have been created by 
 this remarkable ar- 
 tist, who infuses into 
 all his work the dis- 
 tinguishing touch of 
 his own personality, 
 even though all have 
 not the same value, 
 
 and sometimes a certain calligraphic dryness and sweetish- 
 ness appears. Carl Larsson's art possesses to a rare degree 
 the great and precious qualities of originality and style. His 
 production was cut short by his death in 19 19. 
 
 Portrait of Self, by Carl Larsson. In the 
 Gothenburg Museum 
 
166 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 The artistic career of Hugo Birger, who was born in 
 Stockholm in 1854 and died in 1887, was brief. In his 
 color he is often hard and garish, and he liked to choose 
 themes that allowed the use of motley tints, such as the 
 toilet of elegant ladies of the beau monde in Spain, enjoying 
 life with a lightness of heart which characterized the artist 
 himself in the highest degree. It was left to this life-loving 
 artist, at a time when disease had already begun to under- 
 mine his strength, to fix on a large canvas a memorial of 
 
 Breakfast in Ledoyen's Restaurant, Paris, at the Opening of the Salon, 
 by Hugo Birger. In the Gothenburg Museum 
 
 the happy companionship in Paris during the time of the 
 Opponents. His Breakfast in Ledoyen's Restaurant at the 
 Opening of the Salon, exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1886, 
 and now in the Gothenburg Museum, has, in addition to its 
 great historical value, a breath of sunshine and joy, of good 
 fellowship and zest of living. Among the artists who took 
 part in these breakfasts on the large glass-enclosed veranda, 
 which have thus been preserved for posterity, were Salmson, 
 Hagborg, Josephson, Pauli, Larsson, Thegerstrom, Wahl- 
 berg, Hasselberg, Edelfelt, Vallgren, and Birger himself, 
 who died the year after the exhibition of the painting. 
 
A SUKVi:V OI' SWI'DISII AkI- 167 
 
 Parnassus. Fresco by Georg Pauli, in the stairway of the Gothen- 
 burg Museum 
 
 One of the most ardent organizers of the opposition move- 
 ment was Georg Pauh, born in Jonkoping in 1855. Among 
 his productions in the eighties At the Sick-bed, a work of 
 sensitive coloring, now in the possession of Fru Clara Pauli, 
 of Stockholm, occupies perhaps the foremost position. But 
 his Roman Wet-nurses, in the Gothenburg Museum, a can- 
 vas glowing with color and painted with humorous char- 
 acterization, is an excellent work of art. With the excep- 
 tion of Carl Larsson, Georg Pauli is the only one who, dur- 
 ing the latter half of the nineteenth century, devoted himself 
 to the difficult and exacting art of fresco painting. The 
 stairway of the Gothenburg Museum, a building of solid and 
 tasteful construction both within and without, has been 
 adorned by Pauli with dignified frescoes in discreet colors, 
 representing in general outline the history of the progress of 
 Gothenburg. They were completed in 1896. The lateral 
 parts were ready as early as 1895, and Pauli thus really 
 became the first artist of recent date to use fresco painting in 
 our land. 
 
168 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 In one of these Gothenburg frescoes called Trade and 
 Commerce we see an East India ship transporting Chinese 
 porcelain for the East India Company, which at one time 
 had its storehouse in the present museum building. Char- 
 acteristic of Pauli is the other larger fresco, The Parnassus, 
 where literary characters and artists from Gothenburg in 
 the fifties symbolize the scientific and artistic interests of 
 the city. The decorative painting Courtship, in possession 
 of the architect Ragnar Ostberg, was executed in 1899 and 
 pictures a "garden of love" with sentimental couples among 
 the laburnum shrubs, wearing costumes from the time when 
 enthusiasm for Jenny Lind and Emilie Hogquist was at its 
 height — a theme well suited to Pauli's art with its distinc- 
 tion, marred by occasional weakness in drawing. Pauli's 
 deeply poetical and decorative Midsummer Wake, in the 
 possession of Erik Frisell in Stockholm, is an exceptionally 
 happy representation of the magic effect of the light North- 
 ern summer night. His large fresco in the South Latin 
 School of Stockholm was painted in 1904, and depicts the 
 Trimming of the Maypole on an old Swedish estate. Among 
 his best productions are the frescoes Mining and Agricul- 
 ture in Riksbanken and, perhaps even more, the actor groups 
 in Kungstradgarden, steeped in the aroma of their time, 
 which were painted in 1908, and are now in the buffet of the 
 Dramatic Theatre. A drawing-room in Dr. Pauli's house 
 near Djursholm is adorned with a series of decorative fres- 
 coes representing the seasons and the pastimes belonging to 
 each. During the year 19 10 Pauli executed his charming, 
 sun-filled painting May in the music room of the Ostermalm 
 School in Stockholm. In his delightful illustrations to Gosta 
 Berling's Saga, Pauli has interpreted the temper of Swedish 
 country life at the beginning of the nineteenth century and 
 created interiors with an impressive, characteristic atmos- 
 phere, peopled by characters instinct with the spirit of the 
 imaginative masterpiece itself. 
 
 In his untiring search for the true principles of mural 
 decoration, Pauli tried several of the new tendencies, and 
 finally adhered. In 19 15, to cubism. As early as 19 13 he 
 
A SURVEY OF SWEDISH ART 
 
 69 
 
 li;ul lliiishcd paintinji;, in the staircase of the New i'vleinentary 
 School in Jonkoping, a series of allegories on education, in 
 the cubist style. He is an excellent writer on art, espe- 
 cially distinguished as a stylist. 
 
 Friends; Ellen Key Reading Aloud in Pauli's Salon, by Hanna 
 Pauli. In the National Museum at Stockholm 
 
 Hanna Pauli, nee Hirsch, of Stockholm, belongs to our 
 figure painters, of whom, unfortunately, we have altogether 
 too few. Her portrait of Fru Jenny Soldan sitting on the 
 floor is done with a strong and realistic stroke, and has the 
 virile note which is also conspicuous in the likeness of Heiden- 
 stam, painted in 1906, which in its romantic and fantastic 
 conception interprets so well both the inner and outer man 
 of the original. The blue-gowned, light-haired little princess 
 of folksong at the city wall of Visby, The Princess, in the 
 Norwegian National Gallery, reveals her Swedish nature 
 underneath the archaizing form. This woman artist has 
 produced things of value in landscape painting, for example 
 her excellent Kungalv by Evening Light, an exceptionally 
 
170 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 magnificent landscape motif. She reaches her highest level, 
 however, in her portraits. For many years she was occupied 
 with a group picture. Friends, begun in 1900 and now in the 
 National Museum, showing Ellen Key in Pauli's salon read- 
 ing aloud to a sympathetic audience. 
 
 J. A. G. Acke is an original, versatile Jack-of-all-trades. 
 Sketches, decorative screens, and friezes, paintings with 
 occasionally far-fetched but always imaginative Ideas — for 
 example In the Forest Temple, in Thiel's gallery — alternate 
 with portraits which show a touch of real genius. Foremost 
 among these, perhaps, is the splendidly characterized like- 
 ness of the author, Tor Hedberg, in a bright green dressing- 
 gown, in Thiel's gallery, where the soulful picture of Tope- 
 lius is also found. Among his many renderings of the sea, 
 the fresh-colored painting Ostrasalt in the Gothenburg 
 Museum perhaps takes first rank. 
 
 Oscar Bjorck is one of our most eminent portrait painters. 
 He was born in Stockholm in i860, studied at the Academy 
 of Arts, and spent some time at Skagen, in Paris, Munich, 
 and Italy. Bjorck is very successful in his broadly painted 
 portraits of elderly ladies and gentlemen, for example that 
 of Fru Charlotte Clason and the quite superb portrait of 
 the manufacturer Akerlund. In the latter a subtle and re- 
 strained emphasis on slight humorous traits adds to the char- 
 acterization. The delicate and warmly colored little picture 
 of his wife at the piano is also among the best of his earlier 
 portraits. As a portrait painter he undoubtedly entered 
 into the fullness of his power in the striking, characteristic, 
 and beautifully painted picture of his royal fellow-artist, 
 Prince Eugen. 
 
 Among Bjorck's earliest and most substantial productions 
 are Distress Signal, an excellently painted interior of a sail- 
 or's home, hung in the Copenhagen Art Museum; Roman 
 Blacksmiths, in the Museum in Washington, showing a sooty 
 shop illuminated both by the sun and by the fire In the forge; 
 and the powerfully executed Farm Scene, In our National 
 Museum, with Its brilliant sun effect. The large picture 
 painted In 1904 of Vadstena Abbey beneath a red evening 
 
A SL1KVI<;V Ol' SWI'.DISI 1 ART 171 
 
 Prince Eugen, by Oscar Bjorck. In the National Museum at Stock- 
 holm 
 
 sky is decorative and romantic. This painting was pre- 
 sented by Prince Eugen to the Technical School in Stocl<:holm. 
 Among his portraits we note the impressive picture of 
 Verner von Heidenstam, painted in 1900 and now in the 
 Gothenburg Museum, showing the poet leaning against a 
 white column looking from his balcony out over the waters 
 of Stora Vartan, also his singularly fresh and charming por- 
 trait of Fru Olga von Heidenstam, painted the same year 
 and now in the Copenhagen Art Museum, and the captivat- 
 ing and noble picture of Princess Ingeborg, in white and 
 gold, which is one of his most successful products, not least 
 by virtue of its coloring. The paintings done by Bjorck in 
 1895 in the dining hall of the Opera Restaurant are pos- 
 sibly a little too large in scale and suffer from the excess of 
 decoration and gilding in the room. Many of them are 
 excellent, however. Bjorck is uneven in his portraits, but 
 often reaches very high levels in both characterization and 
 feeling for color. It is seldom that we see an official por- 
 trait more captivating from all viewpoints than that of 
 Baroness Anna Trolle in black against red and gold, in which 
 line, color, and expression blend in an exquisite unity. The 
 picture of the bank director Louis Fraenckel in the Handels- 
 
172 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 bank in Stockholm portrays the financier looking out with a 
 good-humored yet sarcastic expression, as he sits in an office 
 with red carpets and solid polished mahogany surfaces. The 
 portrait is painted in a manner that is at once pleasing, 
 amusing, clever, and kindly. 
 
 During the last two decades of the nineteenth century 
 landscape painting was practised by hundreds of artists. 
 Among these, besides those previously noted, a few good 
 artists may be mentioned. Robert Thegerstrom, born in 
 London in 1857, shows himself also a skillful portrait 
 painter, for example, in Stenhammar at the Piano. Axel 
 Lindman studied in Paris and Italy, where he painted sev- 
 eral luminous pictures from Capri. His masterpiece is the 
 large canvas The Entrance to Stockholm, which hangs in the 
 Stockholm Municipal Building. Anshelm Schultzberg has 
 painted winter in Dalecarlia. His best work is perhaps Wal- 
 purgis Night in the Mining District, in the National 
 Museum. Vilhelm Behm has pictured Swedish nature in 
 
 A Moonlight Night, by Gottfrid Kallstenius. Owned by Paul 
 Majovski, Budapest 
 
A SURVEY OF SWEDISH ARi 173 
 
 a fresh and genuine manner, under impressionistic inlluences 
 from France. Alfred Bergstrom has rendered with much 
 taste and skill the buoyant coolness of the winter air as well 
 as the stifling atmosphere of summer. Gottfrid Kallstenius 
 has, after studying in Stockholm and France, developed into 
 an eminent interpreter of the moods of the skerries, espe- 
 cially along the magnificently formed coast of Smaland. 
 Pine woods against deep blue summer skies or banked with 
 huge, wet snow-drifts and islands and waters in the magic 
 light of the moon are rendered with an artistic seriousness 
 and a lyrical strain which give Kallstenius's art a genuinely 
 Swedish quality, as in A Moonlight Night and the splendid 
 Baltic Coast hung in the Halsingborg Museum. 
 
 A profound thinker and a seeker after knowledge, a 
 philosopher of art almost as much as a painter, was Richard 
 Bergh, born in Stockholm in 1858, the son of the landscape 
 painter, Edvard Bergh. The picture of his first wife, in 
 the Gothenburg Museum, with its spiritual delicacy and 
 exquisite coloring of bluish-green tones, and its realistically 
 reproduced interior of the eighties, is one of the most inter- 
 esting of his earlier portraits. Others from the same period 
 and equally characteristic are the masterpiece Nils Kreuger, 
 in the Copenhagen Art Museum, and the portrait of the ar- 
 tist and art patroness Eva Bonnier, in the National Museum. 
 The latter is painted with passionate force and with psy- 
 chological keeness; the expression of harassed intellect and 
 restless seeking so typical of the time vie in interest with the 
 color scheme of clear yellow tones contrasted with the black 
 and gloomy pigments. A modest and charming Swedish 
 quality Is found In Bergh's Toward Evening, a little flaxen- 
 haired peasant girl twining flowers on a meadow slope. This 
 picture Is In the Gothenburg Museum. One of the few 
 realistic genre pictures produced in our land during the 
 period of realism Is Richard Bergh's large painting A Hyp- 
 notic Seance, In the National Museum. 
 
 Bold and fantastic Is The Knight and the Maiden, painted 
 by Bergh In 1897 ^"^ now In Thiel's gallery. The monu- 
 mentally treated landscape is illumined by the setting sun; 
 
174 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 My Wife, by Richard Bergh. In the Gothenburg Museum 
 
 the solemnity of decision envelops the young girl; but to 
 the knight all is bright with the crimson, flaming color of 
 love. In the Portrait of Himself, painted in 1898 for the 
 world-renowned collection of the UffizI Gallery In Florence, 
 the searching eye of the artist has been turned toward his 
 own ego, and has reproduced on canvas a countenance in 
 which we divine the throes of the soul by which lasting works 
 of art are given birth. The picture of the admirable actress, 
 Fru Fahraeus, nee Bjorkegren, is perhaps the most power- 
 fully and soundly executed of all his later portraits of 
 
A SURVEY OF SWEDISH ARr 175 
 
 women. I*\ill of beauty and fervent feeling is A Northern 
 Summer l^\ening, representing a young couple who, from a 
 \ eranda, contemplate a Swedish midsummer landscape with 
 luxuriant xerdure. It is a moment of complete happiness, 
 of complete stillness. The foremost examples of his later 
 production are: The Old Folks on the Shore, in the National 
 Gallery at Copenhagen; the interesting group, The Direct- 
 ors of Konstnarsforbundet; the monumental and humorous 
 
 Chr. Eriksson. Eug. Jansson. Kreuger. Nordstrom. Thegerstrom. 
 
 The Directors of Konstnarsforbundet, 1903, by Richard Bergh. In 
 
 the National Museum at Stockholm 
 
 interpretation of Karl Warburg's active intelligence; the 
 wonderfully individualized portrait of August Strlndberg, 
 the man of contradictions; and Gustav Froding painted 
 while sitting alone in his sick-bed as in the desert, his hair 
 entangled like a hermit's, and his eyes aflame with great 
 secrets. Bergh was an excellent author on art subjects, color- 
 ful and original even in his literary style. As director of 
 the National Museum from 19 14 till his death in 19 19, he 
 rendered invaluable services to Swedish art. 
 
 While landscape painting has all too frequently de^en- 
 
176 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 erated into a factory-like overproduction of morning and 
 evening atmospheres, and it is especially in this field that an 
 unrestrained dilettantism has flooded the market, we also 
 find an intimate understanding of nature growing constantly 
 more subtle in certain artists, who at the same time recognize 
 that the decorative element — for a picture is of course sup- 
 posed to decorate, that is adorn, its place — is indispensable 
 in a wall adornment, and that it should preferably be affixed 
 to the surface in a suitable setting. 
 
 Karl Nordstrom, born on the island of Tjorn In 1855, 
 has a touch of manly melancholy and even of defiant power 
 in his art. During the eighties, when he lived in Grez, Nord- 
 strom painted as delicate and graceful pictures In as charm- 
 ing tones as did the other Parisian Swedes. The pastel por- 
 trait My Wife and the oil painting Garden Motif from 
 Grez, which call to mind the earlier water-colors of Lars- 
 son, are examples of his style at the time while he was receiv- 
 ing Ideas from the Impressionists and from the Japanese. 
 During a rather lengthy residence in Varberg In the middle 
 of the nineties, his scale of colors changed. It became 
 darker and more gloomy, while the monumental and dec- 
 orative qualities were intensified in contrast with the 
 emphasis on detail and on the accidental which character- 
 ized the tendency of the eighties. 
 
 The White Steamer, gliding forth among the skerries out- 
 lined in the pale radiance of the summer night against dark 
 rocky shores, aroused a wondrous feeling of mystery. In 
 "this painting from 1891, Nordstrom has already commenced 
 to pass from the French conception to the Swedish. Easter 
 Fire, In Zorn's collection. Is one of his best works from the 
 middle of the nineties. From the top of the mountain the 
 flames rise toward a sky glowing with pale light, while the 
 frosty chill of early spring night lies over the landscape. A 
 mystic pagan feeling for nature appears In this remarkable 
 picture — as indeed often In Nordstrom's art. His sketches 
 have as great artistic value as his paintings. At first he 
 used a technique reminiscent of copper etching. Later he 
 adopted a larger scale and a broader method of sketching 
 
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 Winter Evening at Roslagstull, by Karl Nordstrom. In the Gothen- 
 burg Museum 
 
 with charcoal, by means of which he won from the iron 
 mountains of Lapland and the valleys of Bohuslan a beauty 
 at once austere and sensitive. In these sketches, as well as 
 in his paintings, he has occasionally given something of a 
 fantastic and much-needed beauty even to the most banal 
 rows of tenement-houses. It is the beauty in the very crust 
 of the earth — in round mountain knolls or in ploughed fields 
 with clouds lowering above them in threatening masses — 
 that Nordstrom portrays. Storm Clouds in the National 
 Museum is typical; it conveys to the beholder an almost 
 oppressive sense of a nature which seems to live its own life 
 and to be infinitely misunderstood by man with his restlessly 
 beating heart. Karl Nordstrom is a leader in Konst- 
 narsforbundet, and his oppositional spirit, which is at home 
 only in a contrary wind and feels stifled in a calm, is the 
 life and soul of the Society both in regard to art and art 
 policies. 
 
 Nils Kreuger was born in Kalmar and also studied in 
 France. All the delicate nuances that mist can lend are 
 
178 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 rendered by Kreu- 
 ger in his earlier 
 productions with a 
 lyric realism of the 
 most artistic spirit. 
 A good example of 
 a picture in which 
 an accidental mo- 
 tif, taken appar- 
 ently at random, 
 is treated artistic- 
 ally is Kreuger's 
 Fa rmya rd. A 
 part of a ram- 
 shackle building 
 and a fence where- 
 upon hangs an in- 
 verted tub with a 
 bird perched on 
 top — that is all. 
 The snow is red- 
 dened by the light 
 of the morning sun, 
 the windows are 
 aflame; a glamour 
 of beauty has been 
 cast over the sim- 
 ple reality. 
 
 Kreuger, too, 
 found in Varberg, 
 about 1895, a new 
 style. He loved 
 the wide horizons, which are almost entirely lacking in the 
 middle Swedish landscape. He is as much a draughtsman as 
 a colorist. There is something of simple greatness in his 
 cows, whose heaviness and clumsiness have never been pic- 
 tured so faithfully and, one may add, so beautifully as 
 
 Farmyard, by Nils Kreuger. In the Gothen- 
 burg Museum 
 
A SURVI'.V OI' SWI'DISIi AR'I' 
 
 179 
 
 On a Stony Bottom. Drawing by Nils Kieugei 
 Thiel, Stockholm 
 
 Owned by Ernest 
 
 by Kreuger. The sheep grazing on the high plateau 
 of Oland, huddle together in characteristic flocks. But 
 it is horses that Kreuger prefers to paint; now out- 
 lined ghost-like in the bright summer night; now in blind- 
 ing sunshine, wading in the dark blue water near Oland's 
 long, low shore, and again, as in his Cab-stand (in the pos- 
 session of the author) during a moment's rest, chewing their 
 hay with philosophical melancholy. 
 
 Kreuger often paints on small wood panels, but likes also 
 to use larger dimensions. Some of the best mural paintings 
 in Sweden have come from Kreuger's hand. Two Oland 
 scenes with cows and horses, presented in 1904 by Froken 
 Eva Bonnier, adorn the Grammar School near Valhallava- 
 gen in Stockholm, and the society Konsten i Skolan (Art in 
 the Schools) has presented a painting called Midsummer 
 Eve In Stockholm, full of summer sunshine and the joy of 
 work, to the Adolphus Frederick Grammar School near 
 Vanadlsvagen. Honesty and firmness are at the very root 
 of Kreuger's nature and art. 
 
 The decorative quality pervades also the soulful and per- 
 sonal art of Prince Eugen, born in 1865 In Drottnlngholm 
 
SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 The Old Castle, Sundbyholm in Sodermanland, by Prince Eugen. 
 Owned by the artist 
 
 Castle. The Old Castle, with Its threatening clouds and 
 warm, glowing colors, has something impassioned In Its 
 tone. In his painting A Summer Night, in the National 
 Museum, he employs the unplastic lines of the middle Swe- 
 dish landscape in such a large and monumental way that the 
 forest heights and small Islands enveloped In the luminous 
 twilight of the summer evening give the spectator a sense of 
 the structure of the landscape and of a universality without 
 abstract coldness. Prince Eugen has treated the beautiful 
 motif from Tyreso In a mural painting eight meters In length, 
 which he has presented to the North Latin School In Stock- 
 holm. On the wide expanse dark masses of pine are outlined 
 against the glassy lake, and over the landscape shines a 
 
A SUkVI'.V Ol' SWI'lDISll ART 
 
 1X1 
 
 oolclcii yellow evening sky. The painting is placed in a hall 
 the architecture of which calls to mind the i* lorentine houses. 
 Cirandeur and serenity rest over the landscape, and the 
 painting gleams like a jewel between the austere columns. 
 In the main auditorium of the same school Prince F.ugen has 
 painted a decorati\'e landscape in apsis. The same artist 
 has expressed a mystic, personal feeling for nature in the 
 two pictures Night Clouds, in Thiel's gallery, and The Quiet 
 Water, in the National Museum. Prince Eugen has worked 
 with great energy and with a clear purpose. He has often 
 painted his home environment on Djurgarden and the har- 
 bor of Stockholm as it appears from his house, with white 
 steamers and the lamps of the city shining like precious 
 stones over dark hulls of ships. No one else has interpreted 
 that most lyrically Swedish of all motifs, the summer night, 
 so well as Prince Eugen. 
 
 An obvious striving after the monumental is revealed in 
 his more recent work; wherein he adapts some of the latest 
 tendencies in modern art, for which he has always cherished 
 the deepest interest. The Sun Shines Over the City Is the 
 name given by the artist to the exceptionally well-placed 
 fresco In the Ostermalm School in Stockholm. The figure- 
 less altar-piece In the Kiruna Church, In the most northern 
 part of Sweden, Is Intended to show. In the midst of dark- 
 ness and Ice, the blessing of light when It gladdens earth by 
 Its warmth and brightness. Recently he has depicted the 
 
 Evening at Tyreso. Mural painting by Prince Eugen, in the North 
 Latin School, Stocldiolm 
 
182 
 
 1^' 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 Midsummer Night at Riddarholmen, by Eugen Jansson. Owned by 
 Thorsten Laurin, Stockholm 
 
 home of primitive Swedish culture in Vastergotland, and still 
 later in Ostergotland, where he gives the tender lines of the 
 hills and the wide views of the plains something of that sim- 
 ple nobility which should be the foundation of all great and 
 genuine art. 
 
 Prince Eugen's conception of nature, at once sensitive and 
 arbitrary, is met with again in Eugen Jansson, who died in 
 19 1 5. In the choice of subjects he generally limited his 
 field to his native city, Stockholm, and he succeeded in bring- 
 ing out new aspects of its beauty. Most frequently he 
 painted Stockholm as It appears from "Soder" (South 
 

 
 
 
 ■- -:- .^:.,:-- .-^.^ 
 
 3Hi^fcL«w-.;L..--;- i^fc^^^ 
 
 
 On the River Bank, b}' Herman Norrman. In the Gothenburg 
 Museum 
 
 Hill), and occasionally Riddarholmen reflected in the bay 
 on a calm summer night with deep violet shadows. Then 
 again, he painted a Winter Afternoon, when the setting sun 
 cast a copper-colored sheen over the cloud masses, when the 
 windows of the Palace gleamed, and the boats cut channels 
 in the snow-covered ice of the bay. This painting is In the 
 possession of Ernest Thiel, who owns a large number of 
 canvases by this great and original landscape painter. 
 
 In Eugen Jansson's colorful art lives a spirit which 
 thinks and feels with its own age. His workmen's tenements, 
 
184 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 the windows reflecting the burning gas jets, are rendered in 
 a light and with a technique that excite a sense of a ferment- 
 ing social discontent; yet this impression is conveyed simply 
 by the method of painting, for the use of figures as acces- 
 sories to guide the spectator finds no place In the work of 
 this artist, who despises all catering to the public. In Eugen 
 Jansson there is much of that searching spirit which char- 
 acterizes our best painters. He is never satisfied with what 
 he can do. This eminent artist — one of the most personal 
 Interpreters of the beauty of nature that our age has pro- 
 duced — has achieved, perhaps, his greatest success in the 
 large picture of Riddarholm Bay bathed In golden light. 
 
 Eugen Jansson worked with admirable energy within a 
 field new to him when he painted the nude men In our cold 
 water bathhouses in Stockholm, all in bright sunlight and 
 with strong, blue shadows; yet these figure paintings from 
 his later period can by no means be compared to his wonder- 
 fully personal and creative landscapes. 
 
 An artist who has made valuable contributions to Swedish 
 landscape painting is Herman Norrman, born in Smaland. 
 Norrman painted landscapes and portraits In light tones 
 learned from the Impressionists and with unusual freshness. 
 Among his portraits Is Froken Backman in a black dress 
 against red, painted In 1887, now In Thorsten Laurin's col- 
 lection. In his later style Norrman is impassioned, imbued 
 with a strong personal touch. A reddish-brown tone per- 
 vades his larger pictures, which are executed with a broad 
 brush and thick layers of paint. He Is most interested In 
 clouds and their shadows upon woods and fields. Examples 
 of his work are found in Prince Eugen's collection, in the 
 Thiel gallery, and in the Gothenburg Museum, and he Is also 
 well represented In the National Museum. Norrman was 
 originally a cabinet-maker In Tranas, but despite that, this 
 gifted man developed Into an artist in the true sense of the 
 word. 
 
IX 
 
 NEW TENDENCIES IN SWEDISH PyMNTING 
 
 (CONTINUED) 
 
 THE works of Bruno Liljefors are loved everywhere 
 in Sweden. Few artists have painted their way into 
 the hearts of all men as he has, and few have remained 
 so Swedish in their conception of nature. The woods have 
 never had a greater interpreter than Liljefors. He was 
 born in Uppsala in 1 860, studied for a while at the Academy 
 of Arts in Stockholm, then went to Diisseldorf, and finally 
 to Paris, but was undoubtedly one of those artists who are 
 essentially self-taught. In the beginning of his career he 
 was influenced by Japanese fondness for detail and by 
 French impressionism ; later he sought more monumentality. 
 The criticism sometimes made of his art is that his view of 
 animals is too zoological; but he is a hunter in the highest 
 sense of the term at the same time as he is not less an artist, 
 and therefore, his paintings, however correct and detailed 
 they may be as delineations of animals, still almost always 
 have a beauty and a unity by virtue of which they are true 
 works of art. Among his early pictures, in which the feeling 
 for the forms and details of nature is conspicuous, we may 
 mention the animal study Cat and Bird. But his best work 
 from this period is The Fox Family, painted in 1886, show- 
 ing the foxes capering around their prey in the grass among 
 yellow and white meadow flowers. 
 
 Sometimes Liljefors paints the somber Winter Night 
 brooding over snow-laden pines, when the wind sighs in the 
 trees, and ragged clouds go scudding over the heavens, while 
 
 185 
 
186 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 The Fox Family, by Bruno Liljefors. In the National Museum at 
 Stockholm 
 
 the foxes steal farther and farther Into the forest. Some- 
 times he pictures the Wild Geese flapping their wings heav- 
 ily, as they descend toward the lake shore in the quiet spring 
 evening and are greeted by the cackhng of their comrades. 
 The latter theme has been treated by the artist on an enor- 
 mous canvas with a red evening sky, hanging In the Copen- 
 hagen Art Museum, and again, with a more sensitive touch 
 perhaps, In a small picture owned by the architect Boberg, 
 Spring Evening and Wild Geese, In which two of the big 
 birds flit past In the buoyant spring air against a pearl-col- 
 ored sky. 
 
 In certain of his works the artist seeks the monumental 
 effect, sometimes also the dramatic, and both of these qual- 
 ities are combined in the famous picture Sea-eagles, painted 
 in 1897 and now In the National Museum. The enormous 
 billow In The Breakers, in Prince Eugen's gallery, produces 
 the same effect of bigness. The largest and best collection 
 of Liljefors paintings in existence Is owned by Ernest Thiel, 
 whose gallery of modern, especially of Swedish, art from the 
 beginning of the twentieth century is one of the most im- 
 portant that have ever been established in our country. Thiel 
 possesses a number of the ground studies, where Liljefors 
 dwells upon what is known as protective coloring, letting 
 small, shapely snipes or mottled curlews conceal themselves 
 
The Owl, by Bruno Liljefors. In the Gothenburg Museum 
 
 among greyish-brown hillocks, while he created veritable 
 color symphonies in tones of silver or gold out of the boggy 
 meadows that seem so ugly and insignificant to the uniniti- 
 ated. In this collection also we find Liljefors's best pictures of 
 ducks: canvases that "look as if they were painted by a 
 duck," as some one expressed it, in which the mother duck 
 waddles along among tufts of grass, watching her little 
 downy balls with motherly eye; and the mysterious picture 
 known as The Panther-skin, in which the ducks, on a sum- 
 mer night, swim about In a circle near the edge of the reeds 
 on a strangely ruffled surface of the water. 
 
 On a cliff in the forest sits The Owl, painted in 1895, now 
 in the Gothenburg Museum. Shy of man and defiant, he 
 feels most at home when alone. Free and unrestrained he 
 would hunt, and the murmuring of the pines is the music he 
 loves. That owl strongly resembles its painter. Indeed we 
 are reminded of him when we see Liljetor's Hunter in the 
 
188 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 Portrait of Self, by Bruno Liljefors. In the collection of Ernest 
 Thiel, Stockholm 
 
 National Museum. It has an almost Geijer-like note of 
 Swedish temperament and of feeling for nature; through it 
 we discover the very root of Llljefors's art, if we understand 
 that look of listening to nature's own voice which is in the 
 face of the hunter, as he stands with his gun among the 
 pine trees — the sarrie look that Liljefors has given himself 
 in the Portrait of Self done in 19 13. Liljefors is one of 
 those who hear the grass grow and who understand the 
 language of the birds. We have every reason to be grateful 
 to him who has been able to interpret so well that which is 
 our own. 
 
 An artist who was past master in finding the essential in 
 everything, who in an almost supernatural way, could con- 
 jure up on canvas an object so rich in life-sap, so full-blooded, 
 that reality seems tame beside it, was Anders Leonard Zorn, 
 born in Mora, in i860, and whose untimely death took place 
 at the Mora hospital in 1920. His mother was a Dalecar- 
 lian girl, his father a German brewer. Zorn began his life- 
 work very early. After leaving the Academy, in 1880, he 
 soon won general admiration by his water-colors, some 
 
A sukvr:v oi' s\vi:i)isii Akr 
 
 1.S9 
 
 Portrait of Self, by Anders Zorn. In the National Museum at Stock- 
 holm 
 
 painted with splendid impetuosity, such as The Gypsy 
 Woman with her Child, and some with minute accuracy, 
 such as Our Daily Bread, in the National Museum. Among 
 his water-colors with subjects from Dalecarlia and from his 
 many and long travels in England, Spain, Northern Africa, 
 and Turkey, the small pictures from Mora Fair are espe- 
 
190 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 Outdoors, by Anders Zorn. In the Cjothenburg Museum 
 
 cially noteworthy, the best of them all behig perhaps the 
 picture of the young mother leading her recalcitrant son into 
 the water, called A Premiere, now in the National Museum. 
 With this theme he later did an excellent piece of work in 
 golden tones. 
 
 About 1888, Zorn gave up water-colors almost entirely, 
 and among his first paintings in oil is Outdoors, in the Goth- 
 enburg Museum. Here he has treated in the freshest and 
 most artistic way his favorite theme, the nude bodies of 
 women, outlined In all their beauty and softness against the 
 grey, jutting rocks of the shore. Even the surface of the 
 water is handled with an almost voluptuous touch. Zorn's 
 purpose in his work, which is not least evident In this picture, 
 is, first of all, to develop "values" In art, In other words to 
 perfect a kind of painting that emphasizes lights, half tones, 
 and shadows, and deals In particular with different degrees 
 of light in the various color schemes. In his long productive 
 period Zorn created a glorious line of masterpieces. 
 Sometimes he fails, however, and then he may give a sweet- 
 ish superficiality to his work, whether it be In oil or water- 
 color, whether representing a nude or a portrait. Not only 
 Homer but Zorn also may be caught napping. 
 
A snRVi<:v ()!' swi:i)isn ari^ 
 
 191 
 
 /oni chilnifcl (Ii;it lie iu'\ t'l" painted aiiylliln^- "imciitcd." 
 I le paints liis owi) a^e and understands that e\ en now tlicrc 
 is an alnnulanee ol pieluresqiic inolils c\cry\vlierc for any 
 one who has eyes to see. He paints Bread-niaking in a 
 peasant's home in Dalecarlia, and the pasting of labels in a 
 Brewery, or The Inside of a Parisian Omnibus, and in the 
 same year The Waltz, in whieh the artist himself is seen 
 whirling about in a French salon. Ihese diversified themes 
 testify that he could find interesting material for his brush 
 in almost anything. Gradually, however, he concentrated 
 his efforts around the following groups of themes: folk life 
 in Dalecarlia, nudes, and portraits with the most interna- 
 tional circle of sitters. Among his pictures from Dalecarlia 
 may be mentioned in particular Midsummer Dance in Mora, 
 In the National Museum, and 
 the vividly colored, festal white 
 church Interior with Dalecar- 
 lians attending Christmas 
 Matins. 
 
 No one else In Swedish art 
 has painted woman's body as 
 Zorn does, and Indeed the excel- 
 lence of his style In this field 
 makes him unique among his 
 contemporaries. C. R. Lamm, 
 whose rich collection contains 
 many modern works of art, 
 owns perhaps the best example 
 of this in Naked, painted In 
 1894 In New^ York from an 
 Irish model, and representing a 
 red-haired, large limbed woman who Is drying herself. The 
 room where she stands Is filled with a silvery light which pro- 
 duces a most beautiful effect. The whole picture is painted 
 with passion and vim. The same vigor and exuberance in 
 painting characterizes Summer, In Prince Eugen's collection, 
 a blonde, healthy woman who is wading out into the water. 
 
 Naked, by Anders Zorn. 
 
 In the collection of C. R. 
 
 Lamm, Nasby 
 
192 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 and The Improvised Bath, in the National Museum, show- 
 ing two Dalecarhan women in a bath-house in the double 
 illumination from the window and from the fire. The massive 
 back of one woman gleams with the water; the younger, 
 with the bright red ribbons in her light hair, stands innocent 
 and unconscious, turned toward the spectator. 
 
 Zorn's young flaxen-haired peasant women with their light 
 complexions and their slightly projecting cheek-bones could 
 not be anything but Swedish. Among these peasant pictures 
 should be noted Kings-Karin, a laughing girl in red, with 
 mischievous eyes, owned by Dr. Hjalmar Lundbohm, 
 Kiruna, and the lovely Hallams-Kersti. Among the figures 
 of men, the shrewd, humorous country watchmaker Djos- 
 Matts occupies perhaps the first place. 
 
 Zorn painted portraits all his life, first in water-color, 
 then in oil. Among the latter the following are perhaps the 
 best, taken as a whole : the picture of the highly gifted French 
 actor Coquelin Cadet, in exquisite bluish green tones, owned 
 by Thorsten Laurin; the vivid, animated portrait of the 
 hbrarian H. Wieselgren, called A Toast In Idun; the bril- 
 liant Portrait of Himself with a nude model; the sympa- 
 thetic representation of Prince Carl in blue uniform, owned 
 by the Horseguards, in which the action is rendered in 
 masterly fashion; and the splendidly characteristic portraits 
 of King Oscar, one in court dress with the order of the 
 Seraphim, the other, in everyday costume, a color harmony 
 in brown and gold. The superb intimate portrait of Fru 
 Emma Zorn in red with the dog Mouche, and the elegant, 
 virtuoso-like picture of Fru Josef Sachs In glossy black silk 
 and furs and with a green emerald on her finger as the only 
 speck of color, perhaps deserve special mention. Zorn 
 modeled, carved in wood, and etched with the same skill. In 
 the statue of Gustavus Vasa, erected in Mora in 1903, he 
 proved himself a sculptor of very high rank, and his sculp- 
 tural merits appear to yet greater advantage, perhaps, in the 
 small, strongly sensual bronze group Faun and Nymph. The 
 Morning Bath, a fountain set up in Stockholm and repre- 
 senting a young naked girl who is squeezing a sponge, is full 
 
A SURVEY 01< S\VJ-:DIS11 art 193 
 
 Gustavus Vasa. Statue in bronze, by Anders Zorn. Mora in 
 Dalecarlia 
 
 of freshness and warm life. Among his figures carved in 
 wood, Grandmother, a particularly lifelike old woman's 
 head, and the little wooden figure Gryvel, in the National 
 
194 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 Irish Woman. Etching by Anders Zorn 
 
 Museum, a stout but shapely Dalecarlian maiden crawling 
 on the floor, are especially good. 
 
 In his spirited etchings Zorn catches a momentary expres- 
 sion in its flight and records the action with few but striking 
 lines and dashes that hit the copper surface like a rain 
 
A SUKVJ^V Ol- SWl'lDISIl ART 195 
 
 shower. He delights in fixing the passing moment upon the 
 plate. Copper more tlian anything else gives sap and 
 warmth to a sketch. Zorn is one of the greatest etchers that 
 have ever lived. His technique Is entirely independent, and 
 many Swedish and foreign collectors and connoisseurs of 
 engravings consider him the foremost etcher after Rem- 
 brandt. 
 
 Among his etchings the remarkable portrait of Ernest 
 Renan with his thinker's head, The Irish Woman, at once 
 passionate and melancholy, and Maja, the voluptuous beauty, 
 deserve special mention. Besides these are the portraits of 
 Madame Simon, Senator Mason, Portrait of the Artist and 
 Wife, of the American art connoisseur Marquand, Fru Olga 
 Bratt, Mme. Dayot, and the American Zorn collectors Mrs. 
 John Gardner and Mr. and Mrs. Atherton Curtis. Even in 
 his etchings Zorn likes to depict nude women, and does so 
 in superb manner. Among the most brilliantly executed 
 examples are A Premiere, etched after the water-color of 
 1888; My Model and My Boat, showing the stately, self- 
 reliant woman throwing the artist's ulster over her shoul- 
 ders; Edo, a naked girl on a rock, more graceful than most 
 of Zorn's models; A Dark Corner, with two nude negresses; 
 A Woman Guitar Player crouching in bed; and the fascinat- 
 ing girl sitting on a rock with her feet in the water, which 
 he calls Wet. 
 
 Zorn occupied a position of honor among the foremost 
 artists of the world. He Is as well known In North America 
 as in Hungary; he is considered a celebrity both In England 
 and In Germany, but he never forgot that he was a Swede, 
 and he contributed more than any one else to Inspire respect 
 for Swedish art abroad. 
 
 Olof Sager-Nelson, who died In 1896, found time during 
 his short life of thirty years to produce works of such ster- 
 ling value that he won for himself a place In Swedish art. 
 A picture in the Gothenburg Museum, representing a violin 
 player and his audience, and called The Stroke, is perhaps 
 most typical of his art. There Is always a musical quality In 
 his work, but In this painting one can almost hear the timbre 
 
196 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 of the stringed in- 
 strument, hear the 
 vibrations of a deep 
 and mighty tone that 
 would almost burst 
 the breast with its 
 longing and de- 
 fiance. This genuine 
 characteristic of the 
 nineties, mysticism 
 and defiance in com- 
 bination, recurs in 
 all Nelson's strange 
 and yet beautiful 
 portraits with their 
 yellowish green 
 tone. Suffering from 
 a disease of the 
 lungs, he finally be- 
 came melancholy in 
 his deeply personal 
 art. In A Disciple, 
 The Foster Broth- 
 ers, and Princess 
 Maleine, the pale 
 and precocious little girl at the pool, there is always this 
 tremulous dark tone which gives the young artist's produc- 
 tions their haunting charm. 
 
 Axel Sjoberg has painted with strong feeling the life of 
 nature in the outer skerries of his native city, Stockholm, 
 where gulls rest on a sequestered shoal beneath the starry 
 heavens, or swans lift their wings from melting cakes of ice 
 and fly, dazzling white, over the blue sea. Aron Gerle, 
 born in Dalsland, seems able to extract from the ugliest city 
 thoroughfare the same mystic melancholy and beauty to 
 which Hjalmar Soderberg has given form in his novels with 
 their atmosphere of our time. Gerda Wallander, also a 
 native of Stockholm, the widow of Alf Wallander, has suc- 
 
 A Disciple, by Olof Sager- Nelson. 
 Owned by the artist G. Pauli, Stockholm 
 
A SLIRVi;V OI' SWKDISII y\R'I 
 
 197 
 
 ccssliilly i.'arric(.l oiil llic happ) iiica ol rcproelucing the Stuck- 
 holin of our clay ;incl has ^i\ cii us picturesque presentations of 
 streets and markets, of museum lialls and amusement places. 
 Her portrait of the author lljalmar Soderherg, in Thiel's 
 collection, is a startlingly well done likeness and an admir- 
 able character study. 
 
 Somewhat rugged, but sound and honest, is the art of the 
 figure painter, Carl Wilhelmson, born in Fiskebiickskil, who 
 
 Going Home from Church, motif from Fiskebacicskil, Bohuslj 
 by Carl Wilhelmson. In the National Museum at Stockholm 
 
198 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 paints the people of the west coast with a true and genuine 
 feeling. The quality of trustworthiness in the Swedish coun- 
 try workman is sympathetically rendered in the artist's Farm 
 Laborer, in Thiel's gallery. His Harbor Motif, in the 
 Stockholm Post Office, is a decorative painting of good effect, 
 and is one of the many precious gifts that have been pre- 
 sented to the city by Froken Eva Bonnier. Wilhelmson is 
 one of our very best artists. His drawing and his art of 
 characterization are excellent, and this is not least apparent 
 in his June Evening, showing a peasant lad playing a fiddle, 
 a picture full of atmosphere and feeling and yet a genuine 
 presentation of peasant life. He has a keen sense of strong, 
 clear colors: tile roofs sparkling in the sun, red mottled 
 shawls, dresses of the blue shade of the cornflower, and 
 now, since he has taken Spain into his circle of motifs, shin- 
 ing white walls. His picture Church Goers, painted in 1909 
 and representing natives of Bohuslan rowing to church, is 
 gaudy in the best sense of the term, but he is so chary of his 
 pigments that the texture shows through in most of his 
 canvases. 
 
 Louis Sparre was born near Milan, and lived for a long 
 time in Finland, where he made stimulating departures in 
 several domains of art, in architecture, and the crafts. Sparre 
 is a portrait painter of merit and especially accomplished 
 in the use of color. This is attested in the portraits of Cor- 
 nelia Kuylenstlerna, Tollie Zellman, Count Eugene von 
 Rosen, Fru Miirta Key, and Herr Hagelin. Gosta von Hen- 
 nigs, born in Ostergotland, Is original both In his coloring 
 and in his choice of motifs. The picturesque, brilliant, and 
 exotic aspects of the circus and the music hall have caught 
 his painter's eye, and from their swirl of glaring lights and 
 violent motion his color-thirsty brush often creates excellent 
 works of art in which surfaces of pure bright color stand out 
 like bits of masonry rather than paint, while the character- 
 ization of the clowns and dancing girls has all the fresh- 
 ness and Instantaneity of Impressionism. 
 
 The twin brothers Emil Osterman and Bernhard Oster- 
 man, born In Vingaker, resemble each other both in their 
 
A srk\'i:v oi< swi'iDisii Airr 
 
 199 
 
 The Blue Clown, by Gosta von Hennigs. In the collection of Klas 
 FahrcBus, Lidingon 
 
 external appearance and in their graceful painting. Even 
 though their work, like that of many other artists, is uneven, 
 nevertheless they occupy a prominent place in Swedish por- 
 trait art. In our time, when we so often ask what purpose 
 a painting serves, and where it should be placed in order to 
 give us pleasure, while so often our question brings no 
 answer, it is a real satisfaction to remember that family 
 portraits, painted with reverence and honest skill, possessing 
 both character and — what so many artists sadly lack — taste, 
 are still being produced in our land. The foremost example 
 of Emil Osterman's portraits is perhaps the picture of Pro- 
 
200 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 Frofessdr C:\v\ C'unnan, by Emil Osterman. Owned by Fru Curman 
 
 fessor Carl Curman, in which the weight of authority, the 
 calm assurance, and the intellect of the model have received 
 adequate expression. An excellent picture of King Gus- 
 tavus V in the uniform of a general — a portrait may be 
 meritorious even with a uniform^ — and the handsome por- 
 trait of the two friends Erik Lindberg and Bernhard Oster- 
 man, in black evening attire against a white wall, with the 
 red silk of the sofa and the topaz yellow lights of the punch 
 glass, are among his best works, and this is at least equally 
 
A SURVEY (W SWEDISH ART 201 
 
 true of the representation ol Pastor yMilher^er, whieh is 
 full of hunioi" and eharaeter. In 1916 he linisheci his hir^e 
 Studio Picture, a painting of huge dimensions and great 
 merit as to detail, representing the artist Emerik Stenbcrg 
 telhng one of his funny stories to an interested audience in 
 Emil Osterman's studio. This work will prove of very great 
 interest, not least from an historical standpoint. 
 
 In the rich production of Bernhard Osterman may be men- 
 tioned the picture of Jonas Lie in Gothenburg Museum, the 
 interesting type of Bishop Billing with the pale face against 
 a background of black and green, the noble color harmony 
 and characterization in his portrait of Fru Alice Tigerschold, 
 and not least the charming picture of his wife, in which 
 grace and an air of the grande dame are combined to form 
 a salon portrait in the best sense. 
 
 Pelle Svedlund, born In Gavle, painted. In the nineties, 
 several pictures full of atmosphere with motifs from Bruges 
 and its canals. Vilhelm Smith has executed colorful and sub- 
 stantive paintings from his native city, Karlshamn, as well 
 as from Italy and Africa. Erik Hedberg has a strong feel- 
 ing for the characteristic features of the nature and people 
 of his native environment In Gastrlkland. Edvard Rosen- 
 berg, a native of Stockholm, In his finely sensitive and beau- 
 tifully drawn painting A March Evening, In the National 
 Museum, has Infused a Northern steel timbre Into his color. 
 Emerik Stenberg, also a native of Stockholm, pictures In 
 honest and conscientious manner the people of Dalecarlla, 
 and shows an exceptional power of characterization In his 
 excellent canvas A Wake In Leksand, In the Gothenburg 
 Museum. He has painted a series of good portraits, among 
 which those of Professor Rudin, Colonel Baron Rosenblad, 
 and Professor Oscar Montellus should be especially noted. 
 David Wallln, In his soulful portraits The Wife of the 
 Artist, Fru Sven LIdman, Georg von Rosen, and others, 
 allows the figures to emerge like white wraiths from the 
 luminous darkness. 
 
 The Swedish note Is emphasized and often very cleverly 
 caught In Gustav Ankarcrona's paintings, treating subjects 
 
202 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 from old-fashioned, comfortable manor houses where the 
 guest is received with much food and great friendliness. 
 Ankarcrona draws horses particularly well and likes to use 
 them as accessory figures in his pictures. Oscar Hullgren, 
 who like Ankarcrona was born in Smaland, has rendered the 
 sea and the Swedish coast landscape with exceptional fresh- 
 ness. His Harbor of Palermo is a remarkably good paint- 
 ing, and very interesting from an atmospheric standpoint. 
 
 Gustav Fjsestad, a native of Stockholm, has discovered 
 the decorative element of lichen-covered stumps and stones, 
 and has painted the solitude beneath snow-laden spruce trees. 
 FJEestad, who has made a contribution to industrial art 
 through his designs for furniture and artistic textile fabrics, 
 is well known and esteemed abroad. Otto Hesselbom, who 
 died in 1913, was much admired both in Germany and in 
 Italy for his serious, decorative pictures of the lakes and 
 forests of his native Dalsland. Not until later did this thor- 
 ough and modest artist become known in his own country. 
 Another artist who is greatly appreciated In Italy and on 
 the Continent is Fru Anna Boberg, nee Scholander, of Stock- 
 holm, whose numerous canvases with motifs from Lofoten 
 depict the magnificent scenery of the islands with picturesque 
 effect. 
 
 An artist who lays particular stress on the decorative, as 
 in the excellent portrait of his wife, and who at the same 
 time revels in the strongest colors in his pictures from the 
 Orient and from Italy, is OUe Hjortzberg, born in Stock- 
 holm. His decorations in Klara Church and even more those 
 of the auditorium in the New Normal School In the south 
 quarter of Stockholm bear witness to wide knowledge and 
 good taste. 
 
 Gunnar Hallstrom, also a native of Stockholm, Is gifted 
 with Imagination and with a certain solidity by virtue of 
 which he goes his own way. He seeks first of all character in 
 his drawing, and paints Swedish peasants and Swedish sport 
 in that Malaren environment which he loves most. The 
 artist, who lives on the historical Bjorko In Lake Malaren, 
 has pictured the home feeling around the red-painted houses 
 
A SURVEY OF SWia)lSll ART 
 
 203 
 
 The Ski-runner, drawing by Gunnar Hallstrom. Owned by Herr 
 Clairemont, Vienna 
 
 surrounded by thick lilac hedges and the plough cutting the 
 meadow flowers and the turf beneath which rest the bones 
 of the forefathers; he has also sketched and painted ski- 
 runners and skaters on the bays. Two Stockholm artists 
 are Axel Erdmann, who has painted his native city in a series 
 of fine and colorful pictures, and Rikard Lindstrom, who has 
 painted the Stockholm Archipelago and also the Lofoten 
 Islands. In the canvases of the latter white bodies of women 
 appear between decorative groups of trees or emerge from 
 the dark blue water. His landscapes in brown and blue have 
 a certain pleasing austerity. 
 
 Among the artists from Skane the first rank is held by 
 Anders Trulson, who died in 191 1, and the painter and 
 etcher Ernst Norlind. The latter employs a distinguished 
 and personal scale of colors In grey and brown, with some- 
 times a cluster of yellow flowers or red-beaked, white storks 
 enlivening the pale tones of the landscape. Trulson painted 
 good landscapes and portraits, among them the strong por- 
 trait of himself in the National Museum. Ossian Elgstrom, 
 also from Skane, has become the artistic discoverer of the 
 Lapps, With wonderful Intuition and an Imagination filled 
 with dazzling colors and bloody horrors, he produces an 
 impression of primltiveness in his art. His sketches appear 
 like the visions of a Lapp in whom the old heathenism has 
 survived. 
 
204 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 Beacon Fires, fresco by Axel Torneman. In the second chamber of 
 the Riksdag 
 
 With rich and Germanic fantasy, John Bauer, born in 
 Jonkoping, created a charming and mystic saga world, 
 inhabited by clumsy and ungainly trolls, with lonely cabins 
 from which the smoke rises straight up over horizons of 
 pine forests, blue in the distance, and where fair-haired wood- 
 nymphs are glimpsed among the trees. Bauer created a 
 beautiful picture of Northern womanhood in the mural 
 painting Freja in the Karlskrona Girls' School. He died by 
 an accident on Lake Wettern in 191 8. 
 
 A pleasant Swedish quality, fresh and youthful with 
 breezes from bays and summer meadows, with gay girls on 
 skis, is found in Torsten Schonberg. He is one of our best 
 designers of posters. Einar Nerman, born in Norrkoping, 
 is a cartoonist with a fine sense of style. One hardly knows 
 whether to admire most the elegance of line or the charac- 
 terization in his cartoons; these and his illustrations to Fred- 
 man's Epistles, which appear as if breathed upon the paper 
 and filled with the dream of Bellman's Stockholm, are so 
 far, the best he has done. Sigge Bergstrom, born near Filip- 
 stad, has reawakened Interest in the artistic possibilities of 
 the woodcut, and has also done good portraits and land- 
 scapes in oil. 
 
 Axel Torneman, a Varmlander, shows great decorative 
 ability. In his Night Cafe in Paris, in Thlel's Collection, he 
 has produced an almost mosaic-like masterpiece of effective 
 
A siiRVi-:v oi' swi;i)isii art 
 
 ^05 
 
 coloring. With big loriiis in an atmosphere of primeval 
 dawn he has painted Thor's Combat with the Giants in the 
 Ostermalm School, and in two austere but decorative fres- 
 coes in the Second Chamber of the Riksdag he pictures 
 Torgny at the Thing and Engelbrekt in Orebro, while in 
 the symbolic fresco Beacon Fires, in the same hall, he gives 
 artistic and powerful expression to the defiant forces of de- 
 fense against threatening war. Torneman's paintings often 
 have an original and superb color tone. 
 
 David Tagtstrom, of Dalecarlia, proves in his portraits 
 that he possesses both fine taste and ability to conventional- 
 ize in a personal way. 
 
 The two movements, expressionism and cubism, have had 
 a number of followers In Sweden. These seek. In the same 
 way as their French masters, to conjure up new values of 
 beauty by Intentional and extreme deformations of reality 
 as well as by a new conventional scale of colors. Among 
 these painters are Isaac Grunewald, Gosta Sandels, Leander 
 Engstrom, Arthur C :son Percy, and many others. 
 
 Albert Engstrom, born In Smaland, Is Sweden's greatest 
 humorous artist and one of the most eminent that we have 
 ever had in this domain. He is thoroughly Swedish and has 
 
 The Boy, the Princess, and the Golden Goose. Fairy-tale illus- 
 tration by Ivar Arosenius 
 
206 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 sketched our people — especially the lower classes — in a style 
 that is equally amusing and masterly, Engstrom's drawings 
 of Swedish nature and Swedish types have contributed much 
 to the artistic education of the general public, and have 
 taught many how to grasp the beauty and value of even 
 the most rapid sketches. 
 
 Ivar Arosenius became known and recognized all at once 
 through an exhibition arranged after his death, which oc- 
 curred in 1909. A succulent, full-blooded humor charac- 
 terizes his jocular sketches and paintings. Their brutality, 
 however, proves offensive to many. They have the same 
 orgiastic touch that distinguishes Bellman's songs, and in 
 many of Arosenius's paintings the strain of pathos is also 
 very marked. The wealth of his imagination is inexhaust- 
 ible, and his intuitive psychology is seen in, for example, the 
 initial awakening of a child's mind in that charming little 
 girl who stands alone watching the flame, The Girl and the 
 Candle, in the Gothenburg Museum, Arosenius succeeds 
 best perhaps in his fairy-tale motifs, born as they are of a 
 spirit that understands better than any one else in our coun- 
 try the soul of the fairy-tale in all its mysticism, humor, and 
 richness of color. Yngve Berg, of Stockholm, has a peculiar 
 gift of catching physical motion with his drawing-pencil. 
 His adroit toreadors, his dancers, and his Bellman illus- 
 trations, executed with amazing skill and taste in the spirit 
 of the eighteenth century, live and move in a way that place 
 him in the very front rank among European draughtsmen. 
 
X 
 
 MODERN PLASTIC AND DECORATIVE ART 
 
 IN THE field of sculpture there has not been so much 
 activity as in that of painting. With the exception of 
 monuments to great men — which are not generally de- 
 signed to satisfy a craving for beauty — works of sculpture 
 are not ordered either by the State or by individuals, and 
 for that reason this whole branch of art has remained, as it 
 were, disconnected and outside the general development. 
 
 There has been no dearth of good sculptors, however. 
 The greatest number as well as the best of the portrait 
 statues erected in this country during the eighties and nine- 
 ties were designed by John Borjeson, who was born in 
 Halland, and died in Gothenburg in 19 lo. The whole con- 
 ventional apparatus with large Spanish cloaks to give the 
 figures plasticity is brushed aside and the sculptor strives, 
 in the spirit of modern art, for character. He found 
 adequate form for the manly courage and Swedish vigor of 
 Geijer, as expressed in Geijer's Thought, a symbolic figure 
 on the pedestal of the Geijer statue in Uppsala, and also for 
 the aristocratic bearing of Oxenstierna. The statue of 
 Scheele, a personification of introspective, fruitful mental 
 activity, has the combined monumentality and character 
 which we like to see in a statue. The memorial to Oxen- 
 stierna has been set up by the nobility outside of Riddar- 
 huset; that to Scheele is in Humlegarden in Stockholm. The 
 artist has reached his highest level, however, in the eques- 
 trian statue of Charles X Gustavus, erected in 1896 in the 
 market-olace at Malmo. where the King sits calm and serene 
 
 207 
 
208 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 Karl X Gustavus. Statue by John 
 Borjeson 
 
 on his large-limbed horse, looking out over the country of 
 Skane like an imperious but popular master. 
 
 Teodor Lundberg has created a magnificent work of art 
 in The Billow and the Shore, in the Royal Palace. It is 
 modern in feeling and form; the contrast between the mas- 
 culine and the feminine is effectually emphasized, and the 
 pose gives expression to a vibrating life without infringing 
 on the plastic character of the work. The same artist has 
 created a figure full of power and vitality in Olavus Petri, 
 an embodiment of Lutheran courage, erected in 1898 outside 
 the Storkyrka in Stockholm. Among Lundberg's other 
 creations the stately group Svea with a Fallen Carolinian — 
 the so-called Poltava monument on the Artillery Grounds 
 in Stockholm — and the intimate, nobly composed group My 
 Family deserve special mention. 
 
 The tender beauty of woman's body is the chief subject 
 of Per Hasselberg's work. In the beginning he was some- 
 what bound by the French conception of form, but soon his 
 
A SURVEY OF SWEDISH AKI' 209 
 
 The Water-lily, by Per Hasselberg. In marble in the Gothenburg 
 Museum 
 
 own personality emerged, clear and distinct. The Snow- 
 drop, for all its spring loveliness, does not attain the grace 
 and charm and the dew-like freshness of The Frog, a figure 
 executed in marble in 1890 for the Gothenburg Museum. 
 Here also, in the midst of the finest examples of modern 
 Swedish art, his last work, The Water-lily, done in 1893, 
 the year before his death, reposes in her snow-white beauty. 
 The Water-lily rises amidst the powerful and jubilant fan- 
 fares of all the colors, and through her young limbs there 
 passes a tremor of joy at the wealth of existence. It is a 
 woman without any academic formulas, resting in the com- 
 bined majesty of sleep and beauty. 
 
 Hasselberg's art reveals a passionate love of life and of 
 eternal blooming youth. In The Grandfather, set up on 
 the lawn of Humlegarden in Stockholm, he has grouped in 
 monumental and simple fashion the old man and the boy 
 who continues where old age leaves off, thus symbolizing 
 the constant renewal of nature in spite of death and cor- 
 ruption. Hasselberg, who was a zealous participant in the 
 Opposition movement, has done an excellent animated 
 
210 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 r 
 
 Ernst Josephson. Bronze bust by Per Hasselberg. 
 In the National Museum at Stockholm 
 
 bronze bust, now In the National Museum, of his friend 
 Ernst Josephson. 
 
 During the golden periods of art the relation between 
 art and Industrial art has been intimate and fruitful. It was 
 so In Greece, and It was so during the Renaissance, and 
 In the eighteenth century, as It Is In Japan. After periods 
 of degeneracy and barbarism In industrial art — brought 
 on by the misconception that machines can do work as artis- 
 tically, In other words as personally, as human beings — 
 new forces have begun to work. No machine in the world 
 can replace an artist; no loom can weave a Gobelin tapestry 
 as a skilled artisan does; no photographic apparatus can 
 produce so good a portrait as a good painter, any more than 
 
A suKvr:Y ov s\vj;i)isii art 
 
 211 
 
 Life. Silver dish by Christian Eriksson. Owned by Dr. 
 Hjalmar Lundbohm in Kiruna 
 
 a music box can take the place of a musician. In recent 
 times we have come back to a realization of the fact, which 
 is as clear as day, though so often ignored, that beauty 
 should brighten all life, that paintings and statues should 
 be found, not only in museums, but also in offices, in schools, 
 on street corners, in barracks, and first of all in our homes. 
 What we need is gifted and capable artists to set the stamp 
 of beauty on the handicrafts. 
 
 Christian Eriksson, born near Arvika, has something of 
 the strong life-sap of the neo-Renaissance in his art. He 
 studied in the Technical School in Stockholm, then in Ham- 
 burg, and finally in Paris, where his talent was given its true 
 direction. Whether he works in wood or silver, in marble 
 or iron, he shows original conception and infuses a new, 
 
212 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 Dionysos Troup, by Christian Eriksson. Detail from the frieze on 
 the Dramatic Theatre at Stockholm 
 
 modern spirit into his sculpture. Freshness and humor are 
 found in all that Eriksson has done. Because he puts his 
 soul into his work, his walking-sticks, goblets, bookcases, 
 
A SURVRV OI' SWEDISH ART 213 
 
 ami locks li;i\c (lie saiiie- aesthetic si^iiidcaiicc as his large 
 marhlcs. Ilie rehel ol l.iniie, a splendid gift of Ilerr 
 P. iHirstcnhcrg to our National Muscutn, is one of the most 
 magnificent pieces of sculpture executed in recent years. In 
 spite of its large dimensions, it is full of warmth and feeling 
 and re\eals an ama/ing bravura in the treatment of the 
 marble. Eriksson's bronze vase Enchantment is one of his 
 most successful products in industrial art. Eike his large 
 silver dish Eife, it bears testimony to the creator's graceful 
 technique and strong feeling for nature. Among Eriksson's 
 later works are a piece of sculpture carved in wood, The 
 Crouching Lapp, in the Gothenburg Museum, and Toe 
 Dancing, the property of Herr K. O. Bonnier, carved in 
 light maple, in which he has succeeded in catching an instan- 
 taneous movement without losing the exceptional beauty of 
 form. His design over the doorway of the Sundsvall Bank 
 on the facade facing Fredsgatan In Stockholm shows a man 
 and a woman — the latter with an uncommonly well-modelled 
 body and a head full of life and vigor — symbolizing lumber- 
 ing and shipping. In 1905 Christian Eriksson exhibited the 
 designs for the pedestals of two flagpoles which are now put 
 up In Saltsjobaden near Stockholm. One represents summer 
 sport, the other and more successful one, outdoor life In 
 winter with sleds and skates. Eriksson has reached his 
 highest level, perhaps, In the gigantic reliefs that adorn 
 the facade of the Dramatic Theatre In Stockholm. They 
 depict the origin of the theatre from the Dionysos cult and 
 the Italian masque, and are filled with beauty and exuberant 
 life. The opposite mood, piety, resignation, and despair. 
 Is expressed by Eriksson In his gilded bronze figures on 
 KIruna Church. The most monumental work he has exe- 
 cuted Is The Archer, done In 19 16, an Engelbrekt memorial 
 on Kornhamnstorg In Stockholm, In which the chief figure, 
 Instinct with a concentrated and unfaltering will of defense, 
 Is drawing his bow, while the expression of strength and 
 tenacity Is underscored by an Ingenious composition. The 
 reliefs represent the achievements of the Dalecarlian patriot 
 In the service of freedom. 
 
214 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN AR\ 
 
 Aron Jerndahl is another good artist wno nas developed 
 from the field of handicraft. Both his small bronze objects 
 and his large monumental sculptures from the life of work- 
 ingmen are full of character and modern in the best sense. 
 
 Carl J. Eldh was born near Uppsala in 1873. He first 
 assisted in the restoration of Uppsala Cathedral and later 
 studied, in the latter half of the nineties, in Paris. In France 
 he developed his unusual gift for interpreting the qualities of 
 womanhood, whether of motherly tenderness, of innocent 
 purity, or of playful provocativeness, the latter most beau- 
 tifully, perhaps, in the wooden statuette Brita, and in the 
 Sitting Nude Girl in wood and bronze. Purity of form and 
 strength of expression mark the high relief Reading, an 
 unusually distinctive figure of a young woman showing the 
 repose and concentration that come with reading. 
 
 Reading. Relief by Carl J. Eldh, in Kungsholmen High School, 
 Stockholm 
 
A SURVi;:( OF SWi'DISlI ART 215 
 
 Among his statut?* and statuettes are the companion 
 figures Nils Kreuger with his good-humored assurance and 
 Karl Nordstrom with his pugnacious toss of the head. The 
 sketch for the statue of August Strindbcrg, a gigantic, de- 
 fiant, naked Titan, dates from 19 16. Eldh's granite reliefs 
 of playing and bathing boys adorn the exterior of Ostermalm 
 School in Stockholm. The group Youth with the naked 
 boy and girl and the statue Young Girl, both in the National 
 Museum, reveal a tendency toward monumentality during 
 his later period. In the Gunnar Wennerberg Monument, 
 erected in Minneapolis and in Stockholm, in 19 16, Eldh has 
 created in an apt and original way an idealized picture of a 
 student of 1850, full of romanticism, geniality, and self- 
 confidence. The statue, which is excellently placed near the 
 bay Djurgardsbrunnsviken in Stockholm, Is a gift to the city 
 by Herr John Josephson. 
 
 The Smalander David Edstrom, who returned from 
 America at the age of twenty-one after a boyhood full of 
 hardships, studied in Italy, France, and Germany, and de- 
 veloped into an excellent, though often a fantastic, artist. 
 There is both strong imagination and feeling for form in 
 the granite head which he calls Sphinx, and however strained 
 some of his sculptures may be, many of his portrait heads 
 — as the figure of Intendant Romdahl — attain an intensity 
 and sculptural effect which appear to best advantage, per- 
 haps, in the figure of the financier and art patron, Ernest 
 Thiel, with its expression of iron will. 
 
 One of the foremost of contemporary sculptors, by virtue 
 of his exuberant creative powers and the originality of his 
 conceptions, is Carl Milles. He was born near Uppsala 
 and received his artistic training first in the Technical School 
 in Stockholm, then during a residence In Paris and Munich. 
 In Paris, In 1900, Milles executed his first masterpiece, a 
 delightful little statuette of a Dancer moving with proud 
 grace, but he made his mark In 1901 with the design for the 
 Sten Sture Monument which, however, proved difficult to 
 place suitably. The sketch Itself was worked over several 
 times after 1901. 
 
16 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN Ai^T 
 
 Ernest Thiel. Bronze bust by David 
 Edstrom. Owned by Herr Thiel 
 
 With graphic realism and with deep psychological pene- 
 tration, he modelled the portrait bust of Julius Kronberg, In 
 1904. His groups of elephants, giant lizards, bears, and 
 many other strangely formed historic and pre-historic, 
 zoologic and mythologic creatures have a kind of grotesque 
 monumentallty. He has designed bear groups in the form 
 of two large spheres made, as Michael Angelo would have 
 them, so that they "could be rolled down a mountain without 
 breaking." They are placed in the Berzelius Park in Stock- 
 holm and are a gift of Eva Bonnier. 
 
 Milles, who works with marvellous ease, is constantly 
 seeking new paths. From modelling the exuberantly life- 
 
A SlIRVi:^ OI' SWl'DlSll ARr 
 
 217 
 
 like Danciiijj^ ChiKircii on 
 the bases of the cokiniiisiii 
 the higgia of the Dramatic 
 I'heatre, lie turns to the 
 keen characterization in 
 the features of the aged 
 Franzcn on the monument 
 with the lovely group 
 Selma and Fanny on the 
 pedestal. This monument 
 was raised in Harnosand, 
 in 19 10. An almost im- 
 pressionistic statue of 
 Scheele was set up in Kop- 
 ing, in 19 12, while an 
 austere conventionalism 
 marks the well known por- 
 trait in wood of Levertin's 
 suffering seer countenance, 
 in the National Museum. 
 A stamp of realistic monu- 
 mentality is found in the 
 brooding head of the au- 
 t h o r Gustaf Stridsberg, 
 which has been cut in 
 granite in masterly fash- 
 ion. In the giant figure 
 of Gustavus Vasa in 
 painted plaster of Paris, 
 set up in 1907 in the hall 
 of Nordiska Museet, the 
 artist employs a severity 
 of form which is well 
 suited to this symbol of 
 governmental authority and jurisdiction, to him "who built 
 our Sweden from floor to roof." 
 
 In his larger and smaller reliefs and groups in stone or 
 bronze of women dancers of antiquity Milles employs forms 
 
 Scheele 
 
 Statue in bronze by 
 Carl Milles 
 
218 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 Selma and Fanny, by Carl Milles. Group in black granite on the 
 pedestal of the monument to Franzen at Harnosand 
 
 that closely resemble archaic Greek art. For Uppenbarel- 
 sekyrkan at Saltsjobaden, which has been ornamented with 
 excellent sculptures by Milles, he has executed two monu- 
 mental bronze doors, on which he depicts sin and grace with 
 archaizing naivete in imitation of the door in Hildesheim, 
 all with wonderful Imagination and often with great beauty. 
 
A SUKVi:V OV S\VIiL»i.ll ART 
 
 219 
 
 The Hours of Day and Night. Marble clock by 
 Carl Milles 
 
 It Is to be hoped that Milles's gigantic Monument of 
 Industry, a monumental fountain on which symbolic figures 
 full of strength in the Michael Angelo-Rodin style ornament 
 the pedestal, will be erected in Stockholm despite all diffi- 
 culties that threaten to obstruct it. Upon the fagade of En- 
 skilda Banken in Stockholm, Milles has represented in four 
 groups, with a kind of conventionalized realism, the periods 
 of trade development from bartering to world commerce. 
 The best work, perhaps, among his small pieces of sculpture 
 is the marble clock made in 19 15 with the hours of Day 
 
220 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 Dancers. Stone sculpture by Carl Milles. In the Glyp- 
 tothek, Copenhagen 
 
 and Night in the form of nude, young women carved with 
 wonderful skill and calling to mind the Hellenic art of the 
 sixth century before the Christian Era. A feeling for style 
 is happily combined in this aspiring artist with the fullest 
 measure of creative genius. 
 
A sukvi:v oi' s\vi':i)isii \\<\' 221 
 
 I'.ric l\a I acl-l\;ull)cr^- has cxcculcti lorcclully sculptured 
 aiul well charactcri/cd portrait heads in hroii/.c, marble, and 
 granite, of the sculptor Ciustal" Sandherg, Dr. (jregor Pauls- 
 son, Vvu l*'di/,abcth Laurin, and little (lunilia Clason, the 
 last-named in the National Museum, l^legance and good 
 taste are characteristic of Otto Strandman. His small 
 figures in bronze, precious metals, or wood, sometimes com- 
 bined in one design with artistically formed useful objects, 
 such as ink-wells and similar things, are modelled with 
 exquisite charm. In his Workingman, erected in 19 17 in the 
 Vasa Park in Stockholm, Gottfrid Larsson has succeeded 
 exceptionally well in his endeavor to introduce the common 
 laborer into sculpture. Olof Ahlgren has executed char- 
 acteristic portrait heads in red granite. Upon the tomb- 
 stone of Alf Wallander near Solna he has carved a mourning 
 figure in black granite in remarkably harmonious composi- 
 tion with the socle. Both In a number of small ceramic 
 drinking fountains in the New Technical School and in a 
 few sculptural groups, designed In harmony with the build- 
 ing, Ivar Johnsson, has proved himself one of our most 
 promising younger sculptors. 
 
 Axel Pettersson of Doderhult occupies a unique place. 
 He Is a carver of humorous figures In wood of high artistic 
 merit. With subtle skill and with a fusion of modernity, 
 rococo, and Chinese art, Gerhard Henning, a native of 
 Stockholm, designs miniature figures reproduced by the 
 Royal Danish Porcelain Company. Henning Is also an 
 etcher of note. Adolf LIndberg has made a very valuable 
 contribution to the art of medal engraving, which entered a 
 new golden age In France through Roty and Chaplain. His 
 medals and portrait medallions show beauty of line as well 
 as of characterization. They filled a real need at a time 
 when faded photographs, mediocre woodcuts, or fogged 
 autotypes were considered good enough to preserve the 
 features of even eminent men for posterity. His son Erik 
 LIndberg continues with honor In the same noble and endur- 
 ing domain of art. The Swedish Nobel medals are from his 
 hand. 
 
222 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 Industrial art is making a stand against all cheap orna- 
 mentation, and it is particularly in an important field, where 
 bad taste has been allowed to spread and propagate in the 
 most unhampered and shameless fashion, namely in the 
 manufacture of porcelain, that the Stockholm artist Alf 
 Wallander has done pioneer work for us. Wallander was 
 a good painter, but he realized that the artist's eye and 
 his capacity for energetic work have a large mission to per- 
 form in the industrial arts. Vases, lamps, and dishes 
 fashioned by him disclose new fields conquered for art, while 
 in the textile industry also, in woven fabrics, he has made 
 successful innovations. Of greatest moment, however, is 
 the contribution he has made to the products of the Ror- 
 strand factories. He died in 19 14. In the same field, 
 Gunnar Wennerberg did a similar service for the porcelain 
 factories of Gustafsberg. 
 
 In textile art, the society Handarbetets vanner (the 
 Friends of Handicraft) has worked successfully, since 1874, 
 to preserve and revive old methods of weaving, to collect 
 patterns, and in general to lift needle work to a higher 
 artistic level. The most important achievement of the 
 society is undoubtedly its revival of interest in the art of 
 tapestry weaving, which in its simpler forms had been pre- 
 served by our peasantry. The only woven piece of tapestry 
 with a modern figure motif that was made in Sweden during 
 the nineteenth century was one woven by the above-men- 
 tioned society after a design by Carl Larsson. It repre- 
 sents A Catch of Crayfish, executed with exquisite taste 
 and skill, both landscape and figures being slightly conven- 
 tionalized. The tapestry is hung in the Museum of Indus- 
 trial Arts in Copenhagen. 
 
XI 
 
 ARCHITECTURE AT THE OPENING OF THE 
 TWENTIETH CENTURY 
 
 BOTH private and public buildings erected in the sixties 
 and seventies were, as a rule, without artistic signifi- 
 cance, and the cheap materials employed often 
 entailed a careless treatment of details. The most note- 
 worthy activity was the rebuilding or so-called restoration of 
 our old churches. This was usually carried out on the theory 
 that, when the date of the original building had been deter- 
 mined, all subsequent additions should be removed, where- 
 upon the church should be provided in the cheapest possible 
 way with spire and ornaments In the original style as the 
 restorers supposed It would have looked had It been com- 
 pleted all at once. These restorations, often based on the 
 most thorough knowledge, have resulted In robbing the 
 churches of their historical Interest and the venerable per- 
 sonal character they once had — and all In the name of 
 historical style! It was after an Inspection of Uppsala 
 Cathedral, which had been restored In the nineties, that 
 an English authority remarked in a technical journal, "I 
 realize now that something worse than fire may befall a 
 building." 
 
 Helgo Zetterwall, who died in 1907, devoted himself with 
 great zeal and energy, but with little success, to restoration 
 work. The stately building of the North Latin School In 
 Stockholm was erected by him In 1880 in the style of the 
 Florentine Renaissance. The handsome Renaissance facade 
 of Skandlnaviska Kreditaktiebolaget in Stockholm, facing 
 
 223 
 
224 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 Storkyrkobrlnken, was constructed In 1876 by Ernst Jacobs- 
 son, who died in 1905. Artificial stone with half columns of 
 porphyry was used for material. During the eighties it was 
 the custom to allow the wall surfaces to remain unplastered, 
 exposing the brick, and to limit the plastering to window 
 casements or else to construct these of cut stone. The latter 
 was used in the University House in Uppsala, which was 
 erected in 1887 by Herman Holmgren. The magnificent 
 main entrance makes a very imposing impression with its 
 large dimensions and excellent materials. 
 
 During the last two decades of the nineteenth century, 
 there was great activity both in private and public construc- 
 tion In Sweden, not least In the rapidly growing capital. A 
 number of schools, banks, and barracks were erected, among 
 the latter the barracks of the Horse Guards on Sturevagen 
 near Stockholm by Erik Josephsson. He also built In the 
 French baroque style the stately new bank edifice of Skandi- 
 naviska Kreditaktiebolaget. This building forms a part of 
 the surroundings of Gustaf Adolfs torg — a square which 
 has unfortunately suffered in architectonic respects by the 
 demolition of the old Opera House. The interior produces 
 a severe, imposing effect, with its huge Doric columns which 
 occupy the centre of the background. Stress is laid upon 
 beauty of form and materials with sumptuous simplicity and 
 without regard to cost. The Worklngmen's Institute In 
 Stockholm, which was erected In an admirable way by Carl 
 Moller, should also be mentioned. 
 
 A large number of tenement houses were built at this time 
 along our streets. The fagades were over-loaded with de- 
 generate neo-Renalssance ornaments of mechanical make, 
 often of cement, which after a year or two precipitates a 
 salt that disfigures the walls by large white spots. Often the 
 architect was Ignored by the contractor. The watch-word 
 became "speed and cheapness," and In most cases a building 
 was put up without even a thought of consulting an artis- 
 tically trained architect. Beautiful old houses were torn 
 down without the slightest reverence; straight thorough- 
 fares were made to cut each other at right angles; and a 
 
A SURVEY OK SWEDISH ART 225 
 
 deadly dullness spread ever the small towns that were for- 
 merly so charming, ovcv the ruined country churches, and 
 o\er the new quarters in Stockholm, But even then a gen- 
 eration of architects was growing up, who combined thor- 
 ough technical studies with a keen desire to reinstate beauty 
 in its proper place, and, besides, to reintroduce natural 
 stone. 
 
 The prestige of architects has increased considerably 
 during the last decades. We are beginning to realize that 
 an artistically trained expert should, if ever, be consulted 
 in the construction of buildings that are to beautify or dis- 
 figure a city for centuries. Stockholm has had the misfor- 
 tune that its largest monumental building of our time has 
 been placed in such a way as to conceal partly and take away 
 from the effect of the Royal Palace, contrary to the wishes 
 of almost all architects and others trained in matters of 
 art. This has from the beginning made many distrustful of 
 the Riksdag building, for which designs were drawn by 
 Aron Johansson. One would have preferred to have had 
 this building different and situated somewhere else. 
 
 The so-called Danvlks Hospital, erected with fine taste 
 by Aron Johansson, Is exceptionally Impressive, and has 
 been given a splendid location commanding the harbor of 
 Stockholm. The only trouble is that the form and purpose 
 of the building do not harmonize. A home for the aged 
 poor should not appear like a palace, although It is an 
 especially pleasing sense of humanity that makes the public 
 provide, not only a suitable, but also a comfortable home 
 for those who have worked themselves tired and old with- 
 out economic success. In Denmark and Germany we find 
 pleasant homes for the aged, but not very often In Sweden. 
 
 The Opera House of Gustavus III has been replaced by 
 a very large and very expensive building erected after plans 
 by Axel Anderberg. The wall surfaces are finished In 
 plaster, but with window casements and pilasters of stone. 
 The style Is a variety of the baroque and. In part, gives a 
 very good effect. The Interior has an unusually beautiful 
 and Imposing vestibule, but the auditorium and the lobby 
 
226 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 The Adelsward House in Stockholm, designed by Gustav Clason 
 
 are Impaired by showy gilding and very conventional deco- 
 rations. The lobby, however, is brightened by Carl Lars- 
 son's fresh-colored paintings in the ceiling and the lunettes. 
 The royal lobby is ornamented by good decorative paintings 
 by Prince Eugen and Georg Pauli. Anderberg has created 
 an exceptionally dignified and suitable ensemble of brick 
 buildings in the stately edifice of the Swedish Museum, 
 dedicated in 191 6, and in the neighboring establishments 
 and houses of the Academy of Sciences In Frescati near 
 Stockholm. The expensive, over-decorated marble building 
 of the Dramatic Theatre, beautified by much good art and 
 
A SURVEY OF SWEDISH ART 227 
 
 disfigured by poor art, is a work of J-rcdrik J.illjckvist. 
 
 The Nordiska Museet building at the entrance to Djur- 
 garden in Stockhohn, "this giant offspring of one man's 
 energy," was completed in 1907. iLverything there, from 
 the foundation to the ceiling, is of the very best material. 
 With its gables calling to mind the Vasa age, its genuine 
 Swedish character, and the huge dimensions of its hall, this 
 edifice is an ornament to the city and an honor to the North. 
 Isac Gustav Clason, a native of Dalecarlia, after whose 
 drawings Nordiska Museet was erected, has also made very 
 Important contributions to residential architecture. The 
 enormous Biinsow House near Strandvagen, constructed 
 after a motif from the French neo-Renalssance, Is perhaps 
 the first apartment house In Stockholm In which both the 
 material — brick and sandstone — and the style are of a dig- 
 nified character. In Imitation of forms from the Swedish 
 residential architecture of the seventeenth century, Clason 
 has created one of our most celebrated and substantial 
 private residences, the Adelsward house at 2 Drottning- 
 gatan. Clason has also built Sweden's only private palace 
 of the nineteenth century, the magnificent residence of Count 
 W. v. Hallvyl. The fagade of reddish sandstone points to 
 Spanish forms; the portal Is constructed of smooth-cut 
 granite In Imposing dimensions, and above It Is enblazoned 
 the family coat-of-arms. The house Is finished throughout 
 with costly luxurlousness — a real palace in the midst of so- 
 called palaces. Clason's activity as an architect has been of 
 the greatest significance. He has emphasized the impor- 
 tance of the materials, and has done exceptional work In 
 purifying the general taste. In the mighty forms of the 
 Norrkoping Town Hall, which was constructed of brick, 
 In 1 9 10, Clason has given an Imposing expression of public 
 dignity and power. The Centralbank on Gustaf Adolfs torg 
 In Stockholm was finished in 19 14. The plans were drawn 
 by Clason in French baroque and became the determining 
 style for the north side of the marketplace. 
 
 The Davidson House on Gustaf Adolfs torg, with Its 
 sandstone facade, was erected In 1886 by Gustaf Lindgren. 
 
228 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 Among monumental edifices the building of the Academy of 
 Arts, designed by Erik Lallerstedt, occupies a conspicuous 
 place by virtue of its tasteful exterior ornamentation in the 
 Italian neo-Renaissance. The Kungsholmen Municipal 
 Building, of exquisite material and beautiful proportions, 
 and the Vasteras-Bergslags Railroad Building in Stockholm, 
 with its unique roof, are also designed by him. His most 
 distinguished work is the palatial building of the Trygg In- 
 surance Company in Stockholm, completed in 1909. Both 
 its forms and material bespeak a solidity which from all 
 viewpoints — not least from an artistic one — inspires confi- 
 dence. Lallerstedt is the creator of the imposing Technical 
 High School in Stockholm, which is a credit to our engineers 
 as well as to the architect himself. 
 
 Several business offices were erected soon after 1890. 
 The most satisfactory from an aesthetic and practical point 
 of view is the Centralpalats in Stockholm, constructed of 
 Orsa sandstone with a framework of iron. The architect, 
 Ernst Stenhammar, also built the Hotel Royal whose winter- 
 garden court, by its impressiveness and its picturesque 
 motifs, calls to mind the Venetian palaces, and is probably 
 from the standpoint of pure beauty one of the most magnifi- 
 cent places of its kind in the world. Ludvig Peterson has 
 done good work in the architecture of private buildings. In 
 1889 he erected the Hoganas warehouse in Stockholm of 
 brick in various colors, and was particularly successful in 
 giving to it an expression of massive power, thereby ingeni- 
 ously letting the material itself advertise the goods sold 
 inside. Peterson also designed the plans of Konstnarshuset 
 (the Artists' House) in Stockholm. 
 
 Ferdinand Boberg, born in Dalecarlia, is an architect 
 who, notwithstanding his obvious admiration for the archi- 
 tecture of America and Spain, seeks new forms. At the 
 Exposition in Stockholm, in 1897, his white Spanish Hall of 
 Arts, with its decorations, its loggia, and the interior with 
 imposing perspectives beneath the nobly-formed vaults, 
 aroused general admiration. The Industrial Arts Building, 
 in 1909, in Stockholm, was a work of perfect unity and 
 
A SUKVEV OI' S\Vi:i)ISIl AKI" 
 
 229 
 
 Portal of the Electrical Works in Stockholm, de- 
 signed by Ferdinand Boberg 
 
 impressiveness. This time also Boberg imitated the Span- 
 ish; dazzling white walls encircled picturesque courts. The 
 main architectural scheme of the Malmo Exposition in 19 14 
 was Boberg's creation. It was finished in white with motifs 
 from church walls and with corbie-step gables, and had a 
 majestic art hall of severe, dignified simplicity. Of more 
 substantial material is his Electrical Works in Stockholm. 
 The portal toward Regeringsgatan indicates, by its orna- 
 mentation of wires and incandescent lamps carved in huge 
 blocks of limestone, the purpose of the building, and every 
 detail suggests that it is a place for the generation of a 
 mighty natural power. Boberg's Post OflSce in Stockholm 
 
230 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 has that combination of massive strength with a goldsmith's 
 delicacy of ornamentation which is the distinguishing mark 
 of his art. In the Malmo Post Office Boberg has again 
 created a building that is an ornament to the city. He has 
 also been very successful in Rosenbad near Norrstrom, 
 where the external decoration and the color scheme — white 
 and green — are both extraordinarily original, and, what 
 is more important, beautiful. Boberg's energetic efforts to 
 give even factory buildings an attractive form has been of 
 great significance. His Gas Works near Vartan gives an 
 impression of massive power eminently suitable for a struc- 
 ture of that kind. Some of Boberg's designs are in a sense 
 inorganic and lacking in monumental qualities. This is 
 particularly noticeable in Prince Vilhelm's residence at 
 Djurgarden, in which neighborhood he has also designed the 
 residences of Prince Eugen and Herr Ernest Thiel. 
 
 Through the splendid generosity of the banker, Knut 
 Wallenberg, Uppenbarelsekyrkan was built in Saltsjobaden 
 after designs by Boberg, and decorated lavishly with exqui- 
 site works of art. The interior is a combination of grandeur 
 and sanctity, two qualities that may be united in the Byzan- 
 tine church style, but are seldom found in the churches con- 
 structed in our day. Byzantine influence is clearly revealed 
 both in the interior architectural forms and in the decora- 
 tions executed by Hjortzberg. 
 
 Boberg has designed the palatial business building of 
 Nordiska Kompaniet in Stockholm, built with solid and 
 expensive simplicity, and with a practical application of what 
 German and American technique has accomplished in this 
 field. Reliefs by Milles, symbolizing different phases of 
 trade and commerce, adorn the facade facing Hamngatan. 
 Boberg's sketches of interesting old houses, bridges, mills, 
 blacksmith shops, and so on, will form an excellent work of 
 historical importance. 
 
 Carl Westman was born in Uppsala. After studying and 
 practising his profession in North America, he returned and 
 by his virile and purposeful work has become one of our 
 most Important architects. Westman built the sanatorium 
 
A SURVEY OF SWlCDISll ARr 231 
 
 The Court-house of Stockholm, designed by Carl West- 
 man 
 
 Romanas, near Sommen in Smaland, and the house of the 
 Medical Association, in Stockholm, where every detail, such 
 as lattice-work, light fixtures, and the like was given its 
 
232 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 characteristic touch by the artist himself. He was also a 
 furniture designer. Hogberga, where the art patron 
 Fahraeus lives among his wonderful collections of Swedish, 
 Norwegian, French, and Chinese art, is Westman's work. 
 This brick building is situated near the channel on Lidingo, 
 and makes a stately appearance from the top of the hill 
 overlooking the Japanized, pine-covered terraces. These 
 three edifices, all so different but equally perfect, have dem- 
 onstrated to us the value of Carl Westman. His master- 
 piece, however, is the Stockholm Court-house, near Scheele- 
 gatan on Kungsholmen, completed in 19 15. This mighty 
 structure, looming in the austere solemnity proper for its 
 serious purpose, is topped by a huge tower covered with 
 copper. The upper part of the main portal is adorned with 
 figures representing the judge and two guilty prisoners, 
 sculptured by Christian Eriksson; the lower part is beautified 
 by excellent, strongly conventionalized small reliefs by 
 Gustav Sandberg, representing the Seven Deadly Sins. 
 
 Huge dimensions, smooth surfaces suggestive of Vadstena 
 Abbey, a certain severity In the ornamentation as is fitting 
 In a house of law, a genuinely Swedish quality together with 
 freshness and boldness of execution, all contribute to make 
 Stockholm's Court-house a work of special significance in 
 what It presages for modern Swedish architecture. The 
 Interior harmonizes with the exterior. It Is very substantial 
 In its appointments with both amusing and exquisite details, 
 often full of meaning, as, for example, the colossal Vala's 
 Column, an enormous block of stone sculptured by Sand- 
 berg, on which the wisdom of the Eddas concerning crime 
 and final atonement Is represented in extremely conventional- 
 ized low reliefs; and the room where marriages are per- 
 formed, which Is ornamented with graceful and imaginative 
 paintings by FIlip Mansson. The same vigor and solidity 
 that characterize the Court-house are found in Westman's 
 Museum of Industrial Arts In Gothenburg. 
 
 The Stockholmer Ragnar Ostberg belongs to the Swedish 
 architects who are keenly Interested in all vital architecture, 
 whether old or new, and has trained himself In his profes- 
 
A siikvi;v oi' swi'.Disii Akr 
 
 233 
 
 Ostermalm Technical High School in Stockholm, designed by Ragnar 
 Ostberg 
 
 sion by travelling — often on a bicycle — in almost every part 
 of Europe. While respecting tradition as well as materials, 
 he aims to create houses in harmony with what our time 
 and our country have a right to demand in the way of genu- 
 ineness and impressiveness. Among the beautiful homes 
 that Ostberg has built we may note the solid mansion of 
 Dr. Paull, at Djursholm, constructed with dignified sim- 
 plicity of brick. He has been exceptionally happy in the 
 manner in which he has united and rebuilt, to form the 
 Bonnier residence, two adjoining houses in Djurgarden, pre- 
 serving and increasing the homelike comfort of the old struc- 
 tures. For Herr Thorsten Laurin he has erected, also in 
 Djurgarden, a silver-grey wooden house with shingled walls 
 and roof covered with green-glazed tiles. The house forms 
 a happy and firm composition with the knoll upon which 
 it rests. 
 
 In the beautiful Odd Fellow House in Nykoping and in 
 the Ostermalm Technical High School in Stockholm he has 
 
234 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 made use of an artistic form of undressed brick surfaces. 
 This school building, completed in 19 lO, is one of the most 
 satisfying examples of Swedish architecture of recent date. 
 A brick wall, resting upon a foundation of uncut stones and 
 boulders, separates the school and playground from the out- 
 side world. The reddish-brown walls of the building itself 
 are masoned of hand-made Halsingborg brick upon a gran- 
 ite base. The curb-roof is covered with tile. The interior, 
 with its cross-vaulted passages, gives an impression of purity 
 and solemnity, calling to mind the fact that our Swedish 
 schools had their origin in the medieval church. The main 
 staircase is sumptuously adorned with noble works of art 
 by Prince Eugen, Mllles, Torneman, and Georg Pauli. 
 The main auditorium, in white with panels of dark blue 
 Dutch tiles, Is borne up by grooved granite columns. Rag- 
 nar Ostberg has drawn the plans that were unanimously 
 accepted for the Stockholm Town Hall. The high 
 square tower is reflected In Malaren and proclaims far and 
 wide that here stands a building which the largest and most 
 beautiful city of the peninsula may proudly call Its own. 
 
 The architect Ells Benckert has designed furniture with 
 unusual feeling for form and exceptionally fine taste. Un- 
 fortunately his promising career was broken off prematurely 
 by his death In 19 13, but what he did in the furnishing of the 
 Stockholm Municipal Building has exercised a strong Influ- 
 ence upon artistic Swedish handicraft. The architect, Carl 
 Malmsten, in a number of excellently made pieces of furni- 
 ture, such as cabinets, writing tables, and secretaries, has 
 discovered the happiest forms, and has effected a fusion of 
 old and new most conspicuous in his exquisitely artistic 
 inlaid work. 
 
 Lars Wahlman, besides designing a number of stately 
 country palaces — Hjularod near Lund in the medieval 
 French castle style and Tjoloholm In Halland in the English 
 style — has made a name for himself by his exceptionally 
 good solution of the church building problem of our time. 
 The Engelbrekt Church, completed In 19 14, has an unusu- 
 ally picturesque location commanding a view of northern 
 
A SUKVJ<:Y of SWEDISH ART 235 
 
 Stockholm. Although the steps and terraces approaching 
 the buililliig are wanting in ample dimensions, the exterior 
 and, perhaps even more, the interior have a certain richness 
 and a religious atmosphere. The mighty vaults with their 
 pure lines and the artistic decorations — mural paintings by 
 Iljortzberg in a style suggestive of the Byzantine — make 
 this Stockholm church one of our country's most successful 
 ecclesiastical structures of modern times. 
 
 Following the lines of Visby's city wall, Torben Grut, 
 born in Vastergotland, designed Sweden's imposing athletic 
 building, the Stadium, where our nation won its victories 
 at the Olympic Games in 19 12. In the brick walls, at once 
 beautiful and severe, Grut created an excellent Swedish 
 frame for this play with Its under-current of seriousness. 
 Sigfrld Ericson has made a name in church architecture by 
 his wonderfully well placed and almost fortress-like Mast- 
 huggskyrka (Beacon Church) — a stronghold of the spirit 
 — which may be seen far out to sea upon approaching his 
 native city, Gothenburg. 
 
 Ivar Tengbom first aroused attention by his Town Hall 
 In Boras. But It was in the construction of the substantial, 
 palatial home of the Enskllda Bank near Kungstradgarden 
 In Stockholm that he attained a rank of the first order among 
 the architects of our land. The building harmonizes in 
 architectural composition with a house situated on the other 
 side of Wahrendorffsgatan. It is constructed of black 
 granite extending for a considerable distance up the facade, 
 and finished off above that with a coat of light grey plaster. 
 The forms are somewhat reminiscent of the neo-antlque. 
 The central portion of the fagade Is adorned with columns, 
 which support symbolic reliefs, all in black granite. Money 
 has been called "the result of labor," and this money palace 
 has more of the severity and seriousness of labor than of 
 the splendor of gold. The large banking hall In dark and 
 light polished stone, limestone and marble, Is very Imposing 
 In Its dimensions and in Its subdued but sumptuous decora- 
 tions. Solidity, strength, good taste, and efficiency are 
 characteristics of thjs building, and these are qualities we 
 
236 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 The Enskilda Bank in Stockholm, designed by Ivar Tengbom 
 
 desire both in our economic and not less in our artistic life. 
 During the last decades, the conviction has gained ground 
 in a few places in Europe, that style and a more general 
 aesthetic influence In our communities can only be attained 
 through good architecture. In the development of the 
 home, the private dwelling-house, both the Interior and the 
 
A suKVia' oi' s\vi:i)isii arv 237 
 
 cxtcrioi", llici^c is no people lliat lias workeil more success- 
 fully than the I'aij^lish. When it comes to municipal archi- 
 tecture and monumental buildings, on tlie other hand, a 
 severe style has perhaps found its most magnificent applica- 
 tion in the new buildings of German cities. Denmark, also, 
 has enjoyed a very sound architectural evolution, in which 
 harmony and self-restraint — which spell good taste — ha\e 
 been more evident than in most other places. Nor can it 
 be denied that Swedish architecture — by virtue of gootl 
 material, big conceptions, and a large number of artists who 
 possess creative genius and yet base their art on national 
 traditions — has had and Is having a golden period. It is 
 now one of the best In the world, and we can only hope that 
 we shall be able to protect the relatively little of the old that 
 we have left, all the more precious to us because It is so little. 
 We may hope, too, that while due attention Is paid to the 
 practical and economic, the aesthetic viewpoint, which Is so 
 essential to our Intellectual welfare, be further encouraged 
 and promoted by energetic architects. Then we shall per- 
 haps attain a modern Swedish style with all that this Implies 
 of national health and stability of culture. 
 
DANISH ART IN THE NINETEENTH 
 CENTURY 
 
 By 
 EMIL HANNOVER 
 
 Director of The Danish Museum of Industrial Art 
 
DANISH ART IN THE NINETEENTH 
 CENTURY 
 
 Bv Emil Hannover 
 
 THE PERIOD BEFORE ECKERSBERG 
 
 DURING the Middle Ages and the period of the 
 Renaissance, art in little Denmark, even when prac- 
 tised by Danes, remained hardly more than a feeble 
 reflection of the art of larger countries, or of countries 
 which set the artistic standards of the time. Necessarily, of 
 course, it adapted itself to the humbler needs of Denmark, 
 and, In special cases, developed distinctive forms which 
 would scarcely be met with outside of the Danish bounda- 
 ries; but even as late as the rococo period Denmark had 
 produced no art that could be called truly Danish In spirit 
 and character. 
 
 Pilo, who was a Swede by birth, shows in his portraits a 
 purely French style. Als, who went to Rome at a time when 
 the antique was beginning to engage men's minds, belongs as 
 a portrait painter to the European period of transition be- 
 tween rococo and classicism. In the style of Vigillus Erich- 
 sen's portraits we find still more marked evidence of the 
 conflicting currents which then swayed the world. And as 
 for the art of Abildgaard, it is not Danish either; although 
 his calm endeavor to attain the grand style gives his work 
 an appeal which is lacking in Fiissll's or Mengs's, It was by 
 those artists, none the less, that he was most potently In- 
 
 241 
 
242 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 fluenced. The greatest merit of his scholarly painting is 
 that it raised the level of taste in the representation of the 
 human figure. Even when the mannerism of his drawing, 
 the elongation of his proportions, is most pronounced, there 
 is a dignified bearing and a ceremonious rhythm in his 
 figures; granting that his mannerism is a detriment to his 
 style, at least it is his own. He showed less individuality 
 in his coloring, which was the result of comprehensive study 
 of the great colorists of old. Yet he had a strong sense of 
 
 Ossian, by N. A. Abildgaard 
 
DANISH ARI' IN 11 ll", XIX Cl-INTURY 243 
 
 the dcconituc \aliic of color, and a natural gift for general 
 decorative effect. In his big paintings at the Christlansborg 
 Palace in Copenhagen his skilful use of color is in contrast 
 to his fantastic notion of the quantity of allegorical inven- 
 tion that a picture can bear. On the whole, one may fairly 
 say that there is more reason to honor him for unusually high 
 purpose than for any outstanding natural talent. 
 
 All that nature withheld from Abildgaard — the freshness, 
 the geniality, the true artistic temperament, the genuine 
 professional talent and the genuine professional training — 
 all this was united in Juel. He knew the joy that comes to 
 the possessor of a great natural gift, and although he mis- 
 used his gift during his later years by the wholesale produc- 
 tion of portraits which were often empty and flat, even these 
 show the enjoyment he felt in the exercise of his accurate 
 eye and his easy, delicate hand. There is something infec- 
 tious in his delight In his work, and also In his amiability. 
 Since his time portrait painting has gained In sobriety, and 
 to the modern eye the people In his pictures undoubtedly 
 seem more festive than he ever Intended that they should. 
 In his own day, however, his portrait painting marked a 
 complete break from the fashion of the preceding age; it 
 was a gigantic stride toward the close approach to life as It 
 really Is, whereas the earlier period had held Itself aloof 
 and superior. In an attitude of condescension toward the 
 beholder. Juel was probably the first painter to present 
 a distinguished man In his dressing-gown — In his portrait 
 of Bonnet, the Genevan philosopher. 
 
 He sometimes became saccharine in his coloring, finicky 
 In his drawing, all too ready to make concessions to public 
 taste. Yet there Is a little series of portrait sketches which 
 shows that he might have become a pioneer In coloring, too. 
 Unfortunately, the mastery, the freedom from conven- 
 tionality, the strongly progressive trend, which these 
 sketches display, did not develop In Juel's portrait painting. 
 He had to take to an entirely different field, to landscape, 
 before he could let himself go and satisfy the longing for 
 fresh air which his mind was cleanly enough to feel, even 
 
244 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 though it seemed that his proper element was the close 
 atmosphere of the drawing-room. We may well believe 
 that he was imbued with the ideas of Rousseau, for he had 
 lived for some years in Rousseau's city and in the house of 
 one of Rousseau's disciples. However that may be, his 
 attitude toward nature was essentially Rousseau's. He was 
 most strongly moved by the vast and phenomenal aspects of 
 nature. He rarely made any deep study of single landscape 
 
 Portrait of the Philosopher Bonnet, by Jens Juel 
 
DANISM \kl' IN 11 ll', XIX Ci'.NIl'kV 245 
 
 Farmhouse in a Gathering Storm, by Jens Juel 
 
 motifs, but he was sensitive to the moods of nature, and he 
 felt the spirit of Danish landscape earlier and more acutely 
 than any of his contemporaries. 
 
 In other and broader conditions, a man of such capacity, 
 one of the most talented Danish artists that has ever lived, 
 would undoubtedly have developed along different lines, 
 and might have become a painter of European importance. 
 Carstens (not to mention Thorvaldsen) , has shown us how 
 the power of native Danish genius may expand in a climate 
 more favorable to art than that of Denmark. Unfortu- 
 nately Carstens turned away from Denmark as he devel- 
 oped, and his significance in relation to his native country is 
 limited to his significance in relation to Thorvaldsen. 
 
 If the other Danish painters who preceded Eckersberg 
 may claim an Introduction to the public outside Denmark, 
 it can be only perfunctory. Both the portraits and the land- 
 scapes of Erik Pauelsen, painted In a style common to all 
 Europe, point backward rather than forward. As a typical 
 example of all that was required to fulfill the modest de- 
 mands on art of eighteenth century Denmark, we have 
 Lorentzen, with his views from all corners of the world, his 
 
246 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 pictures on subjects from the history of the North, and his 
 portraits. Only a few of the later ones show any tendency 
 toward more thorough characterization; these few are, in 
 a way, Eckersberg before Eckersberg; they are more nearly 
 in his spirit than the portraits painted by Hornemann — 
 quite as able an artist — in his latest years under the direct 
 influence of the torch-bearer of Danish art. 
 
 On the rest of the older men who lived on into his time, 
 Eckersberg made little if any impression. There is a slight 
 trace in the work from the 1820's of Hans Hansen, a pupil 
 or imitator of Juel's, of little ability. As an historical 
 painter, Kratzenstein-Stub formed his style after Thorvald- 
 sen's; as a portrait painter, more or less after Gerard's. 
 Fritzsch, the painter of flowers, got his style, his effective 
 composition, and the free swing of his brush from Monnoyer 
 and other seventeenth century French or Dutch flower spe- 
 cialists. Gebauer, likewise, had studied the galleries more 
 diligently than nature. He by no means lacked delicate 
 and romantic feeling for the animals and the landscapes he 
 painted, but he did lack the courage to depend on his own 
 impressions. In composition and in coloring he followed 
 his Dutchmen to the end. 
 
 The art of the outgoing period thus persisted, to some 
 extent, into the first years of the nineteenth century in Den- 
 mark. The majority of its devotees, however, wore out 
 their moribund existence in the shadow, taking no place in 
 the light of truth which Eckersberg's art spread abroad like 
 the brightness of day; in this light the seedlings of future 
 Danish art were sprouting and growing green in abundance. 
 
II 
 
 ECKERSBERG 
 
 BORN in 1783 at Blaakrog In Slesvig in poor circum- 
 stances, Eckersberg was a needy student at the Acad- 
 emy of Art in Copenhagen, until he started out in 
 1 8 10 on his journey to Paris and Rome. He remained 
 abroad until 18 16, and experienced a complete transforma- 
 tion of his ideas, in the course of which his artistic person- 
 ality finally emerged in crystalline clarity. 
 
 Despite a superficial sympathy for the classicism of his 
 time, with which he came in close contact first while a pupil 
 of David In Paris and later when he was In friendly asso- 
 ciation with Thorvaldsen In Rome, his character as an artist 
 formed itself round his faculty for the reproduction of 
 external nature, which he owed to his extraordinary eyes. 
 The first distinct expression of this gift Is In his Views of 
 Rome. The secret of these studies Is that there Is nothing 
 secret In them. Eckersberg painted just what he saw, but 
 now for the first time he saw entirely with his own eyes, and 
 his own eyes were marvellously perfect organs. It was as 
 If nature had fitted them with something that worked like 
 a telescope, giving them longer range than ordinary eyes. 
 He could see distant objects as clearly and sharply as those 
 that were near, and he observed so accurately that one would 
 think he must have used some optical Instrument Instead of 
 mere unassisted human vision. Eckersberg's sound con- 
 stitution partly explains the phenomenon. Entirely devoid 
 of nervousness, he received all impressions calmly and Im- 
 perturbably; nothing could give him a shock, nothing could 
 influence him or color what he saw or obscure It or warp It 
 
 247 
 
248 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 View at Villa Borghese, by C. V. Eckersberg 
 
 to fit some subjective Interpretation rather than the objective 
 reahty. 
 
 This fixity of vision was so intense that it amounted almost 
 to genius. Yet Eckersberg did not really attain genius. He 
 lacked the ability to let the visible reality rise up phoenix- 
 like from his work in a more beautiful form. Only once in 
 his life did he have a real inspiration: when he painted his 
 three-quarter-length portrait of Thorvaldsen. On this one 
 occasion a higher power came to his assistance, unknown to 
 him. The observer, for once, became something of a seer. 
 
 He did not again rise above himself like this. It was the 
 homely virtues, amiability, righteousness, diligence, and 
 sense of duty, which throve best in the quiet atmosphere of 
 his sitting-room. To his brush nothing was insignificant. 
 For fear of missing something, he avoided half-lights and 
 chiaroscuro. Only in the clear, sober light of day could 
 Eckersberg satisfy his keenest passion as an artist, the desire 
 for study, or, as he called it himself, for "research." 
 
 i 
 
DANISI I \K I l\' II IP: XIX CI'N ri'RV 
 
 ■V.) 
 
 Portrait of Thorvaldsen, by Eckersberg 
 
 It was not the heart and reins that he searched as a por- 
 trait painter, but everything that he could actually see with 
 his eyes. If one remembers that the Danes have always 
 been known for their homely simplicity, that their simplicity 
 has never been more homely than at the period when Eckers- 
 berg drew, and that no people have ever been drawn by an 
 artist who had more of the virtues of this same homely 
 simplicity than Eckersberg himself, one will appreciate how 
 typically, intensely, the Danish character Is brought out in 
 
250 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 The Natlianson Family, by Eckersberg 
 
 his portraits. That is one of the discoveries to which he was 
 led unconsciously — one might almost say blindly if it were 
 not particularly due to his eyes — by his constant insistence 
 on going to the bottom in his search for truth. It goes with- 
 out saying that this discovery is one of the greatest of which 
 the history of Danish art can boast. 
 
 This fresh, primal point of view, which is what produces 
 in the earlier stages of an art the pioneers who give direc- 
 tion to subsequent tendencies, led him to other discoveries 
 besides this of the Danish Type. He is also the discoverer 
 of Danish country and of the Danish sea. 
 
 His passion for the sea began as a passion for ships. He 
 was interested In mechanics and construction, and in ship- 
 ping he found a wide field for this interest. His first ma- 
 rines, accordingly, are rather pictures of ships than of the 
 sea. With complete familiarity his brush hovered about 
 the full-rigged masts, flitted in a delighted rope-dance along 
 hundreds of stays and halyards and ratlines, all drawn with- 
 out the faintest tremor of the hand. Soon the sea became 
 as Interesting to him as the ships. He found In it a wholly 
 
DANISH ART IN Till: XIX C1:N lURY 251 
 
 Portrait of Madame Schmidt, by Eckersberg 
 
 new subject for that "research" with which his art was be- 
 coming more and more identical, and he acquired a thorough 
 knowledge of it in a scientific way. It is obvious that there 
 can be no great spontaneity to pictures that have required 
 in advance an extraordinary amount of deliberation, that 
 
252 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 Portrait of Froken Marsmann, by Eckersberg 
 
 conceal under their paint a network of structural lines. 
 Not until old age had impaired his sight — probably because 
 of his constant use of a telescope — did he go through a brief 
 phase, when his eyes were reduced to M^hat might be called 
 normal vision, in which he painted a little series of marines 
 of a more pictorial character. All the energy that he had 
 formerly devoted to detail was in these works concentrated 
 on the reproduction of the general effect which he saw with 
 his once analytical eyes. It seems as if he had had to scale 
 his over-acute sight down to normal before he could focus 
 on the great striking truth of nature which he had long 
 sought but never quite attained: the color of the Danish 
 
I3AN1SH ART IN TUJ-: XIX C1':N I'URV 253 
 
 A Privateer Chasing a Frigate, by Eckersberg 
 
 seas when the Danish sounds grow blue under a summer 
 sky and the summer sun flashes on the white sails that en- 
 circle the green islands of Denmark. 
 
 He made his discoveries on land more quickly, more 
 easily, and more incidentally. When he took it into his head, 
 on a fine September day, to have a look at the green trees 
 of the Dyrehaven beechwoods before the coming of autumn, 
 or when his pupils induced him to go with them on one of 
 their excursions, he would inevitably make use of the occa- 
 sion to do a little color-sketch. What he brought back in 
 his thumb-box was only a trifle in comparison to the wealth 
 of remembered detail that he poured out on his sketch 
 when he got it home and worked it up on canvas. He was at 
 times too lavish in his sheer exuberant delight in the small 
 things of nature, hitherto neglected in Danish landscape 
 painting. It is easy to see in his finished landscapes that 
 they were not completed in the open. They are products 
 of the heart, and of the studio. Such treatment, however, 
 was not unsuitable to the happy, idyllic aspect of Danish 
 country which he preferred to paint. Entirely untrained, 
 
254 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 Renbjerg Brickyard, by Eckersberg 
 
 self-taught as a landscape painter, unaffected by rules and 
 methods, with his hitherto unused and therefore fresh per- 
 ception of nature and his love for his native land, he could 
 penetrate further Into Danish nature than any of his prede- 
 cessors. He was the first to strike with sure, firm touch the 
 dominant color chord In the harmony of Danish landscape. 
 
 These discoveries of his, the unchanging characteristics 
 of the Danish people and the physiognomy of Danish land 
 and Danish sea, were far greater contributions than any- 
 thing In the big historical paintings and altar-pieces which 
 he himself regarded as his highest achievements. His art 
 was all prose, but It was great prose. His form Is beautiful 
 because It Is natural; It Is natural because It Is the most accu- 
 rate and Immediate expression of his spirit. The consistency 
 between the spirit and the form of his art bespeaks the 
 undeviating truthfulness which Is the essence of his character. 
 
 On this same Inherent truthfulness, as on an Imperishable 
 foundation, stands the school which Eckersberg established. 
 
Ill 
 
 ECKERSBERG'S SCHOOL 
 
 THERE were three men virtually contemporary with 
 Eckersberg of whom one took his place in the evo- 
 lution of Danish art very late, another never took any 
 place at all, while the third attained a very prominent posi- 
 tion apart from the general trend. The first of the three 
 was I. P. Moller, a landscape painter, who in his old age, 
 under the influence of younger landscape painters, attained 
 a better understanding of Danish nature, and somewhat 
 outgrew his earlier artificial manner. The second was I. L. 
 Lund, who a few years before Eckersberg, had likewise 
 worked under David, but had not been so fortunate in seiz- 
 ing and fostering the realistic spirit of David's teaching. He 
 became professor at the Academy of Art, but did not offer 
 any such attraction to the rising generation of painters as 
 Eckersberg, who became professor at the same time. A bet- 
 ter example for the young was the third of these artists, 
 C. A. Jensen, His special gift was insight swift as lightning, 
 happily combined with a dazzlingly clever technique. These 
 two characteristics gave him exceptional qualification as a 
 portrait painter, but they also brought him more popularity 
 than was altogether good for him. His profundity had 
 never been great, and as the years went on his portraits 
 became mere rapid sketches. Yet in these swift sketches 
 his insight is so sure and his drawing so brilliant that he 
 often reminds us of no less a personage than Frans Hals. 
 
 The inevitable reflection of such a shining phenomenon 
 In the skies of Danish art may be seen here and there in the 
 painting of the younger men — frequently in Kobke, occa- 
 
 255 
 
256 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 sionally in Marstrand and Roed. But these are only transi- 
 tory gleams compared with the steady and constant light 
 that radiates from Eckersberg's work upon the great circle 
 of his pupils. 
 
 It was in the late twenties and the early thirties that 
 
 Eckersberg's school 
 reached its fullest 
 bloom. His best 
 pupils at that time 
 were Rorbye, Roed, 
 Bendz, Kobke, Petz- 
 holdt, Adam Miil- 
 ler, Kiichler, Con- 
 stantin Hansen, 
 Eddelien, and Mar- 
 strand. For all 
 these men the day 
 that they entered 
 the master's atelier 
 was of far-reaching 
 significance. They 
 learned there that 
 the first rule of 
 painting is inviola- 
 ble truthfulness in 
 the representation 
 of a subject. They 
 learned, further, that this depends not on what is represented, 
 but on how it is represented. They also learned, in this 
 connection, the value of loving study of the smallest details 
 of nature. Lastly, they learned that only what lies near at 
 hand lies near enough to the heart to be loved and to be 
 painted. 
 
 Naturally they had already in their youth tendencies 
 toward the individual differences which later became evident 
 in their work, but their pictures have far less the stamp of 
 individuality than of the period and the school. It is, per- 
 haps, the glimpses of individuality, naively revealed with the 
 
 Portrait of the Scene Painter Troels Lund, 
 by C. A. Jensen 
 
DANISH ARV IN riii<: xix ci':NriJkv 257 
 
 shy and dcllcalc <;i-atc ol uncoiiscloiisiicss, wliith ^i\c to the 
 paintings procluccd hy ]'",ckcrsh erg's i)upils in the thirties tiicir 
 greatest charm. 
 
 Among their pictures from this period portraits are the 
 most numerous and perhaps the best. In these the sense of 
 form is penetrating, the drawing delicate, the coloring fresh, 
 the brushwork meticulous, the interpretation of character 
 serious, direct, sincere, simple, wholesome, and clean. The 
 same may be said of their genre paintings, mostly scenes 
 from the streets and houses of Copenhagen (rarely, how- 
 ever, from peasant life, which was left to a later generation) , 
 full of homeliness and warmth, seldom with any significance 
 — the pictorial was always the most important considera- 
 tion — invariably presented in a quiet and unaffected man- 
 ner, with no suggestion of straining after effect. How easily 
 these young painters managed to be genuine and natural ! 
 All the forces that co-operate in the production of a work of 
 art were then in a state of young and blameless innocence. 
 Even nature was still almost untouched in Denmark, and 
 consequently seemed more virginal than it does to-day, now 
 
 The Finck Coffee-house at Munich, by Vilhelm Bend2 
 
258 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 that its beauty has been so often unveiled, and so often pro- 
 faned, In our paintings. The little landscapes that we owe 
 to this school therefore have an effect on one's mind like that 
 of morning and dew on one's senses. Their spirit Is so 
 ethereal that one cannot conceive of It except as pertaining to 
 just such an era of dawn as that from which they sprang. 
 
 In every field these young eyes now discovered new pic- 
 torial beauties, and they were often more fastidious In such 
 matters than the less experienced Eckersberg had been at 
 their age. The observers of color were Bendz and Kobke. 
 Bendz, who unfortunately died very young, did not leave 
 much work, but what he left Is of the highest artistic 
 quality. The greatest difference between him and Eckers- 
 berg was that he had a stronger sense of the effect of atmos- 
 phere In color than he had of color Itself. In his work, 
 where, significantly enough, we find the first attempt In Dan- 
 ish art to present scenes with artificial lighting, the most 
 Important characteristic Is the delicate perception of pictorial 
 effect. That does not imply that the characterization In his 
 portraits Is inadequate, or that there was anything lukewarm 
 In his feeling for life when he painted everyday scenes. Still, 
 If one were seeking the point at which he comes In closest 
 contact with the world about him, one might find it in his 
 eye rather than In his heart. 
 
 Kobke is richer and warmer; his feeling for the things 
 about him was at least as much in his heart as in his eye. He 
 possessed the gift, so priceless to an artist, of a heart of gold, 
 and It was In one of the most Inestimable feelings of the 
 heart of a man of the people, in the love of home and 
 all that belongs to It, that his art had Its deepest root. To 
 him, the family at home, the kinsmen and the friends who 
 cross the threshold, are half the world; the other half is 
 the Idyllic surroundings of his home. Among his most beau- 
 tiful paintings are pictures of his parents, his relatives, and 
 his friends, painted with the most complete sympathy. Even 
 the strangers whom he might occasionally paint to order 
 look as if they had been his nearest and dearest kin. He 
 could understand Intimately without feeling intimately. The 
 
DANISH ART IN Till': XIX CI:N lUkY 250 
 
 Portrait of the Artist's Mother, by Christen Kobke 
 
 great difference between Kobke and Eckersberg as portrait 
 painters is that while the latter, always alert but never vary- 
 ing in his capacity from day to day, went on with his "re- 
 search" into a character trait by trait, Kobke had moments 
 of higher intelligence in which the character in its entirety 
 flashed into his consciousness. In this respect he rather re- 
 sembled C. A. Jensen, and it is not surprising that in his 
 execution he followed Jensen rather than Eckersberg. 
 Kobke was the first Dane who succeeded in applying to 
 landscape the brilliant technique at the service of brilliant 
 insight, which he had learned from C. A. Jensen but had 
 developed to full independence. It was this that enabled 
 him to transfer his impressions of nature in all their fresh- 
 ness to the canvases which are the first, and perhaps to this 
 day the finest, of Danish open-air paintings. In his landscapes 
 
260 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 At Soitedamsso, by Christen Kobke 
 
 even more than in his portraits he confined himself within 
 narrow Hmits. So close did he circumscribe his limits that 
 he could hardly have drawn them closer and still have left 
 room for anything that could really be called landscape. He 
 sought his subjects in the restricted region where the coun- 
 try meets the city and surrounds scattered, outlying strag- 
 glers from the battalions of red roofs with the green circle 
 of its gardens and fields. No romantic excursion lured him 
 from these precincts, where he felt himself completely at 
 home. If more homely in his choice of subjects than Eckers- 
 berg, he was, on the other hand, more purely artistic in his 
 treatment of them. "From the study of shadow and the 
 theory of linear perspective a man advances to color and 
 air-tones" Eckersberg once said to his pupils. Kobke had 
 followed no such course; he was a born painter, especially 
 sensitive to the delicacy and beauty of color as affected by 
 light and atmosphere. He is the discoverer in Danish land- 
 scape painting of what are now called "values," the relative 
 intensity of color-tones; he is the earliest master in this de- 
 partment, and is still perhaps the greatest. 
 
 While Bendz and Kobke in Eckersberg's school devoted 
 themselves to the cultivation of color, it came more natur- 
 ally to Rorbye and Roed to develop drawing and form. Both 
 
DANISM \\<\ IN INI', \IX (I'A'rUKV 261 
 
 tiicJ their li;iiuls at almost c\ crytliiiifj; in their youth, as was 
 the eiistom of the sehool, hut the eomplete laek of poetie 
 faeulty c\entually foreecl them into the Held in whieh this 
 limitation least hampered them. Apart from this limitation, 
 their strongest common characteristics were, at first, an ex- 
 traordinary dexterity and absolute truthfulness. Rocd main- 
 tained these to the end of his days, hut Rorbye lost some- 
 thing ol his thoroughness dui'ing his years of rambling in 
 
 Portrait of the Artist Lorentzen, by Martinus Rorbye 
 
262 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 Portrait of the Artist's Mother, by Jorgen Rocd 
 
 the South and in the Orient, which naturally widened the 
 range of his subjects. Roed, as has been implied, remained 
 more consistent throughout his life, which was much longer 
 than Rorbye's, but he too painted his best pictures as a young 
 man, and proved himself incapable of growth. In all the 
 long course of his later work we find nothing with as much 
 feeling as his early portraits and nothing so attractive as 
 the naive charm, the appearance of actuality, and the faith- 
 fulness of rendering of his genre paintings and street scenes 
 from the period before his travels, or of the architectual 
 studies from his sojourn in Italy. The talent as a draughts- 
 man with which he was to the last so richly endowed made 
 him the most trustworthy portrait painter of the period. 
 His many large Biblical paintings, on the other hand, testify 
 rather to his taste and his fine intelligence than to a capacity 
 proportionate to his subjects. 
 
DANISH Akr IN Till': XiX CI-:N'IURY 263 
 
 
 
 •:\i|^VJf 
 
 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 m 
 
 " Mr' '^'fflHI^^^^^I 
 
 44;-,o\\.: ::..,^-^:c'^ -^^'ts 
 
 
 %^^ft*^**^^ 
 
 ^' ' 
 
 
 .. .^^-.^^.^.^.... '^^M 
 
 
 ^ 
 
 Portrait of Fru Wanscher, by Constantin Hansen 
 
 All that he acquired in Italy was improved taste. One 
 might well say that of all Eckersberg's pupils he was the 
 least affected by Italy; even as an old man he persevered in 
 the traditions of the school without the slightest alteration. 
 Equally faithful to tradition were Holbech, Aumont, Baer- 
 entzen, and Hunaeus, painters chiefly of portraits, who for 
 the most part stayed at home, and never succeeded in get- 
 ting to Rome. It was at Rome that the best of Eckersberg's 
 pupils were gathered in the later thirties, and it was there 
 that the break from the school occurred. How this breach 
 was made in each case may be learned from what follows. 
 Here we need only point out that the break, for some of 
 those concerned, was already prepared at home, owing to 
 the influence of the sculptor Freund, whose sense of style 
 and broader outlook on art off^ered a pleasing contrast to 
 
264 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 An Elocutionist on the Mole in Naples, by Constantin Hansen 
 
 Eckersberg's somewhat shortsighted naturalism ; he had an 
 especially strong effect on Kobke and his friend Constantin 
 Hansen. 
 
 Hansen was, besides, constitutionally disposed to a breach 
 with tradition at home. Though he shared the school's 
 strong sense of truth, he early acquired a sense of plastic 
 form, and also a strong feeling for the antique. He fol- 
 lowed the example of Eckersberg to the extent of devoting 
 himself faithfully to the study of architecture and landscape 
 during his stay in Italy. He departed from his master, how- 
 ever, by treating these subjects with more intelligence and 
 brilliance and a keener eye for color than Eckersberg ever 
 possessed. Soon his interest in the picturesque was forced 
 into the background by his increasing plastic sense and his 
 awakened feeling for style. He had been roused partly by 
 the antique paintings in Naples and partly by the beautiful 
 race of mankind which he saw about him. The result was 
 that there appeared in his work a fresh and living style, not 
 a mere empty formalism. His chief work is the fresco dec- 
 
DANISH Aki IN nil': xix ei;N riiRv 
 
 2(6 
 
 Fresco Decoration in the Vestibule of the University of Copenhagen, 
 by Constantin Hansen 
 
 oration of the vestibule of the University, which he under- 
 took after his return home in collaboration with Hilker. 
 Here his art rises far above the usual Danish level. With a 
 profound understanding both of the methods of ancient art 
 and of the philosophy of the Greek myths, he produced a 
 cycle of paintings which in the purity and power of their 
 style are scarcely equalled by any work of similar character 
 in modern times. The period, however, was not favorable 
 to a protracted sojourn among the gods of Greece. He was 
 caught in the prevalent trend of thought, and under the 
 influence of "Scandinavianism," of Hoyen and Grundtvig, 
 he devoted himself to subjects from Norse mythology, just 
 at the moment when his art was beginning to show its char- 
 acteristic simplicity and individuality, but unfortunately also 
 its deficiency in certain respects, notably in color and in imag- 
 
266 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 JEgh's Feast, by Constantin Hansen 
 
 inatlon. His portrait painting was affected by his other 
 activities, both to its advantage and to its disadvantage. 
 There is an almost complete lack of pictorial charm in his 
 portraits, which are uniformly brown, and wooden or 
 leathery; but what they lose in this respect they gain in plas- 
 tic and monumental effect. The great picture of the Con- 
 stituent Assembly which Constantin Hansen, who aged 
 early, painted with what was left of his youthful strength, is 
 clearly, despite many obvious defects, the work of a painter 
 who understands better than most sculptors the requisites 
 of monumental art. In his later years he painted more 
 naturalistic, intimate pictures of his home, but even in these 
 the composition retains, by means of a slight deviation 
 from truth of line, something of the beauty of line and the 
 style which were what this artist had acquired in Italy. 
 
 There were still others to whom Italy taught devotion to 
 beauty, but it was to beauty in different and less significant 
 manifestations. To Petzholdt, a landscape painter of re- 
 markable talent, the Southern journey gave only a new and 
 more luminous palette, but as he died young it may be that 
 he had not had time to complete his development. To Kiich- 
 
DANISH ART IN illE XTX CENTURY 267 
 
 Icr the journey supplied gay subjects from the cheerful life 
 of the Italian people, until he was converted to Catholicism 
 and, under the influence of the German Nazarenes, took to 
 painting thin, bloodless, religious pictures of ideal subjects. 
 He became a monk, entered a cloister, and was thus lost to 
 Danish art. A more lamentable loss was that of Adam 
 Muller, whose career came to an end in Italy when he was 
 barely thirty-three. He was the only one of Eckersberg's 
 pupils who might be called ethereal, and was perhaps pre- 
 disposed to artistic anaemia and impotence, for In his earliest 
 work his soulfulness already seemed rather morbidly languid 
 and listless. This, however. Is vital and personal painting 
 compared with the dispirited, characterless work that he 
 produced In Italy after his lungs had become affected — faint 
 echoes of Perugino and the earlier style of Raphael. Edde- 
 llen, like Adam Muller, lost his health In Italy, but he In- 
 creased his artistic powers by his study of the Renaissance, 
 which later stood him In good stead when he executed his 
 best work, the celling of Christian IV's chapel at Roskilde. 
 Even If residence In Italy had, as we have seen, different 
 effects on Eckersberg's different pupils, the general Influence 
 on the tendencies of Danish art was the same. To a con- 
 siderable extent this Influence Is due to the contemporaneous 
 German attitude toward Italian art. Not only while Thor- 
 valdsen was living in Rome, but for several years after his 
 return home, Danish artists continued to profit by the repu- 
 tation that his great name had made for their country. They 
 associated themselves with the Germans, learned their lan- 
 guage, and eagerly took part In the gay artists' life of the 
 cafes. One of the leaders In this Intercourse was Ernst 
 Meyer. He was born in Altona, and spoke Danish Imper- 
 fectly; nor was the language he spoke with his brush gen- 
 uinely Danish. He had hardly any of the peculiarities of 
 Eckersberg's school; the mere fact that he abandoned his 
 own country for practically the whole of his life was an 
 Incongruity In a school which had as Its firmest foundation 
 a strong feeling for home. But the scenes from the life of 
 the Italian people which he sent back to the exhibitions In 
 
268 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 A Roman Boy Brought to the Convent, by Ernst Meyer 
 
 Copenhagen none the less roused great admiration, and 
 seemed to the younger Danish painters to set forth all the 
 charms of Italy. They had a seductive beauty, an alluring 
 playfulness, and a tinge of sentimentality, which were not 
 unwelcome at that period. It was from these pictures that 
 young men got their first conception of Italy, and when they 
 later went there to paint, they chose subjects similar to his, 
 and were predisposed by him in their interpretation. The 
 rest — technique — they learned from the pure Germans. 
 They learned from them to generalize nature so as to con- 
 form with the conventional conception of beauty. They 
 also learned from the Germans to spare themselves labor 
 by any convenient device. The Germans, for instance, taught 
 them to paint from costumes instead of from living models, 
 and to paint over a framework of outlines, drawn on the 
 canvas, with the aid of color formulse. Their naturalism 
 
DANISH ART IN Till': XIX CIlN'rilRV 269 
 
 thus hecainc alHictcd witii a hall-licartccliicss Irom which 
 they found it \cry hard to rcco\cr. Of those already men- 
 tioned, Hoed was the only one who really did recover. Of 
 those not previously discussed, there was one who never 
 recovered — Sonne — hut he properly helonjijs in a later cate- 
 gory; and, strictly speaking, another — Marstrand — who Is 
 separately considered in the next chapter. 
 
IV 
 MARSTRAND 
 
 WHEN Marstrand was very young, he was expected 
 to become something of a Hogarth ; it soon appeared, 
 however, that his gift was not for satire, but for fun- 
 making. His humor sprang from a heart that was pure and 
 warm, and was therefore gentle and crystal clear. And as 
 his heart matured, there flowed from it, also, a deep current 
 of humanity which made the humor in his art delicate and 
 appealing, while at the same time his awakening sense of 
 beauty gave his work its outward dignity and grace. 
 
 Italy roused his sense of beauty. Long before he went to 
 Rome he had adopted the familiar conception of the paint- 
 ers' ideal land of sunshine, common to all representations 
 of Italian life by Northern artists. To their eyes, fascinated 
 by the foreign aspect of a life which in those days still re- 
 tained its national costumes and manners, it seemed like a 
 carnival the year round. The carnival spirit was always in 
 the air; they seized it, and it seized them. In their pic- 
 tures they have shown us, as it were, Italy in masquerade; 
 but of what was under the masquerade they rarely had very 
 much idea, so they had little to say of it. Like all the other 
 pictures of Italian life at that period, Marstrand's reproduce 
 only the surface. Yet his stand out because, far more than 
 other Northern paintings, they show a feeling for the plastic 
 grace and rythmic movement of the human form. Mar- 
 strand acquired this from first hand study of the beautiful 
 Italian race, and it so permeated him that it beautified and 
 softened his whole nature, so that one would never suspect 
 that the same artist had painted the coarse satires of his 
 
 270 
 
DANISH ARr IN iilK XIX C1':N1URV 271 
 
 
SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 Young Italian Chasing the Flies from a Sleeping Girl, by Vilhelm 
 Marstrand 
 
 early youth and the sketches of The October Festival, The 
 Sisters' Bed and other playful and charming pictures from 
 his first visit to Rome. 
 
 In the following period, while he was living in Denmark 
 from 1 841 to 1845, Marstrand painted, among other things, 
 a series of remarkable portraits. It is, however, his illus- 
 trations of Holberg that make this period an epoch in his 
 artistic career. There can be no doubt of his congeniality 
 with Holberg. Although Holberg was as far from being 
 a painter as a poet well could be, Marstrand was more of a 
 poet than most painters, and his poetic strain turned easily 
 to laughter, which gave his attitude toward life something 
 in common with Holberg's. He is one of the few men In 
 modern times who have attained a real appreciation of com- 
 edy without feeling obliged to resort to caricature in the 
 presentation of comic character. Even Daumier, of whom 
 
DANISH ARr IN riir: xix ci<:NruRY 273 
 
 The Lying-in Chamber, by Vilhelm Marstrand. From Holberg's 
 Comedy 
 
 Marstrand often reminds us in his drawings, was more pre- 
 ponderantly a caricaturist. In Marstrand's illustrations of 
 Holberg the interpretation of character is softened by 
 humor, and the humor is elevated by the sense of beauty 
 which never forsakes him. 
 
 From 1845 to 1848 he was off on another long journey, 
 through Holland to Paris and back once more to Rome. 
 None of his work has attained such popularity in his own 
 country as the genre paintings that date from this journey. 
 They by no means deserve their reputation. They show 
 insipid taste, cheap prettiness, often recalling the simpering, 
 coquettish painting of the German Riedel, 
 
 The sketches that date from the period of his second jour- 
 ney show no sign of any such deterioration. So slight, in 
 fact, was the effect of the deterioration that on a subsequent 
 trip to Italy he proved himself capable of more fresh and 
 vigorous feeling than ever before. From this last journey 
 one may date his complete emancipation, the final blossom- 
 ing of his genius. 
 
274 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 A Gondolier Giving His Hand to a Young Maiden, 
 bv Vilhelm Marstrand 
 
 The new acquirements which he brought home with him 
 had not taken shape as completed works in his portfolio. 
 What he brought home was the courage with which he had 
 been inspired to raise his art toward what he called "the 
 higher regions." Venice, especially, seems to have fired 
 him. In the presence of the great art of Titian and, still 
 more, of Veronese, he had felt stirring within him the 
 power for greater artistic achievements than he had hitherto 
 attained. Something new appeared in his painting which 
 evidently came from an expansion of his whole character. 
 The first and most striking sign of it was in his increased 
 productivity. Already industrious, he became prolific: an 
 irresistible flood of paintings, sketches, and drawings flowed 
 
DANISH Aki' IN riir: xix criNii'in 275 
 
 IHR 
 
 ^^^H^ 
 
 
 t ■ r-^- 
 
 ^^S^; --^^^Hf^^l 
 
 ^l^^l 
 
 Hip ^^R^m 
 
 NHHR 
 
 lEik^^lEs 
 
 jfepMi 
 
 The Prodigal Son's Return, by Vilhelm Marstrand 
 
 from his hand and spread out over the land. The next sign 
 of the change was in his technique; the stroke of his brush 
 or his pen became freer and bolder, his form and his line 
 became more luxuriant, more sensuous, more exuberantly 
 healthy. And as his sense of beauty developed, his humor 
 developed also; like a ripple of laughter it spread out and 
 swept over his paintings, in which he again and again turned 
 back to Holberg, or to the afflicted hero of Salamanca, who 
 is one of the most prominent figures in his great comic gal- 
 lery. At times his spirits would ebb; especially in his old 
 age he had many moments of gloom. The tide always 
 quickly rose again, however, and then he would show how 
 his heart could still swell with the very buoyancy of youth. 
 This is best illustrated, perhaps, in some of his pictures of 
 his home, of his wife, and his children. 
 
 The broadening of his character led quite naturally to 
 the broadening of his field. He now justly earned the title 
 of "historical painter," but not in the derogatory sense which 
 
276 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
DANISM ART IN TIIR XTX Cl^NTURY 277 
 
 the term has acquired in our day. It was life itself, not dead 
 history, that he painted, and painted in such a way that the 
 boundary between historical painting and genre painting is 
 often hard to define. In his religious pictures, too, one rec- 
 ognizes the genre painter; they owe their freshness to their 
 close relation to actual life. This is especially noticeable in 
 his greatest easel painting. The Great Supper (1869). Of 
 all his beautiful compositions this is the most beautiful, and 
 it is impossible to find a picture, although pictorially it is not 
 one of his best, which so fully displays his finest and richest 
 gifts. His great love for humanity in every walk of life pal- 
 pitates in this picture, in which he has assembled all types, 
 and his strong affection for the South is manifest in his 
 choice of setting — an Italian Renaissance hall, with a table 
 laden with Italian wine and Italian fruit, and guests who are 
 the actual people of the Italian streets and lanes. Over all 
 is a magical glamour, not produced by any illusion of beauti- 
 ful color — for he was great only as a draughtsman, not as a 
 colorist — but reflected from the luxuriance of his lavishly 
 splendid and generous spirit. 
 
 Far from being quenched by years, his spirit shone con- 
 stantly brighter and cast its light over new and wider regions. 
 With the exception of landscape, which played an entirely 
 insignificant part in his art, he painted almost everything. 
 Much of his work was mediocre, but there is no need to 
 dwell upon this fact. He concentrated his power on big 
 things instead of spreading it evenly over lesser things. In 
 his later years ample opportunity arose for the application 
 of his powers to the solution of new problems in the devel- 
 opment of monumental design. In his mural painting in 
 Christian IV's chapel in Roskilde Cathedral, his grand and 
 virile characterization of the King on board Trefoldigheden, 
 the composition, otherwise excellent, has one fault: there is 
 material in it for a dozen pictures. There is far greater 
 economy of figures, colors, and perspective in his picture of 
 the inauguration of Copenhagen University, and, judging by 
 the sketches, his representation of the Parable of the Tal- 
 ents, which he unfortunately did not complete, for the Na- 
 
278 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 tional Bank in Copenhagen, would probably have attained 
 still more grandeur of style. The high degree to which he 
 had developed himself as a painter in the grand style is best 
 exemplified in his last design, for a colossal altar-piece ; here- 
 we find the directness and simplicity which are the highest 
 expression of artistic wisdom. 
 
 So far and so high had he won his way when he was 
 stopped by death. He was in the full course of his most 
 fertile development, for all his sixty-three years. If he had 
 lived ten years longer, Danish art would have been richer 
 by many masterpieces. There is little reason, however, to 
 brood over what he had not achieved, for as it was he had 
 achieved more than any other Danish painter. His produc- 
 tion was not limited to his hundreds of paintings and painted 
 sketches, but included also several thousand drawings, some- 
 times hastily and freely executed with a reed pen, his fav- 
 orite tool, sometimes carefully worked up with India ink 
 
 
 JlS-fcij^i^i 
 
 0- 
 
 "JV/ 
 
 ■ J3^^=;=r^i^^^^ 
 
 Jeppe Getting Out of Bed, by Vilhelm Marstrand. From Holber§ 
 Comedy 
 
DANISH Akr IN rill-: xix ci-:NruKY 279 
 
 or jicncil. In order (o lorin an :i(lc(]u:itc idea not merely 
 of his manner hut of tlie whole Noiume of his i)r(Hluction, it 
 is essential to take his ciravvlnjrs into consideration, h'or 
 only a small proportion of them arc projects for paintings; 
 hy far the greater number — in fact thousands — arc inde- 
 pendent pictures, which he never executed in color. 
 
 Marstrand's capacity for making pictures by the thou- 
 sand is what raises him above the many talented painters of 
 the Danish school and distinguishes him as one of its few 
 real geniuses. The comparison, often applied but almost 
 always misused, of a painter's imagination with a kaleido- 
 scope, applies to Marstrand, and applies better to him than 
 to any other Danish artist. It was because of the truly 
 kaleidoscopic play of his Imagination that it could not only 
 mould the material with which it was filled, but constantly 
 remould it into new pictures, always greater than the old, 
 till they attained what justly may be called the grand style. 
 
THE EUROPEANS 
 
 MARSTRAND founded no school; he was not even a 
 good teacher. His great example, however, encour- 
 aged a few of the younger artists to free themselves 
 from the subjugation to nature imposed by Eckersberg, and 
 to try a flight on fancy's wings to times and regions more 
 remote. The example of the Germans in Rome had im- 
 pelled the Danish painters in the same direction. The result 
 was that about the year 1844, when Hoyen, the historian of 
 art, began his enthusiastic propaganda for a national Danish 
 art in the spirit of Eckersberg but with a rather wider hori- 
 zon, there rose in opposition a party whose tendency was 
 the direct reverse — to give to Danish art a more generally 
 European guise, with more liberal choice of subject and 
 freer form of expression. This party was heterogeneous. 
 It included in its ranks a few mere bunglers, but also some 
 men of considerable professional talent, who might have 
 become notable painters if they had only had a broader edu- 
 cation as men and sounder training as artists. 
 
 Fru Jerichau-Baumann, born in Germany, was one of 
 those who had great ability but very little solidity. Even 
 such of her pictures as are entitled Denmark or A Wounded 
 Danish Warrior are altogether un-Danish in feeling as in 
 expression. Un-Danish, too, is her lack of moderation, es- 
 pecially noticeable in her glaring color effects. Most of her 
 hasty work might be described by the title which she gave to 
 one of her books — A Motley of Travel-pictures. "A mot- 
 ley of travel-pictures" might also be applied to the marines 
 of Anton Melbye, which just because of their facile "inter- 
 
 280 
 
DANISH ART IN THE XIX CIINTURY 281 
 
 Marine, by Anton Melbye 
 
 national" manner brought him temporary international re- 
 nown. To a far higher degree than Eckersberg he had an 
 eye for the dramatic aspects of sea and sky, but he frequently 
 prompted sea and sky in their dramatic parts by introducing 
 effects that were more artistic than nature's own. One of 
 the great men of the past has said that art is inherent in 
 nature — "Who grasps the one has grasped the other." 
 Eckersberg held a similar belief as to the secret of art, and 
 he held quite as firmly to his faith when he searched the sea 
 horizon with his telescope; Melbye, on the other hand, be- 
 lieved that the secret was in the paint-box. Much the same 
 may be said of his brother, Vilhelm Melbye, and, for that 
 matter, also of Sorensen. The latter's pictures were usually 
 brighter and more smiling than Anton Melbye's, and pleased 
 the public because the light shone and gleamed out of them 
 with the most fascinating effect, which he regularly produced 
 by the lavish use of little white high lights. Another young 
 marine painter, Neumann, was freer from routine. He was 
 a better draughtsman, and made more notable use of his 
 palette, but he was dryer and less at home on the sea than 
 the others. 
 
282 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 Two portrait painters, one of whom was also a genre 
 painter, deviated from Eckersberg in their domain in much 
 the same way that these marine painters had in theirs. Mon- 
 ies was the more distinguished of the two. Judging by the 
 portraits which he painted in the late thirties, he was at that 
 time very promising. Later he degenerated as a portrait 
 painter, because he was content to cater to the unexacting 
 public demand, and as a genre painter he showed throughout 
 an unfortunate propensity to lapse into the unconscious 
 humor of the vulgar. In one instance, however, his prosaic 
 attitude gave way to a more sensitive perception — when he 
 painted his rather sentimental but deeply moving picture of 
 The Soldiers' Homecoming in the September Days. With 
 Gertner, on the contrary, dullness was chronic. Com- 
 pletely unmoved, he recorded all that he saw with his frigid 
 eye. At first his rendering had the sharpness and precision 
 of miniature painting; later it became coarse, and raw and 
 brutal in coloring. 
 
 The artists of the group we are discussing were gen- 
 erally liable to offences against color — for instance J. L. 
 Jensen, who painted flowers, and N. Simonsen, who painted 
 Arabs, Jews, Swedes, Italians, Spaniards, pirate and wreck- 
 scenes. Bavarian landscapes, views of the desert, and endless 
 other things, none of which he thoroughly understood. An- 
 other, Chr. Holm, who lived in Munich and was both a 
 battle painter and an animal painter, was almost as versa- 
 tile and no less superficial. The same might be said of Kjaer- 
 schou as a landscape painter and of Schleisner as a figure 
 painter; they are at the bottom of the scale. Lehmann, 
 although a poor portrait painter, showed in a few pictures 
 of Copenhagen society an engaging, half French charm of 
 his own. N. F. Rohde, whose specialty was winter land- 
 scape, had a pleasant but rather tedious touch. Brendstrup, 
 whose wandering life seems to have kept him from form- 
 ing permanent and intimate associations with any place on 
 earth, had a sense of decorative effect rather unusual in 
 earlier Danish art. Another rather older landscape painter, 
 Buntzen, in his youth led his class as a draughtsman, learn- 
 
DANISH Mil IN I'lll'; XIX Cl'lNTUkY 283 
 
 ing easily and quickly; hut later his facility took the fatal 
 form of learning nature hy heart instead of continuing to 
 study it. The most gifted, unquestionahly, was (jurlitt, 
 whose life and art, however, belong rather to Germany than 
 to Denmark, which he left for good in 1843. 
 
 Such was the motley, ill-assorted company! All of them 
 were more or less subject to European influences, but it is 
 worth noticing that they were not influenced by the great pro- 
 gressive geniuses of the important countries, but by the com- 
 monplace, average art. They painted to produce pictures 
 for the public, not to produce art. Hoyen was no refined 
 gourmet In matters of art; he was rather too fond of art 
 cooked and served for home consumption. Still, he has the 
 honor of being for many years the only critic who refused to 
 accept this group of painters. For all his onesidedness, his 
 general opinion was correct. In a few individual cases his 
 opinion was Incorrect, and In one case was utterly wrong. 
 He did not properly understand (and perhaps did not prop- 
 erly know) the work of the landscape painter Kjeldrup, in 
 whose pictures, despite their false coloring and mannerisms 
 of execution, one occasionally finds really effective and Intel- 
 ligent painting. What seems more Inexcusable from our 
 modern point of view, he saw nothing whatever In Frollch. 
 
 This painter was equipped by nature with qualities not 
 common among Danes. For one thing, he had an unmate- 
 rlal mind, which took naturally to fancy. His fancy was no 
 uncertain wandering, but a lofty flight; there was no need to 
 fear that It might come to some bad end. His was a winged 
 horse which found Its way surely across the skies to the 
 legendary world whence came the shapes that filled his Imag- 
 ination. It Is easy to understand that a man with such a 
 fortunate endowment would believe himself able to dispense 
 with schools. Frollch had little to do with them In his youth, 
 and later, nothing whatever. For a short time he was a 
 pupil of Eckersberg, but no trace of Eckersberg Is to be 
 found In his work. He was no more than twenty when he 
 left Denmark and settled In Germany, first at Munich and 
 later at Dresden. He found kinship to his romantic dispo- 
 
284 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 Will Edna Give Me a Kiss? by Lorens 
 Frolich. Illustration for a children's book 
 
 sition and his enthu- 
 siasm for the legend- 
 ary past among many 
 of the Germans of 
 that period, espe- 
 cially in Schnorr von 
 Carolsfeld and Lud- 
 wig R i c h t e r, both 
 of whom influenced 
 him strongly. From 
 Richter he adopted 
 the first form of his 
 pictures for children, 
 from Schnorr the first 
 
 form of his saga-pictures. 
 
 It was in Germany that he learned his drawing; his paint- 
 ing he learned in France. As a painter, however, he never 
 developed an independent palette, and he did not care 
 much whether he did or not. Line appealed to his im- 
 agination far more than color. The weavings of his fancy 
 were strange ornamental patterns of plant and animal life 
 inextricably intertwined with human figures In some of the 
 most luxuriant arabesques that the world has ever seen. At 
 the time when Frolich executed for a French publisher the 
 several thousand pictures for children which were to be the 
 forerunners of his great series of world famous children's 
 books, he was still able to compose without conventionalizing. 
 It Is the naturalness, not the art, that one admires in these 
 books. His general talent for composition, however, soon 
 developed Into a special talent for decoration. A single ceil- 
 ing-painting shows that he could have mastered the problems 
 of monumental decoration, but for the time being he did no 
 more work of this kind. The best of his unequalled decor- 
 ative drawing went Into illustrations for books, or sets of 
 prints, especially etchings. This work was not merely dec- 
 orative. Though Frolich sometimes went to the extreme of 
 making the text accompanying his pictures Into a sort of 
 ornamental border round the drawing, skillfully printing the 
 
DANISH ARI' IN rill<: XIX Cl<:NrUKV 285 
 
 
 .,VJ.v.V V 
 
 •T . 
 
 
 "Mo.,.^ 
 
 7)' t 
 
 
 
 M 
 
 tpco 7^^<>3 XJvc'l 
 
 w 
 
 
 
 , _ ,. r._u . 
 
 . -^B 
 
 ~ 
 
 "'^« 
 
 '^"t ^ . n ^, 
 
 ,-9 
 
 
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 ^ir .-T- .► ^ r _^ 
 
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 t , 
 
 ^ "' 
 
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 ;j 
 
 
 
 Thor's Visit to Utgard. Etching by Lorens Frolich 
 
286 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 letters with his own hands, he was far more than a mere 
 embroiderer of pages. He had a sincere and mystically deep 
 feeling for the world of myth and saga whose inhabitants 
 his inspired pen or etcher's needle so memorably portrayed. 
 In some of the greatest achievements, in a few of his most 
 inspired pictures of the Northern legendary period, it cer- 
 tainly is hard to find any specifically Danish quality in his 
 splendid imagination. At least it is not to be measured 
 by any Danish standard. The fault may be rather with Den- 
 mark than with Frolich, and, if this is true, his place is not 
 outside but beyond the evolution of Danish art. 
 
 While his star climbed slowly and did not reach its zenith 
 till his old age, Carl Bloch's star turned pale with surprising 
 rapidity after shining for a generation with a lustre hitherto 
 unseen in the skies of Denmark, usually so devoid of marvels. 
 Early in his career Bloch was designated the heir of Mar- 
 strand, and more than that, a painter of European magni- 
 tude. In his earliest paintings from the life of the common 
 people his talent for dramatic narration became evident, and 
 in those that followed his comic vein appeared. Then the 
 very first pictures that he sent home from Italy proved that 
 his pictorial power was unusual. A series of historical and 
 biblical paintings of large dimensions further indicated a 
 steady rise toward the highest standards of art, especially in 
 his Prometheus, painted in 1865, and regarded as a great 
 achievement, a sign that the nation was reviving after its 
 defeat of the preceding year. Then came light-hearted 
 genre paintings from Italy, and the first of the series of 
 paintings for Frederiksborg, a number of portraits, a few 
 studies of Copenhagen types, and in the midst of all these 
 the Danish historical pictures, among which the painting of 
 Christian II in Sonderborg Prison did more than any other 
 of his works to make his name loved and honored. 
 
 Of course an artist must have marked ability to raise 
 such a stir in the course of a dozen years. He did have the 
 faculty, among others, of simple, unified composition, which 
 makes a picture remain Indelible in the memory. Besides, 
 Bloch's coloring was stronger and more brilliant than any- 
 
DANISH ART IN THE XTX CENTURY 287 
 
 Christian II in Sondeiborg Prison, by Carl Blocli 
 
 thing seen before. This was no trifling patchwork of 
 studies from nature, but light and shade applied with an 
 excellent eye for effect. This was the sure, purposeful work 
 of an unusually clear and Intelligent mind, with a masterful 
 grasp of its problems. Lastly, here was a fresh spring of 
 human emotion; such moving interpretation of suffering 
 plainly rose from the deepest human sympathy. 
 
 The phenomenon, In fact, was dazzling. It was danger- 
 
288 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 ous, however, to be a shining marvel, year in and year out, 
 before the eyes of a pubHc as easily dazzled as the Danes of 
 that day. From the use of strong measures the step was 
 short to the misuse of them. Bloch took the false step. He 
 was given to strong, crude, almost aniline colors, too violent 
 contrasts between light and shade, and excessive use of bril- 
 liant lighting, and although he loved the world's greatest 
 color symphonist and tried his hand sometimes at Rem- 
 brandt's effects, especially in etchings, his results were cheap 
 and coarse. His pictures too often shout in one's ear things 
 better left to be guessed, to be inferred by the intelligence or 
 the imagination. It was his misfortune that he so early made 
 the whole public his public. He was forced to speak loud 
 that all the deaf might hear; hence his gross and violent 
 means. 
 
 Olrik had better taste. He was an eclectic who learned a 
 certain academically external and impersonal form, first 
 from Couture in Paris and later from the masters of the 
 Italian High Renaissance. He became the amiable and 
 correct portrait painter of good society, and finally, by mus- 
 tering all his diligence, energy, and refinement, he achieved 
 an equally correct altar-piece, setting forth the Sermon on 
 the Mount, for the Matthaeuskirke in Copenhagen. He also 
 devoted his taste and his knowledge of style to the creation 
 of lesser decorative works of many varieties. 
 
 Of very different stamp was a young artist who attracted 
 a certain amount of attention in the late thirties and prob- 
 ably would have aroused a good deal more if Bloch had not 
 at that moment cast even the best into the shade. To be 
 sure, L. A. Schou showed nothing more than promise, but 
 it was a greater and more reckless promise than is usually 
 offered by the artistic youth of Denmark. Eager, nervous, 
 passionate, he was unlike the phlegmatic Dane. His very 
 first portraits, a series of young women with pride of race 
 In their bearing and southern sweetness in their expression, 
 were un-Danish. A worldly, gallant point of view, imposed 
 by a romantic worship of women, makes them distinct in 
 style and manner from all other Danish portraits. Con- 
 
DANISH ARr IN rill-: XIX CI-NTUKY 2<S9 
 
 
 
 i 
 
 1 
 
 "■ p' 
 
 fc&' ■ Ik -• 
 
 
 m-^^-'i&^^^k.^.: 
 
 Portrait of the Artist's Grandfather, by L. A. Schou 
 
 temporaneous work of another kind marks Schou as a for- 
 mer pupil of Marstrand, but the differences between him 
 and his master are so great as to be noticeable. There was 
 something of the falcon in the younger man; even before his 
 fancy took flight his eye for the actual was as piercing as the 
 falcon's. 
 
 In 1864 he went to Rome, and in that year and several 
 following he gave brilliant proof of his great qualities in a 
 series of big genre paintings, in which, however, he did not 
 succeed in getting very far away from his studies of his 
 
290 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 Scene from Ragnarok. Sketch by L. A. Schou 
 
 models. He attained his greatest heights in the preliminary 
 sketches that he made for a great cycle of scenes from the 
 Ragnarok myth. It is natural that in the hands of a "Eu- 
 ropean" like Schou the figures of Norse mythology should 
 have taken a form which was neither Greek, as it was with 
 Freund, nor Northern, as it was with Constantin Hansen. 
 Rather, there is something French about these drawings, 
 which occasionally recall Dore. Yet they are more cleverly 
 drawn than most of Dore's work, and almost the only thing 
 Schou learned from him was to abandon himself to an imag- 
 inary world of swirling fire, like Dore's own. It was not 
 anything distinctively Scandinavian in Norse mythology that 
 attracted him; it was of no more value to him than a great 
 many subjects from Shakespeare; he painted Orestes pursued 
 by the Furies In exactly the same spirit that he drew the 
 scenes from Ragnarok. All these were merely outlets for 
 his imagination, which poured through his consciousness, 
 agonizing and chaotic, and held him like a nightmare until 
 he had given it definite expression. Here sits Hodr in a 
 
DANISH ART IN 1111-: XIX CI-NIUKY 291 
 
 lonely corner ol the earth and waits lor Ka^narok. Here 
 Herniodr gropes his way lorward toward 1 lel's throne in tlie 
 underworld. Here Thor and his servant bind Loki with 
 Narli's entrails, while Skadi pins the venomous snake to 
 the rock above his heatl, and Sigyn catches the poison. Here 
 Hel with her dismal, silent train passes on a moonless winter 
 night through the woods to Ragnarok, startling an owl and 
 huge fantastic bats. Here Thor buries his hammer in the 
 head of the Midgard Serpent, which spouts venom in his 
 face. Here, finally, mountains reel, the sun darkens, the 
 heavens catch fire as the battles rage on the ultimate day. 
 All this and more Schou has set forth with a daring and a 
 demoniacal passion unique in the quiet art of Denmark. 
 
 There are times, however, when It seems that death favors 
 the moderate In art as In life. It overtook this prodigal In 
 time to prevent further extravagances of fancy; It likewise 
 overtook In early youth two others who might have helped 
 to change the mood of Danish art from the small to the 
 great. One was Harald Jerlchau, who died when he was 
 only twenty-five. Son of the German-born and German- 
 trained Fru Jerlchau-Baumann, taught by a French painter 
 In Rome, living for a time In Turkey, for a time In Greece, 
 for a time In Italy, he was to an unfortunate degree lacking 
 In associations with his native land. There Is something 
 thin, superficial, and suggestive of stage scenery about his 
 works, especially the best known of all, the big picture of the 
 plain of Sardls, which makes them very unsatisfactory. Yet 
 In the best of his landscapes and marines there Is something 
 of the touch of a really great painter, and of that Danish art 
 has had far too little. The second, or rather the third, of 
 the artists who died prematurely was Jorgen Roed's son, 
 Holger Roed. It Is of course Impossible to say whether he 
 would ever have been able to work up into paintings all the 
 lovely Ideas which he had time only to Indicate In drawings 
 and sketches. Possibly he might never have succeeded In 
 modifying the form of the Renaissance masters — especially 
 Rubens — whom he so admired. Into a style answering to the 
 needs of his own more unassuming character. But the mere 
 
292 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 fact that a young artist who had such beautiful thoughts and 
 such bold enthusiasms and so much sense of style and gran- 
 deur had actually obtained a hearing might well have been 
 of high significance in the subsequent development of Dan- 
 ish art. For despite the efforts of the Europeans, Danish 
 art was becoming more and more homely, just as the spirit 
 of the country tended toward homely simplicity, a process 
 which was considerably hastened by the national revival, 
 under the powerful leadership of Hoyen, in the period be- 
 tween 1848 and 1864. How the country was finally, won 
 over to the cause of art we shall see in the next chapter. 
 
VI 
 THE NATIONALISTS 
 
 IN the years immediately preceding 1848 the impulse 
 toward national unity, which, so to speak, constituted the 
 very existence of Denmark in the forties, was eager to 
 grasp anything that might be employed as a spiritual weapon. 
 Even the artists were mobilized and placed under orders. 
 They received their orders on the March day In 1844 when 
 Hoyen made his famous address "On the requirements for 
 the development of a Scandinavian National Art." 
 
 "The man of the North," he said, "must first be under- 
 stood in all his peculiarities; our senses must be sharpened 
 for what is big and homelike in our natural surroundings, 
 before we can hope to create a popular, historical art. . . . 
 Nor Is every trace of the olden times wiped out, even now 
 after the lapse of centuries The simplicity and bold- 
 ness, the patriarchal life, with which we still meet in the 
 
 fishing villages and the towns throughout Denmark 
 
 still throw an Illuminating gleam on those bygone days. Yet 
 — these figures are vulgar, their joviality Is heavy, their 
 sorrow devoid of dignity or grace. . . . but to him who 
 looks beneath, whose sympathy does not merely skim the 
 surface, to the real artist, there Is here a rich vein of pure 
 precious metal. Lay bare that treasure and it will shine In 
 the eyes of all." 
 
 It seems that H. I. Hammer was one of the first to 
 respond to Hoyen's appeal. He had a responsive and poetic 
 disposition, and there was much that he wanted to say, but 
 soon after his first appearance he was rendered rather super- 
 fluous by Sonne, who had similar alms and found it more 
 
 293 
 
294 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 The Sick Sleeping on Helen's Grave, by Jorgen Sonne 
 
 easy to express them. Sonne had gone on his travels at an 
 early age and had completed a stage of his development in 
 Munich, and therefore was less trained in the use of his eyes 
 than Eckersberg's other pupils. On the other hand, he was 
 more of a dreamer and a poet. When he returned, he seized 
 the opportunity of realizing his youthful ambition to become 
 a battle painter. He took part in both our wars, and painted 
 battle scenes from them that were far more real than his 
 earlier more purely abstract productions in the same field, 
 although his treatment of the horrors of war was evidently 
 softened by the idyllic background of the battles, the placid 
 Danish countryside. His first contact with the life of the 
 Danish people had thus been made. Already romantically 
 inclined, he approached the life of the people from the 
 romantic side of its natural surroundings. He gave vent to 
 his love of mankind and his feeling for nature, not in a fore- 
 ground and a background respectively, but in a single all- 
 pervasive mood. He was most strongly attracted by the 
 
DANISM AUr IN III I'! XIX CIlNrURY 295 
 
 bright NorllKTii summer nights witii their lliilcl mists and 
 tJK'ir mcltiii}:; s;uliicss. It was under tlie sky of a midsummer 
 night that he presented The Sick Sleepinj^ on 1 Iclen's (jrave. 
 It was under the same sky that he painted The Minister 
 Going to Visit a Sick Person Beyond the Hill. 
 
 The sureness of his coloring, so long as he was evaluating 
 the veiled tones of the summer night, gave way to uncer- 
 tainty when he tried to harmonize the colors of bright sun- 
 light. He had no natural gift for form. Perhaps it is just 
 because the painter makes so little impression in his pictures 
 that the poet is so conspicuous in them. In many of his 
 paintings of the life of the people there is something of the 
 primitive folk-poetry, something of the deep simplicity and 
 universality which springs from the complete ingenuousness 
 of naive hearts, and finds utterance in a form that is monu- 
 mental though entirely artless. It is this same naive monu- 
 mental form that lends a special charm to Sonne's splendid 
 sgraffiato pictures on the exterior of the Thorvaldsen 
 Museum. 
 
 Danish art had acquired its first great dreamer and in- 
 terpreter of moods; at just the same time it found in Dals- 
 gaard its first great psychologist and dramatic interpreter, 
 who was a real painter besides. In contrast to Sonne, who 
 lived the best moments of his artistic existence under the 
 open sky, Dalsgaard preferred to seek his inspiration in- 
 doors among the human beings whom it was his life's work 
 to portray. He belonged to a period when national cos- 
 tumes were still worn and the capital had not yet despoiled 
 the rural homesteads of their characteristic old-fashioned 
 furnishings. He carefully collected studies of all these 
 things, but not for the purpose of displaying them in his pic- 
 tures as curiosities. He certainly did not fail to realize that 
 these things had a picturesque value which made them worth 
 his attention, but from the unobtrusive way they are intro- 
 duced into his interiors it is plain they did not distract his 
 attention from what was intrinsically human. The narra- 
 tion is consequently very forcible in Dalsgaard's pictures; 
 often it fairly leaps out of the foreground at the beholder. 
 
296 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
D.WMsii Ak'i^ IN I in: XIX ci:N'n)kv i^)7 
 
 I'\)r his time, he was almost too recklessly truthful. The 
 sorrow in his pictures was in earnest, in hitter earnest, and 
 nothing of the kind had hccn seen hefore in Danish Art, least 
 of all among surroundings where people were accustomed to 
 look for nothing except rustic idylls. He was himself of 
 peasant birth and knew that life is not sheer sunshine In the 
 country any more than it is in town. He left still life to 
 Vermehren, he left Sunday scenes to Exner; what he pre- 
 ferred to describe himself was the stormy days which go 
 straight to the bone and marrow of the strong and make 
 the feeble droop and weaken. His penetrating eye — the eye 
 of a psychologist, almost of a pathologist — probed to the 
 bottom of profound human conflicts; it searched the souls 
 of the unfortunates whom necessity drives from their homes 
 as in Dispossessed, or for whom their own faith and trustful- 
 ness have set snares as in The Mormons. In default of other 
 conflicts, there was always the conflict of love, and his pic- 
 tures have given us poignant glimpses both of the love of 
 parents and children and of the love of husband and wife. 
 In most of these pictures love leads to sorrow and weeping, 
 whether it is the hard-heartedness of parents or cruel death 
 that separates the lovers. But tears do not flow in Dals- 
 gaard's art, they only sparkle in the mourner's eyes. Sor- 
 row does not tear the figures asunder; it devours them in- 
 wardly. Only rarely do we see one of the young women 
 break down in the agony of love, and then there is always 
 the mother's hand tenderly to stroke her hair, or the 
 mother's shoulder on which she can lay her head. In his 
 later love scenes, Dalsgaard struck gentler, milder, more 
 harmonious chords. In these he pictured the young girl's 
 longing and anticipation, waiting for her bridegroom, or 
 reading a letter from her lover, or writing his name on a 
 window pane; in the mood of these women, with their over- 
 flowing hearts and their hearts' secrets, there is often a sweet- 
 ness like that of the lyrics of Christian Winther. Yet these 
 do not compare artistically with the more bitter work of his 
 maturer years. 
 
 Long settled and fast rooted in his post in a small pro- 
 
298 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 A Visit to the Village Carpenter, by Christen Dalsgaard 
 
 vihcial town in central Sjcelland, far from the Jutland re- 
 gions where he had collected his studies, he squandered the 
 capital he had amassed till it shrank to almost nothing. 
 Then, although his great power had been the heightening of 
 dramatic illusion by deceptive rendering of material objects, 
 he finally produced a series of religious pictures in which he 
 so toned down the dramatic effects as to spiritualize them to 
 the point of absolute unreality. These are mentioned here 
 for the sake of completeness, not with the intention of dis- 
 paraging Dalsgaard. The work of his maturity gives him 
 a sure place in the first rank of Danish painters. 
 
 There is some question, on the contrary, as to whether 
 Exner will eventually hold the place at Dalsgaard's side 
 which has hitherto been assigned to him. To a certain ex- 
 tent he won men's hearts as no other Danish artist ever had, 
 
DANISH AR'I' IN TITF, XIX CKNTURY 299 
 
 hut he succcctlcd hy smiling his w:iy into them, not hy grip- 
 [Miig them with any strong passion. Whereas life — harsh as 
 it is in the pinched circumstances of the country districts — 
 hurned itself into Dalsgaard's consciousness, on I^xner's its 
 traces are faint, in so far as they are perceptible at all. It 
 is only life in its gentlest aspect, child-life, which we can 
 grant that he presented truthfully in his pictures. He was 
 the first Danish painter to show a perception of the amus- 
 ingly naive side of children, but his achievement went no 
 further than that. 
 
 He never had anything like the understanding of the peas- 
 ants of Amager and the fishermen of Fano that Dalsgaard 
 had of the people of Sailing Land. He remained a holiday 
 visitor from Copenhagen, to whom country life seemed an 
 ideal Sunday existence. One must realize his amiability, and 
 also his habit of looking from his own very proper and pure 
 point of view at everything which was not externally so 
 clean that it glistened, in order to understand why every- 
 
 The Little Convalescent, by Julius Exner 
 
300 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 thing that comes from his hand seems so extraordinary. It 
 is not enough to say that the characters in Exner's painting 
 are scrubbed clean, hke the floors in his interiors; they are 
 scoured and poHshed hke the coppers and brasses on the 
 walls. His art positively shines with unsullied youth and 
 wholesomeness. 
 
 There was different stuff in Vermehren, and far more 
 genuine. He was a man who could not get a close enough 
 hold on life, and who consequently very soon gave up trying 
 to grasp its movement or its fleeting moods, and made him- 
 self the painter of what one might call human still life. We 
 need not discuss whether or not Vermehren, who later be- 
 came the fashionable Copenhagen portrait painter, really 
 felt himself bound by the heartstrings to the life of the com- 
 mon people, which he chose to paint in his youth; he cer- 
 tainly was not at home among the people in the way that 
 Dalsgaard was. But the subjects that he selected from 
 every-day life appealed to his eye as Dalsgaard's subjects 
 appealed to his heart, and he went just as deeply into his 
 subjects by means of observation as Dalsgaard did by means 
 of emotion. He stands far below Dalsgaard in his human 
 limitations, but he stands above him in his complete ab- 
 sorption in his work. 
 
 In this last respect he established a record. A sporting 
 term may seem out of place in this connection, but it fits. 
 He went in for observation as if it had been a sport, and 
 found the sportsman's satisfaction in developing his special 
 aptitude into a hobby. Neither in his Copenhagen interiors 
 with one or two figures, however, nor in the long series of 
 portraits that from about 1870 onward became his most 
 useful form of production, did he succeed in maintaining the 
 intensity which gives his youthful paintings of the life of the 
 people, especially The Shepherd on the Heath, their place 
 among the profoundest studies of primitive Danish char- 
 acter which our art has ever undertaken. 
 
 Such a spirit of enterprise, unfortunately, was not destined 
 to endure among the older figure painters, nor could it pro- 
 pagate itself among the younger. It was lacking in Siegum- 
 
i)y\Nisii Mil IN rill': \i\ ci'Nrukv 301 
 
 The Shepherd on the Heath, by Frederik Vermehren 
 
 feldt, who took more delight in telling a jolly story, or a sad 
 one, from the Hfe of the people, with the help of several 
 figures, than in earnest inquiry into individual character. It 
 was also lacking in A. Dorph, whose popular pictures make 
 less attempt to render an impression of actual nature than to 
 set forth a rather thin-blooded idealist's ready profession of 
 ideals. It was only in Hans Smidth, a rather younger artist, 
 that the men who painted the life of our people realistically 
 in the fifties found a continuator in the sixties. Right down 
 to our own day he preserved and constantly developed a 
 sense of character that in many ways compared with Dals- 
 gaard's, and a sense of locality which recalled Blicher and 
 lent unusual authenticity to his presentation of the aspect of 
 nature in Jutland and of the temper of Jutland. 
 
 As has been suggested, here and there in these first illus- 
 trations of Danish folk-life we recognize a tone that accords 
 with the tones of contemporaneous Danish poetry. This 
 does not mean, however, that the painting of Danish life 
 in that period was an art which had many points of contact 
 
302 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 Sheep at a Barrow, by Johan Thomas Lundbye 
 
 with poetry and music. On the contrary, it was an art, like 
 that of the old Dutch masters, which found its chief expres- 
 sion in realistic painting. When it is said in reference to this 
 period that "the poets sang a soul of their own into nature, 
 and the painters could not remain deaf to their song," It 
 applies very poorly to the figure painters, and really fits only 
 one of the landscape painters, the one of whom the remark 
 was originally made, Lundbye. His extremely impression- 
 able senses, early aroused by the national poetry, were in- 
 fused with an ardent affection for his native land till they 
 vibrated at the slightest touch of his beloved Danish nature. 
 The sounding-board of his nerves might be described as 
 humming rather than as singing, but in any case the humming 
 never was silenced. It flooded his being with its rhythms 
 and made even his technique rhythmical. His art is there- 
 fore poetry, even when it attempts no more than prose. It 
 Is not only among the prehistoric barrows which he loved 
 so dearly that his mood is poetically exalted; the exaltation 
 accompanied him wheresoever he fared in Denmark. 
 
 He is a greater master of line than of color. The poetic 
 quality is far more manifest in his drawing than in his pal- 
 ette. What he loved best was Sja^lland, with its long, gentle 
 
DANISH Akr IN II II' XIX CI'.N'rilRY 303 
 
 Milklng-place at Vognserup, by johan Thomas Lundbye 
 
 ranges of hills or its wide sweeps to the far horizon. His 
 heart, overflowing with goodness, made him the friend of 
 animals, of flowers, and of children, and Inclined him much 
 more toward placid than toward wild scenery. The tinge of 
 sadness in his disposition is distinguishable in his landscapes, 
 but their tone Is very rarely melancholy. 
 
 Like so many of the others whose work is treated In this 
 chapter, he travelled in Italy and other countries, but on him, 
 as on most of them, the effect was insignificant. By this time 
 people went abroad when they were grown men In order to 
 Increase their knowledge, not, as they had at an earlier date, 
 to lay or to relay the foundations of their development. 
 More quickly than most, Lundbye found his taste for roving 
 giving way to homesickness. There is a delightful drawing 
 from the end of his journey, in which he has anticipated the 
 joy of returning to his friends the animals at home. He has 
 represented himself here, as he so often did before and after- 
 wards, in the guise of one of the good "NIsser" or "little 
 folk" of whose potterlngs about threshing floor and stable 
 and pasture his own pursuits reminded him. Perhaps he 
 
304 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 found rather too much solace in this resemblance, and was 
 too prone to pottering about nature and art; perhaps he 
 resembled his beloved fairy-folk in this, also: that the re- 
 sults he attained did not always correspond in their scope 
 and significance to the amount of work he put into them. Yet 
 why should we reproach him, for even the trifles that he has 
 left us are rich in most precious Danish poetry, which hardly 
 anywhere else in Danish painting has such easy, living flow 
 as In the long, fine penstrokes of Lundbye's multifarious 
 drawings. 
 
 A Lane at Vognserup, by Peter Christian Skovgaard 
 
 Though the process was not quite so effortless, one might 
 say of Lundbye that he passively allowed nature to pluck the 
 strings of his poetic soul. Skovgaard, on the contrary, 
 actively penetrated into nature, searching it with his eyes 
 in every direction. He preferred to look for a spot, whereas 
 Lundbye preferred to scan a region. Consistently with this, 
 he often missed the things in nature which do not strike the 
 eye, the things which are in the air and appeal to other 
 senses than the visual. Technically speaking, too, his com- 
 
DANMSir AK'I' IN 'Illl': XIX Cl-ArrRY 305 
 
 Scene in the \'ejle Valley, by Peter Christian Skovgaard 
 
 mand of the air was weaker than his command of the earth. 
 Atmospheric phenomena interested him very Httle, and 
 when he did attempt to treat them, he did not master them. 
 But everything that pertains to the earth, that grows on the 
 earth, he knew inside and out, so far as form is concerned, as 
 no other Danish artist has known them. 
 
 Scene from Ulvedalene in Dyrehaven, by Peter Christian Skovgaard 
 
506 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 In the great majority of his pictures he showed nature at 
 the moment when the sap was rising highest, at the utmost 
 expansion of the leaves. In most of his pictures, too, he 
 selected the most beautiful and fully-grown specimens — for 
 example, he loved to paint the dome-shaped beeches of 
 Dyrehaven in Copenhagen. Hence the trees in his pictures, 
 if one observes them singly, often give the impression of 
 mere repetitions of the same model. Some of his pictures 
 of forests look more like pictures of parks. On the whole, 
 however, this propensity was advantageous to his art, as it 
 infused into his naturalism a little idealism, without which 
 his work would have been devoid of temperament. For his 
 passion for vegetation in its greatest abundance and vigor 
 was everywhere bursting out through the surface of his art. 
 This is most strikingly evident in his studies, which are 
 usually better, artistically, than his finished paintings. Es- 
 pecially in his larger paintings there was an obvious dis- 
 parity between the great scale of the picture and the exces- 
 
 At the Tea-table in Vejb}', by Peter Christian Sicovgaard 
 
DANISH AR'I' IN Ilir. XIX CFN'niRY 307 
 
 six'cly detailed hrushwork ^\■itll which he tried to i^ci. his 
 effects. The \ ei-satility ol Ins talent (which also showed 
 itself in the fact that he was incidentally a distiiifjjiiished 
 portrait painter and a no less distin^iiisheil ^enre paintei^, 
 and was iinariahly successful at decoratixe drawinj^) made 
 it difficult lor him to restrict himself to any one aspect ol 
 a motif while he was completing a landscape. None the 
 less, even in the dryest of his large pictures, if one stands 
 off at a distance one recognizes his hig, generous disposition 
 in the boldness and exuberance of the outlines, even though 
 at closer range they disintegrate into an arid rendering of 
 detail. In a few of his later pictures, evidently under the 
 influence of Claude or Swanewelt, he showed an inclination 
 to give free rein to his growing sense for the vast and sol- 
 emn phases of nature. No one worthier than he has yet 
 come forward to carry on the grand style which he thus 
 introduced into Danish landscape painting. 
 
 Even though Kyhn, in some of his later pictures, strength- 
 ened his landscape by supporting it on a frame of big lines, 
 he did not usually show any discrimination in his choice 
 of motifs. The superlative abundance of his painting is due 
 to the very fact that almost any kind of fragment of nature 
 was to him a satisfactory motif. His love and his knowl- 
 edge of nature were not limited by the boundaries of Den- 
 mark. With his rare faculty for entering into the spirit 
 of foreign scenery, he painted pleasing landscapes of Italy 
 and France, of Norway and Sweden. Had his hand been 
 equal to his other attributes, he might have made a Euro- 
 pean reputation. Unfortunately, he had a real contempt 
 for mere technique, and consequently, although he was a 
 great artist, he never became a great painter. He was 
 constantly painting in little dabs where what he needed 
 was bold strokes, or else using bold strokes where he should 
 have let his brush linger in order to obtain definition. 
 
 Of all the things that he loved in the course of his long 
 life, in his later years he loved Jutland the best. In those 
 last years summer was the season he preferred to paint, 
 which was quite natural, as he followed in his old age the 
 
308 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 1 
 
 Hillside Near Horsens, by Vilhelm Kyhn 
 
 example of his juniors and completed his pictures outdoors, 
 but on account of his health he could not stay out during 
 the inclement seasons. In his youth he had not submitted 
 to any such restrictions. In those days he had been out 
 at all seasons and all times of day in pursuit of the fleeting 
 moods of nature. One can practically estimate Lundbye's 
 
 Summer Evening, by Vilhelm Kyhn 
 
DANISH AKr IN rilK XIX CI^N'rURY 309 
 
 significance Ironi a single i)ainting, and the satnc is true of 
 Skovgaard; it is otherwise \\'ith Kylin. In any single paint- 
 ing of his it is easier to pick out his faults than to appre- 
 ciate his qualities. One cannot appraise his greatness with- 
 out considering his work as a w hole. I le hatl none of 
 Skovgaard's plastic sense of form, none of Lundhye's 
 rhythmic sense of line; further, his talent as an artist was 
 no more restricted or specialized than his field as a land- 
 scape painter. What he had was a strikingly fresh, 
 elemental, unsophisticated feeling for nature, of loo wide 
 a span to be contained in any one picture. It did, of course, 
 have limits — it was more congenial to quiet, gentle nature 
 than to wild and rugged. Still, it was much more inclu- 
 sive than the feeling for nature in any other Danish land- 
 scape painter, and it was also deeper. It was not, like 
 Lundbye's, pitched in the key of the songs and poems about 
 Denmark and modulated to their rhythm; nor was it, like 
 Skovgaard's, formally cultivated by other means. It was 
 primitive and deeply original, like no one's else. 
 
 The fourth of the painters who brought landscape to its 
 flowering in Denmark was Rump. He, too, was a painter 
 of moods, but he had no such range of moods as Kyhn. 
 He was more of a virtuoso, if the word may be used rela- 
 tively, considering the undeveloped technique of Danish art 
 in those days. He had a marked color sense. In contrast 
 to Lundbye's sense of line and Skovgaard's sense of form. 
 Of the seasons, which he treated in a well-known series of 
 paintings, it was spring which most strongly appealed to 
 his avid enjoyment of nature. He painted a few very 
 pretty but not very wintry winter scenes ; he painted a few 
 autumn scenes, likewise very pretty, but rather subdued ; 
 he had greater success with summer sunshine on woods in 
 full leaf. What he best understood was the budding forest 
 In springtime, when nature Is most lavish with balm for 
 men's souls and bodies. In his vernal scenes one inhales 
 the bright day over which the woods have as yet cast no 
 shadow, the delicious newborn air, laden with fragrance from 
 the earth under the trees. One revels In these delightful 
 
310 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 Spring Landscape, by Gotfred Rump 
 
 sensations, because he, himself, has reveled in them, with 
 senses continually so trained and sharpened that they had 
 become more sensitive than most people's to such impres- 
 sions. It is the genuineness of the coloring which produces 
 the illusion in Rump's pictures of this type. There is some- 
 thing of the painter-virtuoso and something of the sym- 
 phony composer about his work, which in a certain 
 way anticipates a much later development of Danish land- 
 scape. 
 
 Associated with these four great discoverers and restor- 
 ers of Danish landscape there was a little group of artists, 
 of whom some had the misfortune to be born a few years 
 too late to take their place in the first rank of the pioneers, 
 while others had the even more deplorable fate of dying 
 many years too soon, long before they could make them- 
 selves felt. There was the animal painter Dalgas, who was 
 most closely related to Skovgaard and Lundbye, and like 
 the latter gave his life in the war; he was a man of unusual 
 talent, and if he had lived longer would certainly have 
 freed his individuality from the influence of his colleagues 
 as he had fortunately already emancipated himself from his 
 
DANISH ART IN THE XIX CENTURY 311 
 
 A Shepherdess, by Carlo Dalgas 
 
 previous subservience to the Dutch traciition. There was 
 Dreyer, whose landscape sketches rank very high; his fresh 
 studies often disclose a wonderful feeling for the moods of 
 nature, and his full coloring recalls Rousseau, Francais, or 
 Daubigny. There was Frederik Krafft, little known, but the 
 painter of a few pictures which testify to original and inde- 
 pendent observation of light effects in the open, unusual for 
 those days. There was the landscape and animal painter, 
 I. D. Frisch, also a fresh observer, and a true artist. One 
 might mention, also, the marine painter, Emanuel Larsen, 
 among other reasons because he was one of those who died 
 too young. Of those born a few years too late, Kolle prac- 
 tically repeated the discoveries of the pioneers, and there- 
 fore did not take the place in the first rank for which his 
 attainments would have qualified him if he had been born a 
 little earlier. 
 
 Vilhelm Pedersen occupies a unique position on account 
 of his excellent illustrations of H. C. Andersen's fairy-tales. 
 Any other contributions, outside of landscape painting or the 
 painting of every-day life, in the period, were of little signifi- 
 cance. The life of the citizens of the capital wa.s humorously 
 
312 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 portrayed by the talented dilettante, Fritz Jiirgensen. Hein- 
 rich Hansen devoted himself to architectural painting; he 
 was a fairly good painter, but rigid in his perspective, a vir- 
 tuoso in the use of the ruler. Animal painting found few 
 votaries. The best flower painter was Ottesen, whose Dutch 
 manner bespeaks more industry than genius; he was entirely 
 lacking in appreciation of the decorative quality of flowers. 
 Nor were the professional portrait painters any better. 
 They rarely produced anything more than a "good like- 
 ness." 
 
 After the abundant years that Danish art had enjoyed 
 in the fifties and the early sixties, there followed lean years 
 from about 1870. Those who had won the great victories 
 rested on their laurels, if they were not already resting in 
 the grave. The Charlottenborg exhibitions were filled by 
 a crowd of epigoni, none of whom was capable of carrying 
 the development any further. The man who most nearly 
 approached Kyhn was Foss, who knew the Jutland coun- 
 try intimately, and was a conscientious pupil, but never a 
 
 At the River in Odense, by Dankvart Dreyer 
 
DANISH ART IN JllE XIX CENTURY 313 
 
 At the Mouth of the River, by Janus La Cour 
 
 master. Thorenfeld, also a painter of Jutland, had more 
 personality, but he never got over the stammering and stut- 
 tering stage in his expression. Of Skovgaard's succes- 
 sors, Aagaard may be mentioned; he had a certain knack 
 of choosing effective subjects, but his execution was en- 
 feebled by his diluted coloring and his finicky brushwork. 
 A finer artist than Aagaard, and more of a nature-lover, 
 was Hans Friis, but his enthusiasm, unfortunately, always 
 evaporated long before he could bring his picture labori- 
 ously to completion. Then there was Fritz, who had a 
 keen eye for the majestic beauty of the beechwoods, but 
 who handled his colors so unskilfully that they looked like 
 a snarl of woolen yarn. Far above these men stood Skov- 
 gaard's pupil. La Cour, who had a great talent for form 
 and a fastidious taste, choosing subjects that lent themselves 
 to strong lines and strong feelings; but he had a rather cold 
 and reserved temperament, passionless or at least dreading 
 to let himself go, which hampered him in his frequent at- 
 tempts to show the violent, spontaneous outbursts of stormy 
 
314 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 weather. On the whole, though, he was an artist whose 
 careful, refined, finished pictures always were an ornament 
 to the exhibitions — which cannot be said of many of the 
 paintings of the period under discussion. 
 
 Such a period of stagnation as the early seventies has 
 never been known before or since in Danish art. Three- 
 quarters or more of the painting had become landscape. 
 And what did it amount to? What there had been of in- 
 spiration, or at least of warmth, had sunk to tepid routine. 
 Tenseness had been succeeded by the relaxation of all ardor 
 and energy in the treatment of nature, to which for twenty 
 years previous every effort of Danish art had been devoted. 
 Debility had spread far and wide. Art had become a leis- 
 ure occupation, a domestic pastime, a handicraft. 
 
 While Danish art was in this state, French art had made 
 tremendous strides. On the one hand, there were the new 
 requirements for the rendering of material objects imposed 
 by the cry for "realism;" on the other, there were the fugi- 
 tive color effects, which French artists felt bound to fix 
 still living on their canvas. The term "impressionism" was 
 already on men's lips. Both of these new methods de- 
 manded ability, especially in execution, of a degree un- 
 dreamed of in Denmark. In France men had attained the 
 necessary skill by various means, among others by a 
 thorough study of the old Spanish masters, Ribera, and, 
 particularly, Velazquez, "le peintre le plus peintre qui ne fut 
 jamais." Thus a real, true art of painting had grown up 
 in France with the emphasis on carefully worked-out color 
 schemes, while in Denmark the painters were still content 
 merely to cover the canvas with colors. 
 
 There were some people in Denmark, however, even 
 before the Universal Exposition of 1878, whose eyes had 
 been opened to the advantages to be gained by young paint- 
 ers from a journey to Paris. From 1 877-1 878 on, the city 
 on the Seine became the meeting-place, as Rome had been 
 before. For the second time Danish art was regenerated 
 by contact with French. What David had been to Eckers- 
 berg, Bonnat was to be to Kroyer and Tuxen. 
 
VII 
 
 THE COLORISTIC AWAKENING 
 
 A YEAR, a day, may be epoch-making. On closer in- 
 spection, however, the epoch which the year or the 
 "day in question appears to have inaugurated will 
 almost always be found to have begun some time before. 
 This is true of the period in Danish art of which the year 
 1878 is the apparent starting point. Tuxen, Kroyer, and 
 their contemporaries were not the first Danish painters of 
 that generation to seek the fructifying atmosphere of 
 France. They had a predecessor in Bache, who had been 
 in Paris in the late sixties. He had acquired there a tech- 
 nique which was broader and more powerful than what he 
 had learned from Marstrand, and he had also learned to 
 use his palette so that his art was much more striking in its 
 versimilitude than the work of older painters. He was 
 fond of painting dogs, cattle, and horses, and also did por- 
 traits and genre pictures, all with sound ability and at the 
 same time with a spontaneous boldness and freshness which, 
 we can easily realize, must have been bewildering in that 
 period. He quickly met with approval, and he strengthened 
 his early reputation by his really excellent painting, A 
 String of Horses in Front of a Tavern, one of the best of 
 Danish genre paintings. Soon, however, he became an 
 official painter, that is to say, he allowed his talents to be 
 made use of by influential outsiders Instead of applying them 
 according to his own judgment. He painted posthumous 
 historical portraits and great heroic compositions for the 
 National Historical Museum at Frederiksborg. These all 
 
 315 
 
316 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 A String of Horses in Front of a Tavern, by Otto Bache 
 
 bear witness to his good head and his trained hand, and also 
 to his patriotic heart, especially manifest In The Soldiers' 
 Return to Copenhagen in 1849; but such pictures as these, 
 on prescribed topics, of course, gave no indication of the 
 bright future that awaited Danish Art. 
 
 Another predecessor of the generation of the eighties 
 was Rosenstand. He began by modeling himself after 
 Marstrand; he had something of his gift for narrative, but 
 lacked his humor, so, when he tried to Illustrate Holberg, he 
 failed. He was a pupil of Bonnat, and brought back from 
 Paris a trained European technique and a luminous palette. 
 His coloring rapidly lost its lustre, but he preserved his 
 brilliant technique, and this led him to emulate Marstrand 
 in an attempt at monumental historical painting. Twice In 
 succession he was the winner In competitions for the decora- 
 tion of the Festival Hall in Copenhagen University, and 
 the paintings he did for it, despite their lack of style, were 
 distinguished by their naturalness and animation. 
 
 Bache and Rosenstand mark the half-way point between 
 the old and the new In Danish art. For some years, Carl 
 Bloch held a position similar to theirs. It remained for 
 
DANISH ART IN THE XIX CENTURY 317 
 
 From Juel Lake, by Godfied Christeiiseii 
 
 two landscape painters to lead Danish art one step further 
 in the purely pictorial direction. The more radical of these 
 was Godfred Christensen. He painted a series of striking 
 pictures, some of them quite pretentious, in which the col- 
 ors had a luminous quality and the summer a sunny radiance 
 hitherto unseen in his native country, but the swift, facile 
 play of the brush over the surface of natural objects — land, 
 water, and foliage — left untouched what was real and per- 
 manent in the subject. Zacho may be placed in the same 
 category: a painter of more historical than intrinsic sig- 
 nificance. He made a great sensation in 1881 with The 
 First Snowfall and A Jutland Forest Scene, two big pictures 
 of solid and obvious merit, but he, too, lacked depth in his 
 attitude toward nature. In fact, he soon fell back into the 
 ranks of the indolent followers of routine. It was not so 
 with Niss. He had character; there was something vigor- 
 ous and bluff about him that suggested autumn weather — 
 and autumn was the season he most enjoyed painting. At 
 first he used to make for the inland forest lakes of North 
 Sjaelland in October, but later some seafaring instinct in his 
 bold nature roused him to go in search of autumn weather 
 at its keenest and wildest, on the shores of the Danish seas, 
 
318 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 The First Snowfall, by Christian Zacho 
 
 or even out on the high seas, and from these trips he brought 
 home studies of the sea which were truer, saltier, than any- 
 thing that the painters who specialized in marines were in 
 the habit of producing. There is nothing in the work of 
 men like Blache or Carl Rasmussen that can compare with 
 these sea-pictures of Niss's later years, although Blache was 
 a sailor and Rasmussen was a great traveler and painted 
 interesting pictures of Greenland, Locher, who like Niss, 
 exercised an invigorating influence on Danish art in the 
 early eighties, was the only other man of the time who 
 showed any such spontaneous — even crude — ability to 
 transfer to canvas the freshness of nature. 
 
 The other members of this circle, in which Rud. Bissen 
 may also be included, went no further. All had more power 
 than delicacy, both in feeling and execution. For the honor 
 of the profession they set upon nature with their fists, and 
 often treated her brutally. None of them could draw much 
 better than was necessary for household purposes, but they 
 were out to paint — never mind about drawing ! Fortunately 
 the leading figure painters were men of far finer calibre, and 
 had acquired — first as pupils of Bonnat and later through all 
 sorts of other influences, direct and indirect — the funda- 
 
DANISH AR'I' IN rili: XIX Cl-M UkV n') 
 
 Sunflowers, bv Thorvald Xiss 
 
 mentals of that formal training which was so woefully 
 lacking in the landscape painting of the time. 
 
 Tuxen was the earliest to show the good effects of formal 
 training. He was intelligent, tractable, and persistently 
 diligent. He quickly developed great technical skill, and 
 when he astonished the artistic world of Copenhagen with 
 his brilliant Susanna in the Bath, in 1879, he seemed 
 destined to great achievements. A treasury of precious pos- 
 sibilities appeared to stand open to him. The curse that 
 lay on him was that he did not really know what to do with 
 all this wealth. With no other focus for his artistic char- 
 acter than an interest in the pictorial, so many-sided that it 
 lacked definite direction, he lavished his riches on subjects 
 
320 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 Susanna in the Bath, by Laurits Tuxen 
 
 about which he did not specially care. Finally he took to 
 squandering them on enormous paintings, crowded with 
 figures, of court festivals at home or abroad. He deserv^es 
 far more gratitude for his generosity as one of the founders 
 and supporters of the free schools which made it possible 
 for young artists to partake of his great hoard of knowl- 
 edge, for in this way he unquestionably contributed largely 
 
DANISH \R'r IN 'II Ii: XIX CIlN'rilRY 321 
 
 Italian Hatmakers, by Peter Severin Kroyer 
 
 to the development of Danish art — just as another aimless 
 painter, Schwartz, took part in the education of the younger 
 generation as a teacher, and did his best work in that 
 capacity. 
 
 The man, who, more than any other, had the power to 
 inspire and fascinate by the example he set, was the master, 
 Kroyer. He was almost a master when he was only a 
 student himself! He was almost a master of character 
 
322 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 delineation when, at twenty, he painted his Fishermen at 
 Anchor in Hornbsek; almost a master of draughtsmanship, 
 form, and execution when, barely thirty, after he had studied 
 under Bonnat and had been influenced by Velazquez, he 
 painted his Gipsy Quarter of Granada and his Sardine Pack- 
 ing. He was at last a true master-painter when he produced 
 the great work of his youth, the already classic Italian Hat- 
 makers, which aroused a storm of both praise and blame at 
 the Exposition of 1882. 
 
 With the drop that hung threateningly from the nose of 
 the poor emaciated hatter, Kroyer's naturalism had squeezed 
 dry both nature and naturalness. It was that same drop 
 that made the cup of scandal overflow and accordingly 
 loosed a flood of abuse against the artist, like that which 
 France had poured out upon Courbet's famous Stone- 
 breakers. It was truly remarked in Germany that the 
 two pictures had the same relative significance in France 
 and in Denmark. Courbet's picture, one should re- 
 member, was painted thirty years earlier. So far had 
 Denmark been left behind in the race of European devel- 
 opment, when Kroyer, with one giant stride, made up the 
 distance. 
 
 He was capable of still more. In the next few years he 
 overtook French art on one of the main paths of develop- 
 ment which it had been following since Courbet's day. Like 
 Courbet, he took up the most difficult problems of coloring: 
 artificial light, and the conflict between it and daylight; the 
 reflection of sunlight on summer evenings; and the direct 
 light of the sun, itself, when it is at its highest and has 
 routed all shadows. This last problem, especially, Interested 
 him more and more. He did not himself derive much bene- 
 fit from such experiments, but at that juncture they were of 
 great advantage to our painting. One may even criticize 
 him for going to extremes in the attempt to banish all 
 shadows from his paintings, and for disregarding the danger 
 to which his eagerness for light subjected him of breaking 
 up all his forms. He thus weakened many of his later 
 paintings. This does not, of course, detract from his his- 
 
DANISH ART IN TIIK XIX Cl'-NinRY 323 
 
 Fishermen on the Beach at the Skaw a Summer Evening, by Kroyer 
 
 torical position as the first artist who consistently prac- 
 tised open air painting in Denmark. 
 
 Many of his most popular works fall within the wide 
 field of open air painting; his summer evening pictures of 
 fishermen on the Skaw; his summer day pictures of the same 
 scene with children bathing. He was also active in most 
 of the other fields where a painter can gather material 
 directly from life. He painted genre pictures and interiors 
 and even flower pictures, but he was especially fond of 
 painting portraits and big groups. Geographically, also, 
 his range was inclusive. He had an atelier in Copenhagen, 
 another on the Skaw, a third in Italy, and in his later years 
 he often went to Paris to rest. Yet, in nearly all his diversi- 
 fied work, it is easy to recognize the common feature which 
 connects all of them with his personality. 
 
 Born with the most fortunate artistic endowment, born 
 to triumph without any great struggle, from the outset 
 smiled on by life, he remained a lover of all that was smiling 
 in life. Lover of light and hater of shadow as he was in 
 life, he was also in his art. Everything that lived and 
 
324 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 Music in the Studio, by Kroyer 
 
 breathed in the air and the light he saw in its pictorial rela- 
 tion and pictorially beautified by the atmosphere. This does 
 not imply that he lacked appreciation of what was human. 
 In a few of his portraits he went further in this respect than 
 one might expect, and again in his big groups, of which 
 Music in the Studio was the first, not only was the likeness 
 good, but the characterization was often animated. The 
 important thing to Kroyer, though, was always the pictorial 
 effect. In Music in the Studio one does not so much see the 
 figures as divine their presence through the gathering clouds 
 of tobacco smoke and dusk. In his picture of The Commit- 
 tee for the French Art Exhibition the subject was spiced 
 for him by the addition of a difl^icult lighting problem, the 
 conflict between lamplight and daylight; the painting of The 
 Scientific Society was likewise transformed by Kroyer into 
 a pictorial problem requiring the utmost skill, for he painted 
 the scene in the glimmer of a great number of separate 
 lights. When it came to The Members of the Exchange, 
 
DANISH ARr IN THE XIX CENTURY 325 
 
326 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 he could not think of any pictorial arrangement, and there- 
 fore his picture of that body is the least interesting picto- 
 rially, although as a collection of portraits it is perhaps the 
 soundest and strongest of the series. There were dangers 
 which threatened Kroyer more and more in various ways 
 as time went on. He was exposed to one danger from the 
 very start by his hand, which tempted him to make a game 
 or a form of amusement out of his work. A greater danger 
 arose from his light-loving disposition, which tempted him 
 to deviate from the straight path of the painter, especially 
 when he was traveling under the southern sun — as we have 
 already pointed out. This was bad enough, but what was 
 more serious, it made him too volatile and fond of pleasure 
 as a man, and gave him a tendency toward sweetness and 
 sentiment such as we find, for instance, in his painting of him- 
 self and his wife on the shores of the Skaw on a summer 
 afternoon. If he had lived more constantly in one place, 
 and had thereby got a firmer grasp of some one kind of 
 subject, Kroyer might have maintained even longer the 
 
 Will He Clear the Point? by Michael Aiicher 
 
DANISH Akr IN Tin-; \ix ci:n'iurv ii? 
 
 The Sick Girl, by Michael Ancher 
 
 position which he held for a number of years as the leading 
 painter of his native country. 
 
 It was certainly by means of a permanent residence and 
 a firm grasp of one kind of subject that some of his best 
 contemporaries attained their strength, notably those who 
 settled down on the Skaw. One of the earliest and best 
 of this group was Ancher. As a painter he had a hard 
 road to travel, for to start with he had neither an eye for 
 color nor a light and easy hand; it was pertinently remarked 
 of one of his early paintings that it looked as if it had been 
 "painted in mittens." But he had a marked gift for com- 
 position and a lively sense of character, and thanks to these 
 he won his first success, in 1880, when he exhibited Will 
 He Clear the Point? What was in those days power and 
 breadth such as had never been seen, no longer looks very 
 broad or powerful. Ancher fortunately made great prog- 
 
328 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 A Calm Summer Evening at the Skaw, by Michael Ancher 
 
 ress after that, keeping pace with the times as a first-hand 
 observer of the effects of atmosphere or color. His first 
 advance in this respect was due to the influence of his wife, 
 Fru Anna Ancher. Her work in contrast to his open air 
 painting, was indoor painting. He followed the Skaw 
 fishermen on their venturesome expeditions away from 
 home; she sought the women or the old men at their domes- 
 tic occupations. As each of them went his separate way 
 in search of subjects, each also went his separate way in 
 the treatment of them. She was especially interested in the 
 inner life of her figures, while he was fond of representing 
 dramatic situations. He frequently laid on hard and heavy; 
 she had a naturally light touch, and whatever came from 
 her hand was always perfect in its way. When she was only 
 twenty-two, she exhibited The Gull-pluckers, a painting 
 which is masterly both in narration and in execution. The 
 old man who here sits bent over his work with a quiet smile, 
 had been used by Ancher a few years before as the model 
 for his Laughing Old Man. That was solid, vigorous paint- 
 
DANISH ART IN 11 IE XIX CENTURY 329 
 
 The Gull-pluckers, by Anna Ancher 
 
 iiig, close to nature, and close, too, to Frans Hals in its 
 liveliness and humor, Fru Ancher's treatment of the old 
 man is more subdued and more distinguished. Ancher 
 liked to make his figures address the spectator; in his work 
 there is a whole gallery of figures who are laughing at the 
 beholder, talking to him, or looking at him, Fru Ancher's 
 figures usually are leading a life of their own, unconscious 
 of the fact that they are being painted. 
 
 For this reason, among others, her taste seems more 
 delicate than his. This refinement of taste, which in its 
 higher development is perhaps a feminine instinct rather 
 than masculine, in her art finally encroached on things more 
 essential. Tempted by her delicate taste for color, she 
 elaborated the already rather banal modern tonal scale by 
 placing in juxtaposition numerous shades of the same color, 
 and her experiments in this direction seem to have deadened 
 her feeling for the human, which was originally the funda- 
 mental quality of her work. 
 
 Her husband's painting, in contrast to hers, has remained 
 emphatically masculine, Ancher, it seems, has more virility 
 than modern painters usually have. An evidence of this is 
 his strong will, which he shows not only by the way in which 
 
330 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 he constantly defies and frequently conquers difficulties, but 
 by the pleasure he takes in putting himself to unnecessary 
 trouble, for instance when he repeatedly undertakes vast 
 canvases with several, or even many, life-size figures. An- 
 other evidence is the fact, not altogether accidental, that 
 almost his first artistic enthusiasm, and certainly the one 
 that determined his artistic career, was for such people as 
 the Skaw fishermen. The most explicit testimony of all is 
 his understanding of the outward signs on these men of 
 their manly strength and courage. Though Ancher is by 
 no means ignorant of the use of style and the various artifi- 
 ces which produce monumental effects (see for example 
 his dignified full length portrait of his wife), it is not by 
 such means that he so often succeeds in making his fisher- 
 men true monuments of manliness. He has simply empha- 
 sized their manliness in accordance with his own manly 
 instinct and sympathy, and in so doing he has not only 
 raised them to the level of heroes, but has at the same 
 time brought out his own character as the man among 
 Danish painters. 
 
 Old Houses at the Skaw, by Viggo Johansen 
 
DANISH ART IN TITF XIX CENTURY 331 
 
 The Children's Bath, by Viggo Johansen 
 
 VIggo Johansen, too, Is a man, though of a rather differ- 
 ent type: his position in Danish art is that of the married 
 man, the man of family. He began, as a pupil of Roed, with 
 a remarkably firm and sure treatment of form. It was not 
 until much later that he took to travelling. Yet he had as 
 much share as a good many of the men who had learned to 
 paint in France In the Inauguration of the movement toward 
 a fresher and more colorful treatment than had hitherto 
 been usual. His effort in this direction was put forth In a 
 few big pictures of striking still life subjects. Johansen's long 
 series of pictures of his own home life began with A Bed- 
 room Scene and The Young Mother as a Patient. In these 
 paintings his treatment of the subjects constantly varied, 
 but his emotional relationship to them was always the same. 
 Later he went in for portraits, still life, and landscape, and 
 he is one of the figure painters by whose help this last branch 
 was revivified as it could never have been if left to the pro- 
 fessional landscape painters. Johansen did landscapes of 
 the Skaw, of Tidsvilde, and especially of Dragor, with 
 
332 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 Evening Party, by Viggo Johansen 
 
 clear and simple motifs, but offering complicated problems 
 to him, because of the stress he laid on the phenomena of 
 lighting. In handling such problems he distinguished him- 
 self among the very greatest, but it is as a painter of home 
 life that he stands superior to all. At an early stage he 
 transferred to his studio painting the knowledge he had 
 acquired in the open air of the effects of atmosphere on 
 color, and with his highly developed technique he was able 
 to make light and air wrap and enclose everything and 
 everybody In a room, as they do in reality. Far from 
 weakening the effect of life in his interiors, this enhanced 
 It and made it more convincing. Looking at one of Johan- 
 sen's interiors, one always has the startling sensation of 
 suddenly and unexpectedly bursting through the door into 
 the privacy of his home. There stands the mother by the 
 washstand in the bedroom, carefully drying her hands, ab- 
 sorbed In her contemplation of the little boy who lies asleep 
 in her big bed. There she sits, in the twilight, by the stove, 
 telling stories to the children. There are the children 
 
DANISH Mil IN ilU'] XIX CI'lN'rURY 333 
 
 sitting round tlic tabic in the altcrnoon, deep in tlieir lessons. 
 Here one is an inach ertent witness of the weekly bath in the 
 nursery. Here one steps into the intimate family circle on 
 Christmas Eve, while the children are dancing and singing 
 around the lighted tree. Here, on another afternoon, one 
 has dropped in just as the friends are assembled and the 
 chatter over the toddy is as lively as no one but Johansen 
 could make it. Or there is a real "party" in the house with 
 lots of lights and silk dresses and white shirtfronts, and it is 
 already "after supper," so that one feels a little foolish to 
 be breaking in upon them all. Thus the artist has kept open 
 house for every one, and has given every one the pleasure 
 of seeing what a good time one can have at home, if only 
 one has the gift for it, and the right kind of heart. 
 
 While Johansen was thus a continuator of the distinct- 
 ively Danish tradition of intimate relationship between the 
 painter and his subject, and maintained that relationship 
 more closely than any one else, he was also an artistic inno- 
 vator, one of the few of his generation who made the step 
 over to impressionism. There was only one man of that 
 generation who was more Impressionistic than he. That 
 was the animal painter, Phlllpsen. Few men have had 
 such powers of assimilation. Not only did he appropriate 
 the discoveries of the French impressionists, such as the 
 decomposition of color, but also certain directly opposite 
 tendencies, such as the old Dutch masters' feeling for the 
 effect of line. Despite all this, however much he assimi- 
 lated from abroad, he managed to remain so Danish In his 
 point of view that he sometimes reminds one of Lundbye, 
 although he differs from Lundbye In that he Is an inferior 
 draughtsman and a better painter. He thought his four- 
 legged friends fortunate In their existence In God's free 
 world, or rather In that good morsel of It which goes by the 
 name of Saltholmen. He himself loved nature, and especially 
 that special place, where there Is a wide sky and a clear sun 
 and plenty of room for the weather. His robust person 
 found Intense physical satisfaction In these surroundings; 
 this communicates itself to his pictures and Is the underlying 
 
)34 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 Shipping Cattle, by Theodor Philipsen 
 
 cause of their freshness. It could not, of course, have com- 
 municated Itself In default of the proper means, but In this 
 respect he was better equipped than any one else. No one 
 else could get such Intensity In the light, such clearness In 
 the shadow; no one could compete as he did with the sun- 
 light effects of nature Itself; In fact, with his tendency to 
 exaggerate color, he was rather Inclined to outbid the unified 
 effects of nature. Thanks to such a dazzling yet always 
 harmonious palette and a feeling for country which was In 
 no way Inferior to his feeling for animals, this animal 
 painter developed himself Into one of the best landscape 
 painters that Denmark can claim, the best of all, perhaps, 
 at depicting wind and weather. 
 
 Still more dazzling, externally — at least, when he first 
 attracted attention — was another painter of animals, Ther- 
 kildsen, a very able but rather matter-of-fact artist who has 
 remained true to the promise of his youth, and whose name 
 will endure among those associated with the colorlstic re- 
 vival in Danish art. Among these names we may also 
 
DANISH ART IN THE XIX CKN'ITIRY 335 
 
 count that of the ( Icrniaii-traiticd Bertha Wc^rnann, known 
 for a scries ol accurate and life-hke portraits; that of 
 Brasen, who seriously devoted himself to almost every kind 
 of painting — animals, genre painting, portraits, and land- 
 scape; of Schlichting Carlsen, whose spotty brushwork gave 
 very Impressionistic utterance to his vivid sense of the green 
 luxuriance of summer. In the same connection one might 
 mention Thiele, who, although older, shared the aims of the 
 younger men; Anna Petersen, whose virile feeling for char- 
 acter made her for a brief period one of the strongest and 
 crudest naturalists of the time; another gifted woman, Sofie 
 Holten, who likewise was for a few years a doughty cham- 
 pion of the cause. In this group of painters, who felt them- 
 selves bound together In the great and Inspiring task of 
 improving the pictorial side of Danish painting, we may 
 finally include two artists whom it would otherwise be dan- 
 gerous to classify, because In their wider development they 
 became too eccentric to be included In any definite category. 
 The first Is Hans Nik. Hansen, whose first bold ventures 
 as a painter appeared in the agitated period of the early 
 eighties. We refer especially to From a Graveyard and 
 The Woman on the Heath, paintings whose revolutionary 
 technique (using the palette knife and laying the paint on 
 very thickly) no longer seems as noteworthy as it did then, 
 but which have abiding value because of the pathos they 
 attain in their narrative. This gifted artist never succeeded 
 in producing the great work that was expected of him as a 
 painter, but as an illustrator and as an etcher he found fluent 
 and happy expression for the wealth of romantic imagination 
 which is his most characteristic and personal gift. The col- 
 lective impression one gets from the illustrations and prints 
 which set forth his talent is that of an eccentric and lyric 
 artist who would be without a counterpart had it not been 
 for the existence of Zahrtmann. 
 
 This notable artist played a different part In the develop- 
 ment of the color sense in Denmark from that of most of the 
 other leaders. Whereas the others were more or less ob- 
 jective in their coloring, seeking to reproduce accurately the 
 
336 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 The Mystic Wedding in Pistoja in the Year 1500 Outside of S. Pietro, 
 by Kr. Zahrtmann 
 
 colors of nature itself, he was emphatically subjective. He 
 did not neglect the study of natural coloring, but that was not 
 in his mind an end in itself; it was only a means of testing 
 his own inward and personal perception of color. For in 
 contrast to all the others, he had the rare gift of color 
 imagination, and color imagination of a most unusual kind. 
 Nature, by some odd caprice, had mixed something Oriental 
 into the spirit of this man from Bornholm. There was a 
 suggestion of the Orient in his plump and impassive figures; 
 there was a strong Oriental element in his gorgeous palette, 
 his revelling in sheer color, which in the North in the eight- 
 ies, neurasthenic in its color sense, had the effect of a block 
 of stone from the Alhambra or a piece of Persian pottery 
 set down in the midst of Royal Copenhagen porcelain. His 
 pictures rarely lacked unity of tone, but this was not because 
 he used a single color as medium, as the others did, but be- 
 cause he used many pure colors in a mosaic-like arrange- 
 ment which when seen at some little distance merged into a 
 
DANISH AKr JN TIIJ-: XIX CENTURY 337 
 
 Leonora Christina in Maribo Convent, by Zahrtmann 
 
 single tone. The constancy with which he maintained this 
 unfamiliar attitude toward the question of color, despite the 
 prolonged indignation of all good people at such obvious 
 folly or such Impudent affectation, gave to Zahrtmann a 
 twofold influence on our art. In the first place, he had a 
 general moral influence, for his example encouraged many 
 others to be themselves and themselves only. In the second 
 place, he had a specific influence, because his pictures enabled 
 a lot of decadent neurasthenic eyes to stand the shock of a 
 strong dose of color, and stimulated the enjoyment of color 
 in our painting. His many pictures on subjects from Italy, 
 In which he let his color imagination revel In that bright-hued 
 
338 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 Leonora Christina Leaving the Prison, by Zahrtmann 
 
 country and renew Itself after being shut up in the studio and 
 spend itself in creative exertion, were especially effective as 
 propaganda. It is in any case Zahrtmann, and not any of the 
 men like Kroyer, who had the most important effect on the 
 perception of color among most of those who later attempted 
 paintings of the South. 
 
 Even more remarkable than the painter of this long series 
 of Italian pictures, in which there gleam and flash and spar- 
 kle and shine so many colors and such intense joy of life, was 
 the artist In whose best paintings, of Leonora Christina, a 
 strange deep soul glimmers with a dull fire of its own, casting 
 in the shade Its precious setting of colors. From the time 
 when, in his youth, he painted Aspasia, and instead of paint- 
 ing her beauty he painted the ruins of her beauty — for he 
 conceived of her bereaved of her lover and of her son — 
 Zahrtmann read history In a different way from most men, 
 
DANISH ARF IN rill'. XIX CJ'.N lURV 3.^9 
 
 The Death of Queen Sofie Amalie, by Zahrtmann 
 
 with more fancy and more vision. It was the same with the 
 story of Christian IV's unfortunate daughter. His concep- 
 tion of that sublime figure was founded far more on a naive 
 emotional sympathy for a spirit such as hers than upon any 
 rational understanding of her time or her history. He drew 
 on the period for whatever appealed to his eye in the way 
 of costumes, furniture, and other accessories, but he made no 
 attempt at historical accuracy. Perhaps it was just because 
 he knew a great deal about such things that he frequently 
 took liberties with them. He liked to take liberties, and 
 was not above coquetting with his reputation for being — and 
 his right to be — unlike every one else. Besides, he liked to 
 
340 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 Portrait of the Organist Mathison-Hansen, by August Jerndorff 
 
 paint anything that made good people wonder whether it 
 was in jest or in earnest; he steered close to parody and did 
 not shun even burlesque. , His eye found equal satisfaction 
 in things of the most contrasting natures. He loved painting 
 flowers, but he also loved painting boils as in his Job. His 
 enthusiasm was the real secret of his art, lack of restraint 
 its most profound characteristic. He revelled in exuberant 
 bodies, exuberant lines, exuberant light effects, colors, mate- 
 rials. That is merely the outward exuberance. The inward 
 exuberance, the pathos, such as we see, for instance, in his 
 pictures of Leonora Christina, depends no less on exuber- 
 ance of heart than on exuberance of eye and senses. Added 
 to this, he was so fortunate as to have a positively glutton- 
 ous energy and capacity for work. It is easy to understand 
 that from his pictures, at their best and strongest, there 
 
DANISH AKr IN rill-: xi\ ci:n'iuky 341 
 
 issued upon Danish art a hot and steaming breath such as 
 had never before been known. It came from a man who was 
 boiling over. 
 
 It is easier to lind any number of men who were his oppo- 
 sites than to find one who registered a temperature approach- 
 ing his. One can name Jerndorff, who offers a contrast to 
 Zahrtmann in that he had neither the courage nor the re- 
 sources essential to a man who wishes to paint only what 
 he likes. Especially in his later years, Jerndorff became one 
 of those whom the authorities preferred to employ, and em- 
 ployment on official portraits, painted to order, unfortu- 
 nately monopolized one of his many talents and limited the 
 activity of the others. If one holds him up in opposition 
 to Zahrtmann in the matter of warmth, that does not mean 
 that his work was devoid of temperament. Only he had an 
 entirely different temperament, one which was as restrained 
 and delicate as Zahrtmann's was unmanageably violent. 
 Caution, in his gentle character, was so pervasive that it 
 overflowed everything that came to his hand. There was 
 something pious and resigned in his nature which made duty 
 a pleasure to him, and from his perfectly honest, soberly 
 veracious and thorough portraits there never breathed the 
 
 View Over the Bay at B'astad, by August Jerndorflr 
 
342 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 The Mermaid, by Jerndorff, Drawing fc 
 the Pictorial Work "Troldtoj" 
 
 sigh of the dreamer, 
 whose presence one 
 sometimes suspects 
 behind his land- 
 scapes, but whom 
 one would never 
 really know unless 
 one were familiar 
 with his drawings. 
 It is through his 
 Troldtoj and his il- 
 lustrations of folk 
 stories and folk 
 songs that one rec- 
 ognizes in Jerndorff 
 an artistwith a capa- 
 city for enthusiasm 
 and imagination, not 
 to mention his vigorous decorative sense, which makes one 
 deplore his almost exclusive devotion to portrait painting. 
 Jerndorff was conscientious and competent as a colorist, 
 but he was not one of those who showed genius in this respect. 
 As a draughtsman, however, he was much more modern 
 than the painters who maintained a closer relationship with 
 the old Danish masters and preserved certain of their best 
 features: a certain lovable quality in their treatment, a 
 tenderness for the gentler side of life together with a dis- 
 taste for the bitter, and an affectionate attention to detail. 
 These traits persist in the work of such landscape painters as 
 the refined and noble Kabell, such figure painters as Haslund, 
 The latter at times retained something of Roed's coloring, 
 and no one can make much sensation in an exhibition by 
 such means in our day. Yet whether he painted landscapes 
 or animals, portraits or genre pictures, he often attracted 
 those who were sensitive to the gentle appeal to the heart 
 which spoke most eloquently from his pictures of child life. 
 The same kindly appeal, sometimes more movingly 
 phrased, sometimes, one must admit, with a tone of senti- 
 
DANISH Akr IN l\\\\ XIX CI'A'TURY 343 
 
 mentality, was repeated by Carl 'J'h(3nisen. lie preferred 
 to deal with the past that is recent enough to have survivors 
 at the present day, and therefore lingered over the old-fash- 
 ioned Danish parsonages, with their summer holidays and 
 their winter life which he depicted, especially in a series of 
 drawings, with great fidelity to his characters and to the sur- 
 roundings that moulded them. Of the other "narrative" 
 painters of the same generation, Helsted was a penetrating 
 psychologist, and as much may be said of Engelsted. Hel- 
 sted painted comic genre pictures of Italy half or wholly 
 satiric; very entertaining, but rather too large, pictures of 
 bourgeois life, such as The Town Council and A Deputa- 
 tion; and, finally, very serious-minded religious pictures 
 whose effectiveness is greatly reduced by their dry and mea- 
 gre technique. Engelsted, who began very promisingly with 
 Copenhagen genre pictures, had difficulty later in finding his 
 field and his form. A third, Irminger, managed better. 
 
 Concert in the Studio, by Otto Haslund 
 
344 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 A Deputation, by Axel Helsted 
 
 although he also tried his hand at every kind of painting, 
 despite his very limited command of artistic means. In his 
 early years he painted dragoons; later, beggars, cripples, 
 and palsied people; then, scenes from a hospital for sick 
 children; then he suddenly surprised the public by becoming 
 an enthusiastic painter of healthy children and fresh young 
 women. He was always a successful narrator, but his pic- 
 tures were frequently tinged with sentimentality. His most 
 virile work is in a few portraits which he has completed in 
 recent years. There is nothing of the subjective warmth 
 that pervades the work of Carl Thomson and, still more, of 
 Irminger, in the pathetic or humorous pictures of Frants and 
 Erik Henningsen. Among the many distinguished prose 
 artists and the smaller number of poets who have contrib- 
 uted to Danish art, these two seem like a pair of clever jour- 
 nalists. Their role has been that of brisk artistic reporters 
 in the Danish capital. It is all the more natural to think of 
 them as wielding the pen instead of the brush, because they 
 both have done a great deal of pen-drawing, and even with 
 the brush their work has been drawing rather than painting. 
 
DANISH ART IN rill', XIX CIA'TUkV 
 
 345 
 
 III :i (.liltcrciit, more purely satiric spirit, and in the iiiipre- 
 teiitious loian of mere iilustiMtions, the lile ol the capital 
 has been portrayetl by two cle\er draughtsmen, Alfred 
 Schmidt and I'hics, and, somewhat earlier, also by rcgncr, 
 who was an excellent illustrator of Holberg but rose superior 
 to this field and branched out into all kinds of decorativ^e 
 drawing. As has already been suggested, the life of Copen- 
 hagen streets has for the most part offered very little attrac- 
 tion to the more recent Danish painters. The same is true 
 of family life indoors, which so often supplied the earlier 
 artists with excellent subjects for paintings with numerous 
 
 Interior with Figure, by Carl Holsoe 
 
346 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 figures. In place of these, interiors with only a single figure, 
 or with no figures at all, have become usual. Among those 
 who have painted such interiors was P. A. Schou, who 
 brought back from France an unusually delicate and highly- 
 trained color sense; another was Achen, who also produced 
 sound and capable work in other fields, such as landscape and 
 portrait painting. Then there is listed, whose brushwork is 
 rather slight and insignificant, but who has much delicacy of 
 coloring as a painter and great skill as a color-etcher. Then 
 again, there are the brothers Holsoe, who are most metic- 
 ulous in their rendering of old furniture and of the subtle- 
 ties of close indoor atmosphere. Karl Jensen is an artist of 
 distinction who has painted a few landscapes of high merit, 
 but has distinguished himself chiefly as one of the few who 
 has cultivated interior architectural painting from the purely 
 pictorial point of view, and has not devoted himself too 
 ardently to ruler and compass and problems of perspective. 
 The special and supreme representative of interior paint- 
 ing, however, in recent Danish art, was Vilhelm Hammers- 
 hoi, who unfortunately died prematurely. Even in a few 
 imaginative pictures by this remarkable artist the space and 
 atmosphere behind the frame is not more densely filled than 
 in his interiors with the mist which shut him off from life 
 and made him see everything toned down to various shades 
 of grey. Unquestionably his eyesight was affected by a color 
 neurasthenia, which took the form of a distaste for pure 
 color. But a peculiarity of eyesight would scarcely have 
 contributed such a spiritual quality if it had been merely a 
 matter of taste, and not an expression of his soul. Deeply 
 ingrained in his nature was an aristocratic, aloof, solitary 
 attitude toward life, a dread of everything more luxuriant 
 than the simplest and most Spartan existence, which he him- 
 self lived in his own quiet rooms, rooms that, like a Northern 
 counterpart of Des Esseintes, he decorated in the few tones 
 which could supply the only color harmony his sensitive 
 nerves could bear. Through these rooms a silent little 
 woman occasionally passed. She was allowed there because 
 her dark dress made such a good contrast to the walls and 
 
DANISM ART IN THE XIX CENTURY 347 
 
 Interior with Figure, by Vilhelm Hammershoi 
 
 doors. The same function was fulfilled here and there by a 
 single mahogany frame, an old escritoire, an old cupboard 
 or table. It is in a special sense, and only for lack of a better 
 word, that one speaks of "contrast" between colors in Ham- 
 mershoi's work. Into the play of grey and white tones which 
 form the dominant harmony of his pictures, other colors 
 ventured shyly and only in small fragments; Hammershoi's 
 brush, always tentative and hesitating, was never more 
 disspirited than when called upon to apply such a particle of 
 color to his canvas. When the color was at last actually on 
 
343 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 Portrait of a Young Girl, by Vilhelm Hammershoi 
 
 the canvas — one recalls, for instance, a yellow bedpost, won- 
 deringly and apologetically intruding itself upon the unani- 
 mously grey and whitish tones of a simple little interior — it 
 seemed to be still trembling from some powerful agitation, 
 and in fact it was trembling in the most agitated mind, or at 
 least in the most peculiarly sensitive soul, in all Danish art. 
 Interior painting, however, was not Hammershoi's only 
 field. In his youth he gave vent to his mal de Steele in a 
 Job's Complaint. Later in Artemis he found expression for 
 the continuance of his suffering, and for his yearning for 
 beauty and his somnambulistic longing for a remote and 
 
DANISH ARi' IN riii<: xix ci:ntury 349 
 
 misty hind ol ilrcaiiis. Im-oiii (lie time when, still very young, 
 he painted the sorrow I ul picture ol his sister, he used portrait 
 painting as a means of relief for his own feelings, and later 
 he uttered the melancholy of his soul in landscapes with great 
 sweeping Hnes uiuier \ast grey skies, or else in the heavy 
 grey masses ol heautilul old architecture, whose sub- 
 dued aspect, like his own subtlued art, is a silent protest 
 against all the glaring and staring bad taste of modern 
 times. 
 
 There is nothing un-Danish about Hammershoi, in fact 
 it is easy to recognize something genuinely Danish in his 
 sadness, his renunciation of the world, the melancholy and 
 weariness of his nature. But in the perception of beauty 
 neither Danish painting nor Danish poetry has ever offered 
 anything like his faint and ailing soulfulness. Danish liter- 
 ary art in its highest achievement has been able to vie with 
 Danish painting; in fact the greatest master of language, 
 J. P. Jacobsen, produced pictorial effects with words before 
 the painters had attained any corresponding success with 
 colors, and in so doing he exercised an undoubted influence 
 on both the older and the younger painters. The influence 
 of his prose can best be seen in Zahrtmann, of his poems in 
 Julius Paulsen. He was one of many who sowed seed in 
 the latter's extraordinarily fertile mind. Paulsen's early 
 work reminds us of Vermehren, his work from a little later 
 period of Viggo Johansen, from a little later still, especially 
 in his representation of the female nude, of Henner or his 
 master, Rembrandt, who maintained the strongest hold of 
 all on Paulsen's mind. This artist, when routine does not 
 spoil his efforts, has the most masterly control over a won- 
 derful instrument of color, with a tone which, not unlike 
 Rembrandt's, sounds plaintively In the bass, and in the treble, 
 again like Rembrandt's, rings out exultingly in the light as 
 though released from prison. The dramatic effects In Paul- 
 sen's work are due to his dramatic treatment of light and 
 shade. When he has attempted dramatic effects by the ap- 
 plication of more palpable methods, he has either partly or 
 entirely failed. 
 
350 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 5T~t^\J?^ «j««;,vif,pp?r?w;; 
 
 From the Town of Rye, by Julius Paulsen 
 
 This peculiar sense of the dramatic relation between light 
 anci shade has been of great advantage to him as an interior 
 painter. It has enabled him to imbue commonplace subjects 
 with great pictorial interest. The same thing applies to the 
 best of his portraits, in which he has succeeded in combining 
 his pictorial power with an unusual accuracy and firmness 
 of characterization, whereas in his smaller and also in 
 several of his larger group pictures the pictorial-musical 
 quality has often asserted itself to a greater degree than was 
 beneficial to the characterization. With due respect for the 
 great tasks which this artist has set himself, to which he has 
 devoted more energy than one would think his gentle nature 
 could possess, one cannot help preferring what seems to have 
 been to him a sort of recreation, the landscapes which are 
 the purest expression of his inmost longings and aspirations. 
 
 These landscapes are almost exclusively pictorial in form. 
 There are a few, such as The Two Oaks, which may seem 
 to Jiave been chosen with an eye to an effective motif, but 
 otherwise they are entirely devoid of composition or deco- 
 
DANISH ARl IN 11 li: XIX CKNrURV 331 
 
 Evening, by Julius Paulsen 
 
 rative effect of line. One landscape may have a look of 
 Jutland in contrast to another which suggests Sjaelland, but 
 what interests him most is the times of day when the indi- 
 vidual in nature is dissolved and merged into those unities 
 to which men have given the name of moods. He paints 
 memory pictures of dusk, of evening, of night, almost devoid 
 of form, almost purely color, and in these nocturnes he has 
 often attained a power of expressing moods that compares 
 in poetic intensity with the most beautiful of Jacobsen's 
 lyrics. 
 
 It is remarkable that the poetry of the Danish summer 
 evenings and summer nights has found so few other 
 exponents since Sonne's time. For a few years the attempt 
 was successfully made by N. V. Dorph, in whose paint- 
 ings, unlike Paulsen's, the effect of the mood was height- 
 ened by the strong simple lines of the landscape, as well 
 as by the pervading blue tone, which rarely has been more 
 successfully achieved than by this painter. In more 
 recent years Dorph has devoted himself chiefly to portrait- 
 painting and evidently found more satisfaction in apply- 
 ing his ripening intelligence and education to this purpose 
 
352 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 mm 
 
 Portrait of the Artist's Mother, by N. V. Dorph 
 
 than in living on the remnants of his youthful enthusiasm 
 for nature. 
 
 Of the painters so far mentioned In this chapter the great 
 majority were born In the capital or In provincial towns, 
 only a very few In the country; hardly more than one was 
 really a peasant by birth. Without doubt this distribution 
 partly explains why the representation of peasant life Is 
 so rarely found In the work of these men. What the 
 period did produce of any real significance In this field is 
 
DANISM ARI' IN TllM XIX CllN'IUKY 353 
 
 prctloiiiinaiitly, in I act almost exclusively, due to the activity 
 of a few painters of peasant stock. One of these, R. Chris- 
 tiansen, who is incidentally a good animal painter, has re- 
 peatedly set forth a view from above of the life of the prov- 
 inces or of the country districts, and in his own peculiar 
 form, half drawn and half painted, has shown its (juaiiit 
 or its comic side, sometimes with keen good sense, sometimes 
 with robust humor. The other peasant-born painters of 
 peasant life of the same generation have been kept as free 
 from caricature by their deep sympathy for country life as 
 they have from false idealization by their Intimate knowledge 
 of it. Thus Brendekilde, in his early years, painted a little set 
 of pictures of peasants which in psychological insight, as well 
 as in pictorial value, stood high among the pictures of 
 Danish popular life at that period. Mols, also, has a deep af- 
 fection for the country and the society from which he springs. 
 He has a tender heart, and In his treatment of the rough Jut- 
 land heath or the wild West Jutland coast there is a large sym- 
 pathy, sometimes touched with sentimentality, for the living 
 creatures, human and especially animal, that suffer from the 
 harsh climate. Bjerre, too, a somewhat younger artist, has 
 a deep-rooted feeling for his native place, the Ill-omened 
 coast of Harboore, which lies like a churchyard wall round 
 the grave-strewn sea. Unlike Mols, he has an Impediment 
 In his artistic expression, now groping for a word, now em- 
 phatically concise, so that his utterance resembles that of 
 the people he describes. It Is perhaps this very taciturnity 
 and artlessness of expression which make his presentation 
 of the pious resignation of the assembled Harboore folk In 
 the face of God and destiny so extraordinarily forceful and 
 gripping. 
 
 This same artlessness with the addition of a certain 
 awkwardness of expression Is responsible for a great deal 
 of the primitive effects of Ring's first pictures. Profoundly 
 natural, he was elementary In his emotion, which was simply 
 a family feeling for the locality In which he lived and Its In- 
 habitants; elementary also In his Intelligence, In so far as 
 he treated things plctorlally without any deeper thought 
 
354 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 Beggar Children Outside a Farmhouse, by Lauiitz Rii 
 
 about them ; elementary likewise in his artistic point of view, 
 as he had an eye for the whole rather than for detail, in 
 which respect he often offended by defective drawing. He 
 had great simplicity of character, so that simple expression 
 was the only kind that came natural to him. There is a 
 difference, of course, between simple expression and the sim- 
 plified expression that Ring used later. A simplified expres- 
 sion is a cultivated, conscious abstraction from the complex. 
 Complicated natures find this difficult, so it is rarely quite 
 
DANISH .\\<\' IN 11 ll'! XIX CT'-N rURV 355 
 
 Spring, by Lauritz Ring 
 
 natural. Ring, however, being genuinely primitive, con- 
 trived to do It quite easily after a brief contact with artistic 
 education, and the simplified expression of his later pictures 
 therefore seems no less natural than the simple expression of 
 the earlier ones. In the picture of two young girls In a peas- 
 ant's garden in the springtime or In the picture of a woman 
 standing In a doorway, despite all the mastery of style and 
 the sophistication, there is the same touching simplicity as 
 In The Christmas Visit, The Shoemaker, or other pictures 
 which Ring painted In the years of his unspoiled Innocence. 
 
356 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 One can therefore say that, viewed in its larger lines, his 
 work is uniform, although he did have "periods" not only 
 in style but in color — for instance, one when the dominant 
 tone in his landscapes was grey, and other when it was 
 usually blue. This last change in his coloring was unques- 
 tionably the result of a change in his outlook on life, which 
 became brighter and milder as the years went by. Yet 
 whether he painted grey or blue, whether life looked dark 
 to him or shining, his relation to that part of life which he 
 chose to depict was one of the most intensely sincere and in- 
 timate that has ever existed in Danish art. This relationship 
 resulted in such complete understanding that it seems as if 
 no one else had properly portrayed the Sjifilland peasantry. 
 Ring's art has effaced all earlier representations of every- 
 thing minute or small of stature, indoors or under the open 
 sky, which a Sja?lland country town has to offer, and has 
 established a version which for the present is ultimate, by 
 the simple method of seeking the truth, and telling the truth, 
 which moves him deeply. The SjasUand town with the bare 
 country round it was well known before this time but it was re- 
 garded as a place which men fled from because of its loneliness 
 and boredom. Ring has taught us that life here, as every- 
 where, has its poetry and nature its beauties. Among these 
 is a scale of a few delicate and exquisite grey tones, peculi- 
 arly appropriate to his own temperament, a beauty that com- 
 pares with many of the sights that people go far to see, 
 though this lies right on the beaten track. Out on the high- 
 ways and byways, literally speaking. Ring has found beauty. 
 The road that runs through so many of his pictures might 
 be taken as a clue to their significance, almost as a symbol 
 of his art. 
 
 Ring has in Hans Knudsen a follower who has sometimes 
 gone even further in the quest for bare landscape motifs. 
 A few others among the younger men have likewise attached 
 themselves to the older painters. There is a reminiscence 
 of Zahrtmann (whose wider influence will be discussed In 
 the next chapter) In Wilhjelm's Italian pictures. There Is 
 an occasional memory of Johansen's landscapes In the work 
 
DANISH ART IN 11 lis XIX CI<:N'I'URY 357 
 
 of Gottschack, who died young, a sort of modern Dreyer, 
 a clever sketcher of landscapes and an excellent colorist. Ole 
 Pederson, a landscape and animal painter who likewise died 
 young, recalls Philipsen. It is difficult to determine the in- 
 Huences that affected certain others of the younger natural- 
 istic painters. This applies to Seligmann, a man of rather 
 scattering talents, who painted a little of everything — a few 
 notable interiors, such as A Sunday in the Thorvaldsen 
 Museum, a few fine portraits, clever landscapes and archi- 
 tectural pictures, but also a few failures, notably several 
 historical pictures. It applies equally to the lyrically in- 
 clined nature and genre painter Rud. Petersen; to the 
 robust landscape painter Hans Dall; to the marine painter 
 Thorolf Petersen, who finally has gone over to scene-paint- 
 ing; to Schlichtkrull, a sound portrait and landscape painter; 
 to Repholtz, who in his latter years has made a success in 
 black-and-white and lithography; to Frydensberg, who for 
 many years has struggled hard to establish his scheme of 
 coloring; to Luplau Jansen, who has been rather variable 
 in his manner, but in his genre painting Is always virile and 
 pleasing; to Knud Larsen, who has gradually obtained offi- 
 cial recognition as the sound and able portrait painter of 
 good society; and to many others who have made names for 
 themselves or at least have got themselves talked about a 
 great deal. Among these should be mentioned Henrik Jes- 
 persen, whose able and daring, half-scientific attempts to 
 paint the sun and reproduce not merely its dazzling but Its 
 blinding effect on the eye, by causing the colors of the "sun- 
 spots" to mix on the retina, has In a way marked the extreme 
 limit of the effort of naturalistic art to produce color illusions 
 that can compete with nature itself and break down the dis- 
 tinction between nature and art. One could hardly go fur- 
 ther In the direction of deceiving the eye. Yet the problem 
 of art is not to deceive the eye, but to satisfy the senses and 
 the spirit with beauty, and just as naturalism was celebrating 
 its greatest triumphs of colorlstic illusion, spirits were begin- 
 ning In many places to crave some nobler form of artistic 
 enjoyment. 
 
358 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 The reaction against naturalism In Denmark dates as far 
 back as 1890 or, if one prefers, 1891, the year of the first 
 "Free Exhibition," in which the new movements were fav- 
 ored, whereas in the official exhibition at Charlottenborg 
 there had been discrimination against them. From about 
 that time there arose a succession of painters who had been 
 educated as naturalists and. In full possession of all the pic- 
 torial expedients, foreswore all profit from that source In 
 the hope and the belief that by using the primitive methods 
 of the painters of old they might attain or at least approach 
 the artistic standards of the great men of the past. 
 
VIII 
 
 THE QUEST OF STYLE AND RECENT 
 TENDENCIES 
 
 FUTURE ages will find it easier than we to distinguish 
 between the numerous intellectual movements that com- 
 bined to cause the reaction against naturalism. There 
 was, of course, an element of romanticism in the distaste 
 for life as it is and as modern art is content to present it to 
 us, and in the longing for life as it used to be, or as it seemed 
 to the childlike view of the art of olden times. One might also 
 attribute to other intellectual phenomena — spiritualism and 
 other forms of mysticism — or the enthusiasm for the Middle 
 Ages and the early Renaissance, some share In the romantic 
 reaction against naturalism; such enthusiasm for the past Is 
 one of the familiar effects of the fragrance, benumbing to 
 common sense, which rises from the blue flower of Romanti- 
 cism wherever It spreads Its calyx. The cult of the Middle 
 Ages and the early Renaissance in Germany about 1815 
 (the Nazarenes), In England about 1848 (the pre-Raphael- 
 ites, In France about 1890 (Salon de la Rose Croix), 
 was In each case the expression of some sort of atti- 
 tude toward life; In Denmark It never became much more 
 than an attitude toward art. What there was in Denmark of 
 a Gothic or otherwise romantic attitude toward life was ab- 
 sorbed by the review Taarnet, and with it disappeared almost 
 entirely, having had only a very transitory effect on a few 
 of our painters In their early youth. The romantic attitude 
 toward art, on the contrary, took hold of some of the most 
 modern painters, and left lasting traces In their work. 
 
 In Its further evolution, which swept rapidly onward, the 
 enthusiasm of the romantic attitudes toward art for the 
 artistic forms of the Middle Ages and early Renaissance 
 broadened out until It included all artistic forms which raised 
 
 359 
 
360 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 the eye and the mind to concepts superior to the common- 
 place. Rome and Florence (and in certain cases also 
 Athens) now supplanted Paris as the place of pilgrimage, 
 and instead of bringing home from the South the greatest 
 possible number of little paintings, the pilgrim's object now 
 was to bring back the greatest possible number of big im- 
 pressions. What men hoped for was to be able to restore 
 one of the marvels of creation, nature, to something of its 
 majesty, which artistic naturalism had dissolved into triv- 
 ialities, and to restore the other great marvel of creation, 
 the human form, to something of its aristocratic dignity, 
 which democracy, faithful follower of naturalism, had sac- 
 rificed to mere truthfulness. This hope was sustained by 
 the realization that line is the essential medium of ex- 
 pression of an art that aims at style and decorative effect, 
 whereas color in such an art is only a means and not 
 an end in itself. 
 
 A profound distaste for oils became widespread under 
 these circumstances. It was the use of oils, so men thought 
 then, as they have thought before under corresponding con- 
 ditions, that had led art astray from its great task. The sal- 
 vation of art was commonly sought in the media of the old 
 masters, in tempera or fresco. As fresco postulates walls, 
 and it was necessary to rest content with canvas for the time 
 being, painters made use either of the prevailing oils, adding 
 a dull finish, or of the new tempera colors which enterpris- 
 ing firms began to keep in stock. The application of gold 
 was likewise revived — in fact, in despair at their inability 
 to find means of expression which improved sufficiently on 
 the mere reproduction of nature, either in decorative or in 
 symbolical effect, the painters had recourse to untried and 
 ill-chosen means. There was one who embossed a golden 
 corn-field in copper and painted in a sky in ordinary oils. 
 There was another who cut his whole picture in wood, then 
 painted it, and picked out details in bronze. Many other 
 expedients might be described, showing the desperation of 
 those who were anxious to express the new gospel but who 
 could not utter it in sufficiently eloquent form. 
 
DANISH AR'V IN rill': XIX CllNTURY 361 
 
 These artists, were, of course, not entirely mistaken in 
 their belief that the great traditions of art were insejiaralily 
 connected with the media used before the discovery of oil 
 painting. It was painting in oils that gave rise to easel 
 painting, and It was easel painting that caused art to forsake 
 first its monumental function and then its monumental point 
 of view, growing narrower and narrower in its scope as it 
 disassociated the pictorial from the architectonic and plastic, 
 thus sundering the unity of the arts which is the secret of 
 true purity of style. But they were mistaken in many other 
 ways — especially in their belief that they were in a position 
 to emancipate themselves from all connection with the pre- 
 ceding generation and the naturalistic education it had trans- 
 mitted to them. More than one of them lacerated himself 
 In the foolhardy attempt to tear himself free from his own 
 previous evolution. There were, in fact, only two of them 
 who escaped unhurt, and these two succeeded only because 
 they were peculiarly well equipped for the struggle. 
 
 The special gift that enabled the brothers Skovgaard to 
 be strongly traditional in their decorative work, despite the 
 fact that they were almost purely naturalistic In their easel 
 painting, was based on their Inheritance from their father, the 
 old landscape painter. His talent had developed not merely 
 on his feeling for character, but on a sense of style acquired 
 from his study of the art of former times, plainly evident In 
 all the decorative work from his hand. This sense of style 
 and the decorative faculty resulting from it, which In the 
 father's case was mainly the product of education, was in- 
 herited by the sons as a natural talent. With this dual ca- 
 pacity as a base-line from which they could pilot their course 
 alternately In the traditional and the naturalistic directions, 
 they were able successfully to weather the rock In which so 
 many others ran aground — the rock of no style at all. 
 
 Neither of them made color the subject of thorough study 
 or subtle discrimination. Accustomed to using paint decora- 
 tlvely In a large and elemental spirit of their own, they were 
 not sensitive to the breaking up of colors In nature, which 
 when faithfully reproduced contributes so much to the effec- 
 
362 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
DANISH \\<V IN rill<: XIX CIlNllIRY 2G3 
 
 ti\'cness of inircly naturalistic painting. They none the less 
 succeeded as naturalistic painters — jiroducing many land- 
 scapes that arc jilcasino- aiul a few that arc really notable, 
 fresher than their father's pictures, and recalling some of the 
 best of his studies. They also did many pleasing and a few 
 notable genre pictures. The elder, Joakim, especially dis- 
 tinguished himself as a painter of his own family life in the 
 home of his childhood, scenes of simple contentment that 
 carry one's thoughts back not only to the older Skovgaard, 
 who lived here, but also to his close friend and sympathizer, 
 Constantin Hansen, who liveci in a similar home and painted 
 similar pictures, although in a less bountiful spirit. In gen- 
 eral, there is much in the work of the two brothers that 
 reminds us of this friend of their father's quite as much as 
 it reminds us of the father himself. He stood upon the cen- 
 tury old foundation of Inspiration from the art of ancient 
 Greece, and also of Italy, in its period of full blossoming. 
 They stood upon the newer foundation of inspiration from 
 the art of former times In Its period of development, a foun- 
 dation that had been slowly but surely deposited beneath 
 the tides of successive artistic movements all through the 
 nineteenth century, and since about 1890 has seemed to 
 replace the older foundation for a time, may be even for 
 centuries. The modern archaism of the two brothers, there- 
 fore. Is In contrast to the old-fashioned classicism of Con- 
 stantin Hansen. The contrast is weakened, however, and 
 the relationship revealed, by the fact that their archaism 
 quite as much as his classicism is saturated with the spirit of 
 Grundtvlg, who, childlike, popular, Danish and bold, re- 
 modelled everything, Greek or Italian, to fit his own robust 
 Northern measure. Thus these two brothers, besides all 
 their other advantages over their contemporaries who broke 
 away from naturalism, had the advantage of inheriting an 
 attitude toward life which had been tested and found valid 
 as a support for an aspiring attitude toward art by men like 
 their father and Constantin Hansen. It Is in fact Impossible 
 to name any one in Denmark whose work has roots struck 
 so deep In the best traditions as these two brothers. Through 
 
364 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 their relation to their father and his contemporaries, their 
 work has a root in the Denmark of 1850; through Grundt- 
 vig, in the Denmark of the heroic era ; through Giotto, in old 
 Italy; through unknown masters, in the oldest and noblest 
 period of Greece. Small wonder, then, that nothing seems 
 more firmly grounded than these brothers' taste and style. 
 
 With the same endowment, the same upbringing, the same 
 travels and experiences, for a long time It seemed that they 
 must resemble each other, until, after a journey to Italy, 
 the development of the elder brother, Joakim, gained greater 
 headway than that of the younger. The colorful, brilliant 
 landscapes and figure paintings, which he produced In Italy 
 under the Influence of Viggo Pedersen and Zahrtmann, 
 merely promised to Danish art another distinguished ob- 
 server of nature, but in a set of drawings for Grundtvig's 
 hymn, "O Blessed Day," which he completed shortly after 
 his return, he showed the tempestuous Imagination which pro- 
 claimed this was an artist who might be expected to sweep 
 down upon the land like a storm. In the picture of the Pool 
 of Bethesda the crowd of unfortunates who frantically rush 
 for the water as the angel stirs It, In the picture showing the 
 walls of Paradise towering with celestial boldness round the 
 scene of Christ and the Thief In the Garden of Eden, in the 
 picture of Permina exchanging glances with Hannah — in all 
 these there was the lightning flash of his genius. It was not, 
 however, until the appearance, in 1893, of Christ In the 
 Kingdom of the Dead that the whole storm burst. A super- 
 fluity of strong Impressions of beauty must have been stored 
 in Skovgaard's unusually receptive mind at that time, for it 
 seems as if a collision of such impressions must have caused 
 the explosion that brought forth this picture. He had worked 
 It up out of a fancy of Grundtvig's, apparently not without 
 knowledge of Tintoretto's treatment of the same theme 
 (Christo in Limbo, S. Cassiano, Venice) ; the dominant 
 chord was a Halleluja, In which resounded the tones of 
 Grundtvig's deep-booming organ. With the exception of a 
 few traces of Michelangelo In the figure of Eve, none of the 
 Impressions of beauty whose collusion gave rise to the pic- 
 

 DANISH ART IN THE 
 
 XIX CJ<:N lURY 305 
 
 jn^K^r'.^^PjL.o" ., 
 
 
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 ^m^Xi A 
 
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 <' /^ \ 
 
 ^ ■•*^ -1 - ^.mmP^^ 
 
 
 ■ 1 -■ .J««yv„^~_ 
 
 V 
 
 Christ in the Kingdom of the Dead, by Joakim Skovgaard 
 
 ture could be singled out. It was simply perceptible from 
 the huge formations in the picture that mighty forces had 
 rushed together and that a vast phenomenon of nature had 
 taken place in a great artist's soul. 
 
 To this tremendous outburst succeeded calmer times in 
 Joakim Skovgaard's being. Meanwhile he kept on with his 
 series of notable naturalistic landscapes (especially on sub- 
 jects from Halland in Sweden), added to the small number 
 of his pictures from Greece (among others his charming 
 picture of the Erechtheion Caryatids), and gave expression 
 to his religious thought in a succession of religious works 
 (an altar for St. Nikolaj Church at Svendborg, the An- 
 nunciation In the Helligaandskirke, mosaics in the Emanuel 
 Church, projects for the decoration of Viborg Cathedral), 
 which testify to a searching study of the figure style of Giotto 
 and his contemporaries. Humbly acknowledging that mod- 
 ern times had little possibility of producing anything new In 
 ecclesiastical art that can compare with the best of the old, 
 Skovgaard steeped himself In the conventions of the old 
 painting. His sound sense, however, and the wholesomeness 
 
%6 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 of his taste, fortunately soon broke away from the ascetic 
 form of the Middle Ages, and there finally remained in his 
 style nothing of the old art except its genuine and naive, 
 simple and primitive spirit. Not only in his illustrations 
 of folk-tales that he did in this period (The Maiden in the 
 Hind's Skin, The Maiden in the Bird's Skin, and Urselille), 
 his own healthy, robust, figure style emerges ; also in a few 
 of the biblical pictures, which were a kind of preparation 
 
 ;\ 
 
 *^ 
 
 'ilie A'ewl) -created Ese, water-color, by Joakim Sko\gaard 
 
 for the Viborg decorations, it was already manifest in all its 
 original freshness. One should especially note the big water 
 color of The Newly-created Eve, in which Eve deserves 
 artistically the designation "newly-created," and In which 
 no atom of the dust of erudition has marred the freshness of 
 the first joyful morning of the ages, of mankind, and of 
 flowers. That Skovgaard mastered this particular subject 
 in this pure, sparkling spirit, shows, perhaps, better than any- 
 thing else, that he combined with all his learning not only 
 a fresh but a primevally fresh perception of the beauty of 
 creation. And it need hardly be said that this faculty was 
 
DANISH y\Rr IN 'l\\\\ XIX CIIN'FURY 367 
 
 a fountain which rIppK'd through his other j^ifts and ^a\'C 
 them their woiuicrl III hixiiriancf. 
 
 Thus prepared and matured, he approached the great 
 achievement of his manhood — his real life's work, one may 
 well say: the decoration in fresco of Viborg Cathedral with 
 the Bible in pictures. Such a work, requiring a great number 
 of compositions, naturally cannot be described in a summary 
 like this. It must suffice to indicate its character. 
 
 A feature of this v^ast scheme of decoration which is im- 
 mediately striking and at the same time deeply significant 
 is the unusually genuine, authentic quality of the religious 
 feeling, and the natural connection between that and the 
 artistic feeling — something almost unparalleled in modern 
 ecclesiastical art. Christianity in its joyous, childishly trust- 
 ing form, characteristic of the school of Grundtvig, of which 
 Skovgaard was an adherent, has here entered into such an 
 intimate association with art that the effect is not merely 
 that of art but of preaching. Believers, at least believers in 
 communion with Grundtvig, must here feel themselves con- 
 strained to admit that the scenes of the Old and New Testa- 
 ment must have taken place just as Skovgaard has repre- 
 sented them. It is as though Skovgaard had been initiated 
 into all the mysteries of heaven and the after life; as if, for 
 instance, he had seen with his own eyes the angels opening 
 the great gates of Paradise. Nor is this Impression hard to 
 account for. He really did see all these things with his 
 inward eyes, and as his eyes were those not only of a be- 
 lieving Christian but of a great creative artist with a sure 
 instinct for taste, measure, and style, and a no less certain 
 instinct for striking decorative effects, he moulded everything 
 that came to his hand Into a series of compositions which, 
 resting partly on a foundation of the most deep-seated emo- 
 tions, partly on a foundation of artistic education equally 
 profound and solid, bear the great and noble stamp of classic 
 Inevitability, simplicity, and wholesomeness. One can and 
 will readily admit that the Viborg pictures would be incon- 
 ceivable were it not for certain prototypes from earlier 
 times. Skovgaard, for Instance, learned from the medieval 
 
368 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 The Great Supper, fresco in Viborg Cathedral, by Joakim Skovgaard 
 
 painters to dispense with linear and aerial perspective and to 
 conjure up settings for one biblical scene after another with 
 only an indication of locality. It is also easy to see that 
 in some places he is under the Influence of Rembrandt, in 
 others under the influence of the Greeks. Everything Is 
 
DANISH Akr IN rill': XIX CIINIURY 369 
 
 The Crucifixion, fresco In Viborg Cathedral, by Joakim Skovgaard 
 
 completely assimilated, however, transformed and individu- 
 alized into a style which is Skovgaard's own, a style severe 
 yet in no wise stiff or cold; it is as living and warm In Its ex- 
 pression as life Itself, simple, natui'al, without a trace of the 
 effort which usually follows like a shadow all the ambitious 
 endeavors of modern art. 
 
370 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 With its four or five hundred figures, covering an area of 
 something like 16,000 square feet, the Viborg decoration 
 is the most colossal work in all Danish art. It affords, one 
 may safely say, a complete and exhaustive study of Skov- 
 gaard's characteristics as a monumental painter. His deco- 
 rative talent, however, has phases which must be sought 
 elsewhere. He has furnished drawings for seals and med- 
 als, for bookbindings, for furniture and other useful articles, 
 for tapestries, and for a few excellent fountains, of which 
 two have been erected respectively in and near the new 
 Town Hall in Copenhagen. He takes delight in decorative 
 work, and is always eager to do it. This is a family trait, 
 appearing also in Niels Skovgaard, who devotes himself 
 so ardently to decorative work that, as he is not so produc- 
 tive as his brother, he has been less active as a painter than 
 the equally versatile Joakim. A single colossal work, which 
 is also a masterpiece, has at last come from his sparing hand 
 after ten years of projects and experiments. This is the 
 altar-piece in the Emanuel Church in Copenhagen, a repre- 
 sentation of The Baptism Whitsunday Morning, which with 
 its vernal and festive tone, its sunshine and soulshine, is one 
 of the loveliest pictures In recent Danish art, and Is especially 
 noteworthy because of the clarity and intelligibility of the 
 composition and the genuine feeling of the narration. The 
 style is the Skovgaard brothers' usual blend of Greek and 
 Italian archaism with unadulterated Grundtvigianism, child- 
 like and popular, Danish and bold, here as elsewhere mak- 
 ing everything conform to its own robust Northern measure. 
 Whereas Joakim Skovgaard's nature Is explosive, his 
 brother's Is, rather, reflective. This explains the effect in 
 the work under discussion of subsidence and clarification, 
 of final completeness and restfulness, such as the indefatig- 
 able Joakim does not always allow himself the time to attain. 
 
 Niels Skovgaard may seem to Idle and waste his time, 
 because it Is his nature to muse and meditate. His special 
 gift Is a brilliant decorative imagination, which displays Its 
 wealth no less In his experiments in ceramics than In his etch- 
 ings and Illustrations. In this last field he has created a 
 
DAN'isii Aur IN nil'; xi\ ei;xji in .^71 
 
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 The Baptism Whitsunday Morning, by Niels Skovgaard 
 
 Northern style of his own, more symboHcal than FroHch's 
 yet severe and restrained like Constantin Hansen's. It is 
 more than anything else his plastic work, however, which 
 constitutes his lasting achievement. His relief of Aage and 
 Else, his tombstones for Barfoed and Hostrup, his monu- 
 ment on Lyrskov heath, his Hel Horse fountain, rank among 
 the best of Danish sculpture. Especially in the last-named 
 of these big, boldly-carved works his abstinence from all but 
 the most absolutely necessary lines and forms brings him 
 close to that sublime renunciation of the unessential which 
 the oldest monuments of art have taught us to honor as the 
 highest artistic wisdom. 
 
 The landscape painter VIggo Pedersen, whose develop- 
 ment has since gone through numerous phases, at first re- 
 sembled the Skovgaard brothers in many ways. Not only 
 was he the first of the line of those who endeavored to re- 
 place oils by some new medium, but he ventured into original 
 fields of his own, trying his hand at religious subjects, Imag- 
 niatlve subjects, portraits, and genre painting. His style 
 
372 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 a a Farmhouse, by Viggo Pedersen 
 
 in these different fields became even more variable than it 
 was in landscape paintings, for in that field he formed only 
 one fruitful union (with French synthetic art), while his 
 imaginary and religious figures are the offspring of transi- 
 tory connections with many kinds of art, from ancient Italian 
 down to modern German. Yet all the while his general 
 artistic trend was more and more definitely toward the Skov^- 
 gaard circle, as is perhaps most plainly evident in the pic- 
 tures which he, too, painted of his home. These show very 
 much the same spirit as Joakim Skovgaard's paintings of his 
 home. This benevolent spirit, unfortunately, has lately for- 
 saken his landscapes, which are often attractive as compo- 
 sitions, but show a propensity to an over-exuberant, rich, 
 glaring color scheme, which is discordant with the rest of 
 Danish art. 
 
 The landscape and figure painter Johannes Kragh (lately 
 active as a sculptor also), who began as a disciple of Viggo 
 Pedersen and Skovgaard, is talented, but his individuality 
 Is still unformed and vacillating; he is progressing rather 
 
DANISH ARr IN 1111': XIX CKN'IURY 373 
 
 Winter Day in RIbe, by Johan Rohde 
 
 uncertainly, absorbed in his very praiseworthy ambitions as 
 to decorative style. The pupil who follows Skovgaard most 
 closely is Larsen Stevns, who in his biblical pictures has made 
 the master's style even plainer and more unpretentious than 
 It Is in Itself. Likewise very intimately connected with the 
 Skovgaard circle in the simplicity of her temper is Elise Kon- 
 stantln Hansen, to whom the decorative style comes natu- 
 rally, for in her case it is evidently based on her heritage 
 from her father. It was, however, neither from Greece nor 
 from Italy but from Japan that she, like Susette Holten, the 
 Skovgaard brothers' sister, received her decorative Impulse, 
 which, like the Japanese artists, she has devoted chiefly to 
 the paintings of plants and animals. 
 
 In those days, the late eighties and early nineties, painters 
 In search of forms through which art might be renewed 
 and elevated turned their eyes in all directions, toward all 
 periods and countries. Hardly any one had such eyes for 
 
374 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 the search as Johan Rohde, who, thanks to his comprehen- 
 sive education, his clear intelHgence, his knowledge of art, 
 and his critical faculty, occupied a commanding position 
 among the young men, most of them younger than he, of 
 that period. He sought and found, after his first hesitating 
 experiments, a happy medium between the old Dutch land- 
 scape painting and modern French painting; from the 
 former he learned the decorative value of the silhouette 
 effect of a well-chosen motif, and from the latter he learned 
 to simplify in order to characterize sharply and tersely. 
 For a long time his painting was rather heavy and laborious, 
 but if his pictures were somewhat massive they had a com- 
 pensating quality of saturation and condensation which was 
 distinctive. Himself a provincial by birth, he had a genuine 
 and intimate feeling for his subjects, the picturesque little 
 old-fashioned towns of Holland and Denmark. This feel- 
 ing imposed certain limits on the formalities of style to which 
 he was ordinarily partial, and to which he has rendered due 
 homage in a few dignified portraits, as also in the series 
 of designs for simple and stately pieces of furniture and 
 other useful articles in which for the last ten years he has 
 found extraordinarily abundant expression of his fondness 
 for style. As a painter he was essentially a follower of the 
 old Danish artists. One may see this best, perhaps, in the 
 views of Italy that he painted on his many southward travels, 
 but his later pictures of Denmark, of Ribe, Fano, or Ghris- 
 tianshavn, also show that in the course of the years he wisely 
 abandoned the struggle to attain the new and ambitious and 
 resigned himself to the old, tried, and unpretentious point 
 of view. 
 
 Among his comrades in the youthful struggle for high 
 ideals were Harald and Agnes Slott-Moller, husband and 
 wife. He was endowed in his youth with abundant profes- 
 sional talent; she was if anything rather lacking in this re- 
 spect, but she had in compensation a poetic gift. She was an 
 enthusiast for the Middle Ages; he was given to the study 
 of models, which was to her a painful but necessary means, 
 but to him an end in itself. She soon infected him with 
 
DANISH .\\<l IN nil': XIX ClATl'kV 37? 
 
 
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 Illustration for the Ballad "Duke Frydenborg," bv Agnes 
 Slott-Moller 
 
 the inclination to dream and spin romances, and thereby 
 weakened his fidelity to simple and natural observation of 
 reality. A trip which they took together in 1889, visiting 
 Italy for the first time, brought them very close to each 
 other, inspiring .both with an ardor for style as the sign of 
 artistic aristocracy. They came home and began to dis- 
 seminate their conception of style, causing considerable stir 
 among their friends and associates. From that time on the 
 journey to Italy again became habitual. Historically, the 
 service rendered by Slott-Moller and his wife Is that they 
 called attention to the almost forgotten fact that Danish art 
 might acquire mastery of style as a result of these trips to 
 Italy. 
 
376 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 The overpowering impression of the great painting which 
 they found in Italy unfortunately did not come to either 
 of them at the right moment. He had already been too 
 thoroughly schooled in the downright reproduction of 
 nature; she, on the contrary, had so little schooling of that 
 kind that her early-acquired habit of making her style ab- 
 stract threatened the solidity of her form, already endan- 
 gered by her choice of subjects. It was in the representation 
 of scenes and moods from medieval Danish folk-songs 
 that she had found her life's work. Ever since her child- 
 hood the low, muffled voices of these ballads had echoed 
 through her fancy, and with the voices came apparitions of 
 their heroes. This gave her art from the very outset an in- 
 corporeal quality. For a long time she resisted this weak- 
 ness with great energy, until under English influence (Ros- 
 setti) she was induced to indulge herself in the representa- 
 tion of the psychic emotions, and as at the same time she 
 developed a taste for saccharine coloring, the original en- 
 deavor to attain severity of style was no longer seriously 
 sustained in her painting. Her endeavor is perhaps most 
 evident in a few of her plastic works, Ebbe's Daughters, 
 Queen Dagmar's Death, The Town Council. In its place 
 of honor over the entrance to the new Copenhagen Raadhus 
 (Town Hall) the last-named relief will testify to later gen- 
 erations that even a Danish woman artist, about the year 
 1900, had attained a realization of the monumental stand- 
 ards of art. 
 
 Of the other member of the couple, Harald Slott-Moller, 
 it must unfortunately be recorded that, led astray by what 
 one might call his sweet tooth for beauty, he has not lived 
 up to the great promise of his youth. If one considers his 
 whole production as a painter, one is struck by the fact that 
 a large majority of his works deal with Arcadian and idyllic 
 subjects. The long series extends from In Arcady (1892) 
 to In Italy (1903) and on down to the last few years. One 
 would gladly explain his predilection for such subjects on 
 grounds of indisputably genuine artistic thirst for the beau- 
 ties of life, were it possible to overlook the fact that a more 
 
DANISH Akr IN rill'; xix ci'.niury zii 
 
 Summer Evening, by Harald Slott-Moller 
 
 worldly appetite has kept him constantly circling round these 
 subjects, and has led him to emphasize their alluring qualities 
 more hungrily than is altogether attractive. Finally, his 
 brushwork has simultaneously become too smooth, and his 
 coloring much too pretty. The result is that he has on his 
 conscience a great many failures — pictures of uncertain taste. 
 Yet even leaving out of consideration the fact that he is much 
 more frequently successful in the decorative field, he is a man 
 who cannot be passed over when the history of Danish art 
 is written. An artist who as a mere youth painted the bril- 
 liantly clever picture The Doctor's Waiting-room and the 
 no less brilliantly clever portrait of his wife, whose execu- 
 tion was so fresh that it faintly recalled no less a person than 
 Velazquez, will be brought forward again, as he was origi- 
 nally, as one of the most eminent of his generation. 
 
 The man who will always without the slightest doubt be 
 named as the most remarkable man of this generation is 
 Willumsen. Starting as an architect, he became a painter. 
 
378 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 Jotunheimen, b}' J. F. Willumsen 
 
 then a ceramic artist, and later still showed that it was per- 
 haps as a sculptor he could best find an outlet for the full 
 force of his artistic nature. In Paris in the early nineties, 
 under the influence of various kinds of modern impression- 
 istic and symbolistic French art, he burned all the bridges 
 that connected him with his own past and the past of Den- 
 mark. He attached himself for a time to Raffaelli, a little 
 later to Gauguin, but he shook off their Influence, too, and 
 when he made his first appearance at the Free Exhibition 
 with a long series of his works and scandalized the whole 
 capital, he was unquestionably the most individual phenom- 
 enon that had ever manifested itself In our art. What 
 made people especially angry was his pretention to pro- 
 fundity. He was not profound, and he has not become so 
 since. But It was to the advantage of his artistic form that 
 he himself attributed to even the most elementary of his 
 thoughts on existence an exceedingly deep significance. This 
 encouraged him to feel that he was at a respectful distance 
 from everyday life, which, seen at such distance, grew be- 
 fore his wondering gaze, and passed Into his art In propor- 
 tions greater than the actual. His art was founded on 
 this attitude of respect and aloofness. Instead of on a rela- 
 
DANISH Ai<r IN rill'; xi\ ci'iNrukv .^?) 
 
 (loii between artist aiul suhjccl ol alleetion so \\ai"i)i tlial 
 it rapidly comnuinieatcs itself to the beholder and makes 
 him also feel an affection lor the work of art; the conse- 
 quence is that everything that came Irom his hand — far 
 trom beinji; ingratiating — was singularly unapproachable 
 and im|ier\ious to leeling. Nor did it carry any \ery \ital 
 message; it was not, as \\e ha\e said, especiall)' pi-olound. 
 Yet it olten appealed to the imaguiation in soniewhat the 
 same manner as the art of the earliest times. It succeeded 
 in this because there really was in his character something 
 of the primitive man's awe for the mystery of nature and of 
 existence. What Willumsen's work then had, and to a 
 certain extent still has, in common with the very oldest art, 
 is not limited to the conventions, but is something of its 
 actual spirit, wrung by perplexity under the moral pressure 
 of the mystery of existence, and using art to relieve Itself 
 of that pressure by throwing off mighty forms. For this 
 purpose art requires, among other things, a pair of power- 
 ful hands that can 
 lay hold of such 
 forms and carry 
 them over Intact, 
 strong and whole, 
 from the Imagina- 
 tion to the work of 
 art. Such a pair of 
 hands — a pair of 
 fists, one Is tempted 
 to say — Is just what 
 WUlumsen has. 
 
 Strictly speaking, 
 the manly energy of 
 his hands, which is 
 the foundation of 
 the manly forceful- 
 ness of his treat- 
 ment of form, is 
 
 perhaps his only The Mountain-climber, by J. F. Willumsen 
 
380 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 fully-developed faculty as a painter. His coloring is often 
 crude and hard — he is least of all a colorist; his brushwork 
 has nothing that can be called execution, and serves exclu- 
 sively to fix his forms to the canvas with few and often rather 
 brutal strokes. He has done finished work only in fields 
 other than painting — for instance, in architecture, the build- 
 ing for the Free Exhibition; in sculpture, a few large busts 
 and the memorial to his parents; in handicraft, a cinerary 
 urn and other ceramics. In actual painting, it is among his 
 sketches rather than among his more pretentious work that 
 we find complete successes, and among the water-color 
 sketches rather than among those in oil. 
 
 Unquestionably he has been of great importance in the 
 recent and especially in the very most recent developments 
 of Danish art. The faith that he has long cherished in the 
 possibility of finding artistic expression for philosophical 
 thoughts and subjective emotions in the use of abstract lines 
 has undoubtedly led several of the younger draughtsmen 
 even further into that fatal tendency. Apart from this, 
 however, he has exercised a very decidedly wholesome and 
 stimulating influence. In the first place, he has had a moral 
 influence, because more than any one else he defied and 
 finally bore down the opposition of the multitude, thereby 
 challenging others to do likewise and scorn the temptation 
 to make terms with the public. He has also had an artistic 
 influence, because by the energy of his treatment of form, 
 whether in painting or sculpture, he has set a much needed 
 example to others. It would be hard, for instance, to think 
 of Ejnar Nielsen without Willumsen as a predecessor and 
 a presupposition. It has been correctly said of this artist 
 that it is not the shadows of life with which he has chiefly 
 occupied himself, but the coalblack night of life. Death, 
 directly represented by the corpse, is by no means the most 
 dreadful thing Ejnar Nielsen has forced us to contemplate; 
 he has mercilessly brought us face to face with what is more 
 frightful than death: the incomplete destruction that is the 
 fate of those who linger on though paralyzed, crippled, or 
 suffering from incurable disease. When the victims of his 
 
DANISH AkI' IN rill': XIX Ci:N'iUkV 3,S1 
 
 Portrait Group, by Ejnar Nielsen 
 
 fantasies of the hospital or the charnel house have not 
 lain swathed in winding-sheets or sentenced to a miserable 
 bed, they have travelled in rags that made the thought of 
 their existence even more harrowing. The effect of these 
 uncompromising creations would have been merely loath- 
 some, and one would have hastily turned one's back on them, 
 had not the artist been master of more than one of the 
 means that enable art to expiate ugliness. The pictorial 
 
382 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 was one of these means; the pictures were painted in a 
 few grey tones, delicately and tastefully harmonized. But 
 it was the drawing that did most in mitigation, for it was 
 the drawing that raised them toward the monumental. The 
 most beautiful exemplification, however, of this artist's 
 monumental style is in a few pictures in which the painter of 
 horrors disclosed a surprising feeling for human beauty and 
 for beautiful human sentiments, first in a portrait, larger 
 than life, of a young sculptor and his female model on a 
 balcony overlooking the roofs of Paris (1901), later in a 
 larger group and In several individual portraits, among 
 others, one of Ellen Key. That Ejnar Nielsen's spirit is 
 not always tortured by infernal visions is also proved by 
 a few flower-paintings from his hand. Yet he easily reverts 
 to his morbid specialty, as he has recently, for Instance, in a 
 Job which In its horribly shameless nakedness gave new 
 proof of his curiously surcharged imagination, but also a 
 new evidence of his masterly talent for a kind of monu- 
 mental painting which unfortunately he has not yet been 
 given opportunity to exercise. 
 
 It is not possible to name any more contributions of per- 
 sonal energy, such as Willumsen's and Ejnar Nielsen's, to 
 the development of a great monumental form in the midst 
 of the intimate painting of Denmark; for unfortunately 
 Hartmann died while he was still young and immature, and 
 he was the only other man of whom anything of the kind 
 might have been expected. There was a touch of Dela- 
 croix in his attempts at very dramatic pictures, and he was in 
 general possessed of very great talent. On the other hand, 
 several artists may be pointed out who have endeavored 
 to change and improve the aspect of Danish art partly by 
 the direct importation of the elevated style of earlier times. 
 Thus Fru Bertha Dorph, with her sure sense of plastic form, 
 soon adapted herself to the severe and restricted formulae 
 of portrait painting devised by Domenico Veneziano, the 
 teacher of Piero della Francesca, and other fifteenth cen- 
 tury Italians. Earlier still Clement — after he had aban- 
 doned his youthful endeavors to follow the most recent 
 
DANISH Aki" IN nil': \ix cjuniury 3.s;. 
 
 Portrait of the Artist's Father, by Ludvig Find 
 
 French styles — had painted portraits based on similar for- 
 mulae, though he tried at the same time to preserve some- 
 thing like the minute study of detail of Roed and Ver- 
 mehren. His portraits, however, belong to a stage which 
 this rather variable painter has long since left behind him. 
 He now paints chiefly women and children, in pictures which 
 are a little vague in characterization but pleasing in color, 
 though sometimes a trifle flowery. A man who has finally 
 become a more genuine painter is Find, who after inclining 
 first toward the old Danish bourgeois-democratic and then 
 toward the modern French artistic-aristocratic tendency, 
 finally attached himself to the latter, and under Bonnard 
 
384 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 ^ ■ 
 
 Figure Group, by Sigurd Wandel 
 
 and Vulllard developed a bright, clean palette and a fresh 
 technique, especially noticeable in his pictures of children, of 
 which he seems successfully to be making his specialty. 
 Schouboe occupies rather an unusual position on account of 
 his choice of subjects: he is one of the few Danish artists 
 of talent who has taken up the study of the youthful nude 
 in the sunshine of springtime, and in his treatment of this 
 theme he has shown a fine feeling for harmony and grace 
 of line. An artist who has consistently endeavored to con- 
 fine his portrayal of humanity within controlled and sober 
 outlines is Vedel ; his weakness is working out color schemes 
 a little too elaborately after the manner of the old masters, 
 but in spite of this the movement in his portraits is free and 
 unhampered by the style he cultivates. Very much the same 
 may be said of Tetens, of Tycho Jessen, and especially of 
 Wandel, who of the three is much the most important. At 
 first, Wandel also showed a desire to surround the person- 
 ages in his portraits with the rigid ceremonial of style, but, 
 for all his intentions, life got the better of him, and he seems 
 
DANISM ARI" IN \HE XIX C1:M I KV 38: 
 
 Landscape, by Svend Hammershoi 
 
 finally to have abandoned his pretension to style in order 
 to give himself over to greater delight in painting his chil- 
 dren or their mother or merely his fellow-men just as he 
 sees them and loves them in everyday existence. The re- 
 quirements of style have been most stubbornly upheld by two 
 landscape painters, Svend Hammershoi and Mohl; each in 
 his own way treats nature decoratively, using large mass 
 effects and big, sweeping lines. 
 
 Both these artists engage in handicraft as well as paint- 
 ing. Hammershoi is successful as a designer of ceramics 
 and silverware, Mohl no less successful with embroidery and 
 tapestry. It is a significant fact that almost all the artists 
 we have so far mentioned in this chapter on the quest of style 
 in recent Danish painting have concerned themselves with 
 one or more of the decorative arts. The decorative has 
 gained a leading position in the interest of all of them. This 
 would certainly have been dangerous to the fresh study of 
 nature, which must always remain the source of all art, espe- 
 
386 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 dally of painting, if Denmark had not been a place where no 
 movement ever runs its full course. Every action, in critical 
 and temperate Denmark, brings a reaction on its heels, and 
 thus the quest of style was accompanied by a counter-tend- 
 ency from the very moment, one might say, that it got 
 started in earnest. To this reaction something was perhaps 
 contributed by the retrospect of old Danish art afforded by 
 the Copenhagen Art Society's inclusive exhibitions and pub- 
 lications dealing with the old Danish masters. These made 
 it easy to see how much had been lost, and how little had 
 been gained. The greatest gain, it appeared, was a certain 
 festive quality of style — the most serious loss simplicity of 
 mind. A few young provincial artists, pupils of Zahrtmann, 
 then began to receive a great deal of attention, because they 
 had not merely preserved that precious quality to an excep- 
 tional degree, but had made it tell in their painting, thanks 
 
 ^^. 
 
 Hunting Wild Ducks, by Johannes Larsen 
 
l)y\NlSll AkI' IN nil': XIX CI'N'JL'RV 3.S7 
 
 Dante and Beatrice In Paradise, by Poul Christiansen 
 
 to the demonstratively frank manner that was all their own. 
 One member of this group is the flower painter Harald 
 Holm, who is not meticulous in his choice of flowers, but, in 
 his fresh and confident way, takes them wherever he finds 
 them in the greatest possible profusion and splendor. An- 
 other member of the group is Johannes Larsen, who has the 
 unsophisticated attitude of a hunter toward the living things 
 in nature, and paints wild birds with vigorous characteriza- 
 tion and unaffected coloring. A third member is Poul 
 Christiansen, an able landscape painter, who boldly defies 
 his rustic heaviness of hand and Inspires great respect for 
 his courage, even when he aims his somewhat awkward 
 flight at lofty subjects — from the Bible, for instance, or from 
 
388 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 Country Road at Karise, by Poul Christiansen 
 
 Dante's poems. The others, Karl Schou, Peter Hansen, 
 and especially Syberg, the central figure of the group, stay 
 close to the earth, and their strength Is their capacity for 
 perceiving with all their senses what belongs to earth and 
 to reality. Schou is a painter of interiors and of landscapes, 
 and in both fields he has carried the study of atmosphere to 
 the last degree of refinement. Peter Hansen, who paints 
 landscapes and figures, is a rather commonplace observer, 
 but there is something engaging In his honesty and his dex- 
 terity. The one who Is most typical of the group's new, 
 strong naturalism is Syberg, who sets forth the earth and 
 reality with a peasant's robust indifference to whether the 
 Impressions of his senses are beautiful or not. He breathes 
 the stench of a pigsty, the exhalations of a nursery, the fresh- 
 ness of newly turned sod, or the perfume of a blossoming 
 fruit-tree with the same sense of physical satisfaction, and 
 expects those who look at his pictures to do the same. He 
 attaches Importance to the strength, not the delicacy, of 
 colors, and is never afraid of showing things as they are. 
 
DANISH ART IN TUJl XIX CENTURY 389 
 
 On the Ice at Faaborg, by Peter Hansen 
 
 He prefers to be and to remain as he is — if not exactly 
 clumsy, at least heavy and hard-handed in execution, rather 
 than be tempted by a fluent touch to become superficial. In 
 his strong and primitive media (frequently ink and water- 
 color) he often attains what he aims at: a presentation full 
 of feeling and character, free from the insipidity which often 
 accompanies over-refinement. 
 
 Such is the bulwark on that side — a sound naturalism, 
 which although broader and simpler in its point of view 
 than that of the old Danish masters, is closely related to 
 theirs, and in its own way is no less Danish. One may say 
 that from Eckersberg to Syberg there was, on the whole, 
 an unbroken continuity in Danish art. As a rule It accepted 
 only what could be reconciled with Its moderate Danish 
 temper; even Danish poster art, such as the work of the 
 talented and, for that matter, strongly Europeanized 
 draughtsman Valdemar Andersen, is recognizable In many 
 ways as Intended for Copenhagen and not for Paris or 
 London. Toward Paris all artistic eyes In Denmark were 
 once more turned. Great and noteworthy artists had again 
 made their appearance there. Yet the effect of Impression- 
 Ism on Danish art was so slight that all one can accurately 
 
SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 Spring, by Fritz Syberg 
 
 say is that It was not without influence, and no more can be 
 said for the effect of syntheslsm. The extreme representa- 
 tives of this tendency were recognized and appreciated In 
 Denmark even earher than In France Itself, but they were 
 not imitated. For In their time art was still Individual 
 property, and there was no glory In appropriating it. Re- 
 cently, as we know, It has been otherwise. Appealing to 
 the example of Cezanne, van Gogh, and Gauguin and de- 
 claring that everything depended on accepting the last and 
 utmost consequences of their view, certain artists in France 
 at the very beginning of the new century undertook to break 
 away from the thousand-year-old traditions of art. Paint- 
 ing, despite all differences of opinion about it and about all 
 Its manifold forms and aims, had Invariably been looked on 
 hitherto as the reflection of the outer world In the eyes of an 
 artist, who was free to look upon it as he could and as he 
 would. All sorts of new theories now arose, according to 
 which art should be something Independent of nature, some- 
 thing decorative and suggestive, with the sovereign right 
 of transforming nature Into something completely unrecog- 
 
DANISH ART IN THE XIX CENTURY 391 
 
 nizable. What might have been conceded as an endurable 
 and permissible privilege to some one great artist, was 
 exalted — or rather debased — to a privilege for any and 
 every upstart painter. "Expressionism" was the name of 
 the privilege, Matisse was the grand initiator of the world 
 into its secrets — until the headlong development passed over 
 him, too, and Picasso and his cubism attained an even more 
 suddenly acquired reputation. 
 
 All over the world this movement found throngs of sup- 
 porters. In all the exhibitions one met them, and as they 
 were more anxious to adhere to the method than to stand 
 on their own legs as artists, they were pretty much alike, 
 whether French or Russian, German or Swedish. The 
 movement appeared in Denmark, also, but here, in accord- 
 ance with the custom of the country, it took a far more 
 moderate form than elsewhere. In this little country it was 
 perhaps easier than in a big country to maintain a judicial 
 attitude, to distinguish real talent and ability from the mere 
 use of the convenient, almost exclusively colorlstic, formulae 
 which the new school had adopted for the purpose of con- 
 cealing a lack of capacity or a lack of training and study. 
 In any case it is still too soon to pass judgment In a historical 
 survey such as this on the young Danish artists who have 
 attached themselves more or less Intimately to the most 
 recent tendencies In painting. Swane, Naur, Rude, Scharff, 
 Glerslng, Wele, Salto, are the names of a few of them. 
 They are not too Intolerant to associate amicably In the 
 Exhibition in Gronnlngen, the latest secession In the annals 
 of Copenhagen art exhibitions, with Syberg and a few of 
 his group as well as with such neutrals as these: Knud Kyhn, 
 who Is an able and fresh observer of wild bird life; Viggo 
 Madsen, who has a nice talent for Interiors; Rostrup Boye- 
 sen, who has the merit, among others, of having discovered 
 possibilities of picturesque beauty In such apparently ugly 
 places as the new tenement districts In the outskirts of the 
 Danish capital; Aksel Jorgensen, In whom there Is likely 
 material for a forcible — If anything too forcible — delineator 
 of the tame night-llfe of Copenhagen; Niels Hansen, who 
 
392 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 still stands by Manet and in his spirit paints portraits which 
 show rapid characterization. It must, of course, be left to 
 the future finally and correctly to judge painters like these, 
 who are still young and, in some cases, still undeveloped. 
 
 Such is the Danish painting of the moment, distributed 
 ev^ery spring among two or three different exhibitions, yet 
 not difficult to combine into a single impression. Despite 
 the recent movements in foreign directions, it has persistently 
 shown its national temper. It has recognized restrictions 
 which are mainly the result of the limitations of the passion- 
 less Danish temperament. It has perhaps shown its Danish 
 nature most definitely on the negative side of the sober, 
 critical Danish character, with its sensitive instinct for shun- 
 ning the ridiculous under all circumstances. There has 
 always been very little of the ridiculous in Danish painting. 
 Unfortunately, there was usually a lack of the sublime as 
 well. Was it dread of the ridiculous that was to blame for 
 the rarity in Denmark of approaches to the sublime? Not 
 entirely. Only genius attains the sublime, and Danish paint- 
 ing has always been as lacking in genius as it has been rich 
 in first rate talent. This more moderate degree of artistic 
 endowment combined with the moderate Danish character 
 to impose limits on Danish painting. In the narrowness of 
 these limits lies the weakness of Danish painting; but at 
 least it has always known its own limits. Hence its inherent 
 truthfulness, and hence, again, its strength. 
 
IX 
 SCULPTURE 
 
 IN THE course of the nineteenth century several Swedish 
 painters anci one or two Norwegians had emigrated, and 
 thanks to their accompHshments, had exercised a definite, 
 though slight, influence in one or another of the foreign 
 art centers. There was no opportunity for Danes to exer- 
 cise any such influence, because, as we have seen, they clung 
 too closely to their native land. On the other hand the great 
 Danish sculptor, Thorvaldsen, made a greater contribution 
 to the artistic history of the world than all other Scandina- 
 vians together. 
 
 The story of this neglected child of the proletariat, de- 
 scribed by a contemporary as late as his twenty-seventh year 
 as "a lazy hound," who, once transplanted to classical soil 
 and exposed in the capital of the artistic world to Intellectual 
 Influences from all directions and from all periods, ripened 
 and mellowed like the fruit of the vine, will always remain a 
 marvel. It was not really quite so unaccountable as It ap- 
 pears. When he arrived In Rome In 1797, he unquestion- 
 ably had already received more artistic cultivation than Is 
 usually realized, for the soil, or, if one prefers, the academy, 
 from which he came, was by no means deficient In such 
 cultivation. The same Copenhagen soil had already pro- 
 duced Trippel and Carstens. Ablldgaard and Wiedewelt 
 had been teaching there. Ablldgaard was one of the most 
 thorough, learned, and conscientious painters In Europe at 
 that period ; Wiedewelt was one of the most zealous of those 
 who were working to emancipate art from the prevailing 
 French style and encourage the taste for the antique. The 
 artistic atmosphere which they breathed in the Danish cap- 
 
 393 
 
394 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 ital was of greater significance, not only to Thorvaldsen but 
 to Trippel and Carstens, than is usually realized. It was 
 of greater importance to Thorvaldsen than to the others; 
 whereas Carstens — not to mention Trippel — had been 
 affected by all kinds of powerful influences from Germany 
 before he went to Rome, Thorvaldsen was more exclusively 
 the product of Copenhagen and Rome. He went straight 
 to ancient Italy by way of Gibraltar, thereby escaping Ger- 
 man rococo, North Italian Renaissance, and all the other 
 conflicting impressions which he would have received if he 
 had travelled overland. He arrived in Rome in time to 
 find Carstens still living; and in Zoega he became acquainted 
 with a disciple of Winckelmann; from the former he ex- 
 tracted the quintessence of understanding of the antique, 
 and from the latter of knowledge of the antique, without 
 himself drawing a line or reading a book. He moreover 
 had the advantage of finding the situation, from the point of 
 view of the history of art, arranged and prepared for his 
 coming. The struggle against the old style, the rococo, had 
 ended in victory for the new classicism, antique in spirit, in 
 so far as it had gained a foothold in all countries and in all 
 fields of art. Yet it was plainly evident that the dreams of 
 that generation of a rebirth of Greek art had not yet been 
 realized In the works of Mengs or Battoni, of Angelica 
 Kaufmann or David, of Carstens or Flaxman. It was for 
 the most part a dream devoid of color, a dream of a world 
 In marble, and it seemed vain to expect its fulfilment of 
 painters such as these — or of artists who drew in outline, like 
 the two last-named. Only a sculptor could yield the period 
 what It longed for. It was a sculptor, the great Canova, 
 who satisfied the period until a greater still, Thorvaldsen, 
 came with his creations of a purer clay. One of the Impuri- 
 ties in Canova's classicism was the over-refined, saccharine 
 form, a morbidezza recalling Bernini; another unclasslcal 
 element was the lingering Southern sensuality; a third was 
 his propensity for the languishing and sentimental; a fourth, 
 the Italian virtuosity of his touch. From all these Thorvald- 
 sen kept himself free. As the latest to follow the dream- 
 
DANISH ART IN TITF XIX CENTURY 395 
 
 Jason, by Thorvaldsen 
 
 path to distant Hellas, he had everything In his favor. The 
 shipwrecks of his predecessors marked for him the reefs he 
 must avoid. He was quietly occupied during his first years 
 in Rome, looking over the situation and adapting himself to 
 it. He was really master of the situation when, in 1802, 
 he began work for the second time, after he had smashed 
 his first model in a moment of despondency, upon his Jason. 
 
396 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 The halls and alcoves of his museum In Copenhagen con- 
 tain nearly 200 statues or projects for statues, 130 busts, and 
 330 reliefs (including three large slabs), In all about 650 
 works, or several thousand figures, from his hand. The 
 first impression one receives there is of tremendous creative 
 power. The next impression is one of bewilderment at the 
 prodigious range that he covers: The Life of the Gods, 
 The Life and Acts of Cupid, The Lives of the Heroes, The 
 Bible and Christian Allegory, Portrait Statues and Busts — 
 all these are categories of the work he left to posterity. One 
 soon notices, however, that throughout this vast production 
 there is only one spirit and one style. This unity depends 
 less on uniformity than on what Is almost the greatest 
 adaptability any artist has ever shown. His contempo- 
 raries, who overwhelmed Thorvaldsen with commissions, 
 credited him, not unjustifiably, with a talent for everything. 
 He could do everything, after a fashion. After a fashion! 
 For his adaptability consisted, one should note, not In a 
 capacity to accommodate his OAvn nature to his task, but In a 
 capacity to bring each task within the limits of his nature 
 and put Into the accomplishment of it something of his 
 nature's beauty. His spirit dwelt permanently — hence Its 
 beauty — In a state of deep, unchangeable, almost beatific 
 peace; Julius Lange, the well known Danish art historian, 
 has correctly pointed out the fundamental Importance of this 
 mental attitude of Thorvaldsen's in his choice and treatment 
 of subjects. He represented Heracles as resting between 
 his labors. Mars as the peace-bringing god of war. Hector 
 as the husband and father, Achilles as the lover of Brisels 
 or as the friend of Patrocles — he never showed any of the 
 blood-drenched heroes of the Iliad In action. He glorified 
 Napoleon, disturber of the world's peace, as the peacemaker 
 in his Alexander's Progress. He treated the heroes of the 
 cycle of wars ended by the Congress of Vienna In this same 
 peaceful spirit, and similarly he represented Christ, not In 
 some moment of strife or sorrow, but as the Prince of Peace, 
 stretching out his arms that all mankind may find refuge in 
 his bosom. Parallel with his treatment In this spirit of 
 
DANISH ARr IN THE XIX CENTURY 397 
 
 Mercury as the Slayer of Argus, by Thorvaldsen 
 
 mythology, of the Bible, of history, or of his own contem- 
 poraries, there runs through all Thorvaldsen's work the long 
 series of representations of the beneficent powers of peace 
 and harmony, especially Love, and the Muses, the Graces, 
 the Genii, which swarmed forth from his fancy whenever he 
 had a moment of leisure from his greater tasks. 
 
398 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 Day and Night, bj' Thorvaldsen 
 
 There is something monumental in his figures' conformity 
 to type; but it is not Greek. That "race of blissful seers, 
 dreamers, and thinkers," as Lange has described the popu- 
 lation of Thorvaldsen's world, differs from the prouder and 
 stronger race which ancient art has preserved for us in mar- 
 ble. Not even in classical painting, which exercised an espe- 
 cially strong influence on Thorvaldsen, as it was the first 
 form of art with which he had become acquainted, owing to 
 the fact that he had arrived in Italy by sea and landed in 
 Naples — not even in classical painting does life take on any 
 such aspect as in Thorvaldsen's work, of happy dolce far 
 nlente, of happy idleness. Even less Greek than the aspect 
 of life is the aspect of the human body in Thorvaldsen's 
 work. In the work of Phidias or Praxiteles (to whom the 
 Danish sculptor was likened by his admiring contempo- 
 raries) the beauty of the human body depends to a great 
 extent on something beautifully corporeal, on a physical 
 warmth, which is lacking in Thorvaldsen's art and must 
 necessarily be lacking, if only for the reason that it would 
 never be possible to reproduce the favorable conditions 
 under which the Greeks were able to cultivate the study of 
 the nude. This should not, however, be understood as a 
 confirmation of the too often repeated criticism of Thor- 
 valdsen's art, that his work is lifeless and cold. Relatively, 
 
DANISH AKl IN llll<: XIX CKN I UKY 399 
 
 this is true, especially in comparison with the Greek; but 
 absolutely, it is not true, and it is actually untrue if one com- 
 pares it with the related art of the same period. Far more 
 than most of his contemporaries, Thorvaldsen realized the 
 necessity for the study of nature. Whereas Carstens scorned 
 the use of models, Thorvaldsen considered the study of 
 models indispensable, even for masters. Of course one can- 
 not talk, in his case, of strict and thorough study of nature; 
 what he did was to allow himself to be inspired by his model, 
 rather than to attempt to copy his model directly. But, 
 however inadequate his study of models may have been in 
 itself, it was sufficient to enable him to keep his lines fresher, 
 more lifelike, and freer from convention than could those 
 of his contemporaries whose efforts, like his, were directed 
 toward beauty of style in figure sculpture. Two often re- 
 peated anecdotes call attention to some of the fine threads, 
 otherwise invisible — but by no means imperceptible — by 
 which the lovely line-spinning of his Imagination was con- 
 nected with his life. One Is the story of how his Mercury 
 owed its existence to the chance that he one day saw a young 
 Roman sitting In a doorway in an attitude which struck him 
 as pleasing In Its ease and relaxation. The other story, 
 which is similar, tells how, while he was working on his 
 Ganymede, he surprised his model, in a moment of rest, In 
 an attitude which he reproduced literally in his Shepherd 
 Boy. The fact that these two anecdotes were collected and 
 preserved as evidence of the Importance of living motifs to 
 his Inventive faculty simply goes to show that, as one might 
 be inclined to Infer from the whole character of his work, 
 his Invention was dependent to only a very slight degree on 
 motifs which he found in actual life. On the other hand, 
 the two stories also show that he by no means disdained such 
 ready and available motifs as were offered him by the beau- 
 tiful Italian populace. With his keen sense of beauty, he 
 naturally had a keen eye for the wealth of material of this 
 kind with which he was surrounded and there can be 
 scarcely any doubt that if one could analyze the conception 
 of beauty that he developed shortly after his arrival in Italy, 
 
400 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 Christ, by Thorvaldsen 
 
 one would find many elements of the half-unconscious, fleet- 
 ing and yet lasting impressions from the same quarter from 
 which Mercury and the Shepherd Lad found their way into 
 his art. 
 
 What is most characteristic about Thorvaldsen, however, 
 what is inexplicable, and really a mark of genius, is that his 
 
DANISH ART IN 'JIIi: XIX CJ:N ILIRY 401 
 
 conception of beauty will not submit to analysis. Although 
 in so many respects it was the product of education, it is 
 insoluble, almost like a product of nature. All that his 
 genius acquired from outside — the impression of nature and 
 tlie impression of the antique — it remodelled in its own 
 image. All rose together to a higher unity, in a single great 
 synthesis — his style. 
 
 From first to last, his style — omitting unessential shadings 
 — was unalterably uniform, both in his statues and in his 
 reliefs. He himself had hardly any other purpose in his art 
 than to attain the truest possible balance, outwardly and in- 
 wardly, and that harmony of line which, according to his 
 contemporaries, constituted the essential excellence of an- 
 cient art. When his work satisfied him In these respects, he 
 felt that his own share In them was finished, and he often 
 left the final execution to his pupils. Usually he put on some 
 finishing touches with his own hand, but his work in general 
 lacks the vitalizing breath with which an Inspired artist 
 animates the surface of his work. That Is one reason for 
 the deficiency, which one feels In his figures, of Immediately 
 perceptible subjectivity. His figures, as Lange has pointed 
 out, give but feeble utterance to subjectivity, because they 
 are much more strongly Inclined to retire within themselves 
 than to advance toward the spectator as messengers from 
 their creator's Imaginary world. In this modesty, this shy- 
 ness of theirs, Lange says, — there Is "something which In 
 a striking manner suggests the ancient Greek feeling for 
 the sacred limitations of human nature, for that bashfulness, 
 which acts as a guardian of morality and at the same time 
 gives charm to humanity:" — ^yet which Is not exactly the 
 same, "because the bearing of the Greek figures Is fresher, 
 more powerful, more energetic." 
 
 Thorvaldsen's contemporaries noticed only the similari- 
 ties, not the discrepancies, between his style and the classical. 
 That the dreamland whither they saw him borne by his 
 fancy, which certainly was gleaming with "white marble and 
 ethereal air" — that this dreamland was Greece, none of 
 them doubted. They never suspected that It was only a dis- 
 
402 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 tant mirage, much less that this mirage, with its distinctively 
 cool, clear, pure and calm reproduction of antiquity, was 
 really nothing more than a reflection of Greece on a North- 
 ern artist's soul. Without any reservation they acclaimed in 
 Thorvaldsen the rebirth of Hellenism. One need not have 
 much experience of history to realize that they were neces- 
 sarily wrong. Obviously a man born at the end of the eight- 
 eenth century in a Copenhagen lane, with an Icelander for 
 father and a Jutland girl for mother, could not transform 
 himself into an ancient Greek. It would have been nothing 
 less than a subversion of a part of the order of the universe 
 if such a thing had come to pass, and such a subversion not 
 even the greatest genius can produce. The mistake is easy 
 to explain. Though Thorvaldsen was entirely devoid of 
 higher education and therefore disdained all the require- 
 ments which the aesthetes of the time exacted of the edu- 
 cated artist, he none the less appeared to his contempo- 
 raries to be the fulfilment of their aesthetic theory; if all the 
 dreams and expectations of the period were fulfilled in him, 
 it was primarily because what they had been dreaming of 
 and longing for with glowing passion was not, fundament- 
 ally, the rebirth of ancient art or of the classical conception 
 of the human figure, but the rebirth of the actual human 
 spirit of antiquity. Something of the most primitive and 
 happy quality of that spirit, something of its purity and 
 serenity, something of all that which in Europe generally 
 life had almost poisoned and erudition had almost cor- 
 rupted, was brought on the world's artistic stage about 1800 
 by this youth who had neither read nor lived. It was no 
 mere accident that he came from an obscure little country. 
 Only from an out-of-the-way corner of the world, where life 
 had stood still for centuries, where the primitive spirit of 
 humanity had been preserved, could an artist have come with 
 such pristine simplicity as his. Appearing at the opportune 
 and decisive moment, this was Denmark's most significant 
 contribution to the culture of the world. 
 
 :): 5ls ^ jH He 
 
DANISH ARF IN llUi XIX C1<:N'JURY 403 
 
 If one asks what was Thorvaldscii's significance to the 
 art of his own country, particuhirly to Danish sculpture, 
 there can be no doubt that his great example had a stimu- 
 lating eHect on his younger contemporaries. Such a strong 
 light, however, must throw deep shadows, in which others 
 thrive with difficulty; there was one man, especially, who 
 found this to be the case — Freund. 
 
 Although born in Germany (in the neighborhood of 
 Bremen, in 1786), he subsequently belonged with all his 
 heart to Denmark, whither he had fled during the war to 
 avoid being drafted into Napoleon's army. An indication 
 of his original tendency is the fact that during a stay in 
 Florence, on his way to Rome, he was seized with an ardent 
 enthusiasm for Michelangelo, who, as we know. In the first 
 decade of the nineteenth century was almost universally dis- 
 paraged. Yet no sooner had he reached Rome than he fell 
 under the Influence of antiquity, as the result of his associa- 
 tion with Thorvaldsen, who took a liking to the young artist, 
 but also knew how to make use of him. Despite the pressure 
 of Thorvaldsen's authority, Freund's personality quickly 
 found an outlet, as fortunate as It was accidental. A violent 
 controversy had long been raging In Denmark over "the 
 suitability of Norse Mythology for artistic representation," 
 which had led several members of the Scandinavian literary 
 fraternity to Invite artists to attempt subjects In the Old 
 Norse spirit. As Freund had taken part In the competi- 
 tions and had been awarded several prizes, he felt called 
 upon to go further in the same direction with a frieze in 
 which he undertook to set forth all the figures and incidents 
 In the saga of the Norse gods. His friends at home suc- 
 ceeded in securing for him a commission for such a frieze In 
 the newly-built Christiansborg; he soon saw, however, that 
 he must limit himself to the treatment of the Ragnarok 
 myth, and even this task proved to be so inclusive that he 
 could complete only certain portions of It with his own 
 hands, leaving the rest to be executed by others from his 
 sketches. Unfortunately all the work was destroyed when 
 the palace was burnt in 1884, and Is known only from a series 
 
404 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 Loki, original model, by H. E. Fieund 
 
 of lithographs. Even from these one can see what a flaming 
 imagination the young artist had. To be sure, the style of 
 the frieze is a little uneven, in many places too Greek for 
 the Norse subjects, in others too baroque for the classical 
 stamp of the rest. Not without reason the most powerful 
 parts of this frieze have been compared to the Battle of the 
 Giants at Pergamos, and here, also, traces have been recog- 
 nized of the impression that Michelangelo had made on 
 Freund. Wild pathos interchanges with bold fancy and 
 delicate charm. Surtr with his flaming sword is gripping, 
 and so, too, is Thor, swinging his hammer. Most impressive 
 of all, perhaps, is the wily Loki, wearing the winged cloak 
 of the bat, with whispered words on his lips, a figure which 
 Freund had already produced as a statuette, before he 
 carved the relief; in that form it has remained his most 
 popular work in Denmark. 
 
DANISH ART IN TIIR XIX CENTURY 40: 
 
 The Goddess of Fate, by H. E. Freund 
 
 Unfortunately his powers were not utilized to the extent 
 they deserved. He had, for instance, the possibilities of a 
 great portrait sculptor, but he rarely received commissions 
 for busts. He had to devote most of his time to grave- 
 stones, which he frequently decorated with ingenious bas- 
 reliefs. His relief style appears to great advantage in the 
 representation of the mysteriously veiled Goddess of Fate 
 scanning her book, and in the noble figure of a mourning 
 woman on the medal commemorating the death of Frederik 
 VI. Even in such works as these something appears of the 
 dark and deep, dolorous and dreamy strain, which was the 
 basic element in Freund's imaginative existence. His Imagi- 
 
406 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 nation, however, had practically exhausted itself in the Rag- 
 narok frieze; at any rate, after his return from Italy he 
 turned more and more toward strict classicism, and in his 
 later years he stood in the estimation of the younger genera- 
 tion as its confirmed representative. To this view of his per- 
 sonality the house that he fitted out for himself in Copen- 
 hagen was largely responsible : not only the Interior decora- 
 tion but the furniture and fixtures were. carried out in the 
 Pompeian style by young artists working from Freund's 
 drawing. It was here that Hilker had his first experience as 
 a decorative painter, here, too, Kobke and Constantin Han- 
 sen — to the detriment of the first, but to the profit of the 
 second — acquired even before their journey to Rome more 
 plastic sense and more sense of style than they had learned 
 from Eckersberg. Thus in the course of a few years (until 
 his all too early death in 1840) Freund set his stamp on the 
 development of Danish art. Yet leaving out of considera- 
 tion two medallists, Chrlstensen and Conradsen, trained 
 under his supervision, he exercised his Influence more 
 through his taste than through his work, which perhaps owed 
 Its best features, its poetic depth of feeling and its virile 
 energy of expression, to his German origin; certainly it 
 never found in Denmark the understanding it merited. 
 
 Jerlchau was another artist whose Importance did not 
 correspond to his endowments, although for a moment his 
 Panther-hunter seemed about to win him a European repu- 
 tation. His imagination was not strong, and not very origi- 
 nal, but he was a master of form such as there has not been 
 before or since in Danish plastic art. He spoke the truth 
 when he proudly declared that In his Panther-hunter he had 
 produced the most accomplished piece of sculpture of the 
 period, because that great achievement of his life did em- 
 body an energetic naturalism which was far In advance of the 
 time. As a pupil of Freund and a sincere admirer of Thor- 
 valdsen, he, too, was profoundly influenced by antiquity, but 
 he combined with his enthusiasm for the accepted generali- 
 ties of classical art a keen appreciation of nature. On the 
 other hand, in much of his work there was an element of 
 
DANISH ART TN TITK XIX CKNTURY 407 
 
 The Panther-hunter, by J. A. Jerichau 
 
 sobriety, but there was also much formal beauty of a very 
 superior quality. Especially notable was his representation 
 af animals, and of women. His representation of women 
 was coldly chaste; how much self-restraint such an attitude 
 toward womanhood must have cost him, considering his 
 emphatically erotic temperament. Is Indicated by a sketch 
 
408 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 of Leda from his hand, In which he entirely let himself go 
 and showed warmer passion than anywhere else in his 
 usually rather untemperamental work. 
 
 If Fortune looked askance at Freund and Jerichau, she 
 smiled on a younger friend and colleague of Freund's, H. V. 
 Bissen, who, especially after the death of Thorvaldsen, be- 
 came the preeminent sculptor of Denmark, and left a pro- 
 duction almost as extensive as his master's. Merely between 
 1835 and 1 841, he supplied the Knights' Hall at Christians- 
 borg with a frieze 260 feet long, with more than 200 figures, 
 representing the triumphal procession of Bacchus and Ceres, 
 and, besides, sketched eighteen female figures for statues of 
 saga heroines and Danish queens for a stairway at the same 
 place. During a sojourn in Rome he had attracted Thor- 
 valdsen's attention and won his confidence to such an extent 
 that the master entrusted to him the execution of the Guten- 
 berg monument at Mainz, and later designated him as his 
 artistic executor, in which capacity he inherited several big 
 commissions and directed the reproduction in marble of 
 Thorvaldsen's works. Naturally, collaboration with his 
 great teacher and close association with his spirit left traces 
 in Bissen's work; a whole series of the idyllic sketches of his 
 youth, with or without mythological titles, reveal plainly 
 enough the influence under which they were produced. Yet 
 even figures such as these show something which stands to 
 Bissen's own account, and other works from his hand prove 
 that in character he was very different from Thorvaldsen. 
 He chose from Greek mythology such figures as the angry 
 Achilles, or the Furies pursuing Orestes, or Filoctetes on 
 Lemnos, and in such figures he showed a pathos which gave 
 promise of great dramatic possibilities. The circumstances 
 of his private life, however, especially political considera- 
 tions, soon led him In a different direction. A native of 
 Slesvig, he felt himself even more strongly affected than 
 most by the quarrel between Germany and Denmark, and 
 Impelled by the national awakening and by Hoyen's preach- 
 ing of the doctrine of national art, Bissen now diverted his 
 attention from the remote Ideas which had heretofore pos- 
 
DANISH ART IN TIIR XIX CIlNTUkY 40') 
 
 Achilles, by H. V. BIssen 
 
 sessed his imagination in order to affiliate himself with the 
 nationalist movement. His vital contribution to this was 
 the monument commemorating the victory at Fredericia. In 
 the competition for this, his rival was Jerichau, who chose 
 the god Thor as the symbol of the power of the Danish 
 people. BIssen, on the contrary, chose the actual hero of the 
 victory, the common soldier of Denmark. This Landsoldat, 
 planting his foot on a captured mortar, waving a beech- 
 bough, and uttering with all his lungs a "Hurrah" for Den- 
 mark, marks a turning-point in Danish sculpture like that 
 marked in Danish painting by the pictures of Dalsgaard 
 and Vermehren. Here was the simple man of the people 
 taken as a plastic motif and presented to the public for 
 approval as such; here everything was conceded to living 
 reality, nothing to the abstract ideal. 
 
410 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 Soldiers' Monument at Fredericia, by H. V. 
 Bissen 
 
 Bissen, In consequence, now exploited the breach with 
 tradition that he had thus opened. He had previously been 
 such a faithful adherent of tradition that he had, for in- 
 
DANISH AK'l' IN 'Jill-: XI\ ClsN'rURV 411 
 
 stance, represented ()rstecl in classical drapery. Henceforth 
 In all the nioniinients he designed he adopted modern dress, 
 and this change in itself introduced a new simplicity into 
 the spirit of his art. It would take too long to enumerate 
 all the full length statues that emanated from his atelier 
 between 1850 and his death in 1868. Among the best known 
 are the statue of Frederik VI, the equestrian statue of Fred- 
 erik VII, and further memorials to H. C. Orsted and Oehlcn- 
 schliiger; among the best — besides the statue of Frederik 
 VI already mentioned — are the statues of the actress Fru 
 Heiberg and of the artist's own wife. This last, especially, 
 has an intimacy of treatment which one could not reasonably 
 expect to find in the numerous official tasks that were as- 
 signed to Bissen. The intimate quality of this statue is not, 
 however, entirely unparalleled in his other works, particu- 
 larly in his almost interminable series of busts. He made 
 it a point to preserve portraits of the many prominent men 
 with whom he had come in contact in the course of his long 
 career, and it was especially in these busts, which he carved 
 not to order but con amore, that he showed a far keener 
 eye for essentials of character than his master had possessed, 
 although in other respects he attached no greater Impor- 
 tance to finish than did the master. In this feature his work, 
 especially in his later years, was really deficient. The dem- 
 ocratic spirit of the new era not only diverted Bissen from 
 the dramatic strain in which he worked with so much 
 promise in his earlier years, but it detracted from the formal 
 quality of his work, because it demanded of him wholesale 
 and hasty production, which did not leave him time and quiet 
 for careful execution. For this reason, to many people 
 nowadays he appears at his best In his excellent sketches, 
 of which the Ny Carlsberg Glyptothek In Copenhagen has 
 made a fine collection. 
 
 In his atelier, which was the scene of livelier activity than 
 any later Danish sculptor's, most of the following generation 
 got their training. Here In the late thirties and early forties 
 were gathered such artists as Peters and Hertzog, Stein and 
 Saabye, all of whom attained a great age and carried down 
 
412 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 Girl Painting a Crock, by Vilhelm Bissen 
 
 to the end of the century the traditions of the period of 
 Thorvaldsen and Bissen. Of these, certainly the most bril- 
 
DANISH ARi; IN i'lll-; XIX CJ^NIURY 413 
 
 liant was llertzo^-; his iiuicpcndciil actl\i(y was prema- 
 turely interrupted by a great work of restoration, the sar- 
 cophagus of Queen Margrethe in Roskilde Cathedral; but 
 a large number of little drawings bear witness to his gift 
 for plastic composition. Peters had a great deal of life 
 and humor. His best works are a few statuettes, The 
 Dancing Faun, Diogenes, Ahasuerus, and Peter Willemoes; 
 his larger works are not of correspondingly high merit He 
 also maintained a keen interest in handicraft, and contrib- 
 uted to its promotion a series of designs which, although 
 they do not disclose any great original talent for this kind of 
 work, show delicacy and artistic refinement. Stein was 
 more successful than some of the men we have been discuss- 
 ing in securing commissions; he had a more robust talent, 
 and also a less tender artistic conscience. Saabye was more 
 sympathetic, for he was more genuinely childlike in feeling, 
 and at the same time he was a clever workman In both 
 bronze and marble. Other members of this group of pupils 
 of H. V. BIssen were Evens and Vllhelm BIssen, the master's 
 son, who was rather younger than the rest of the group. 
 Unlike the others, he was somewhat Influenced by the more 
 modern French sculptors such as Dubois, but he was essen- 
 tially a follower of his father's. He found wider scope for 
 his activities than anyone since his father's time. He did not 
 have H. V. BIssen's exuberant creative power, but on the 
 other hand his treatment of form was finer and more highly 
 developed, although It frequently suffered from a certain 
 meagerness and lack of freshness. He did his best work In 
 a series of carvings of animals and In a few genre pieces 
 like A Horseman and Girl Painting a Crock. This last 
 figure, especially, brought him great popularity. It Is an 
 unusually pure and unusually pretty example of the delicate 
 and finished but somewhat timid and often slightly weari- 
 some type of sculpture that became prevalent In Denmark 
 after the period of Thorvaldsen and the elder BIssen. 
 
 The Individuals who did not conform to this tendency 
 were not numerous, and they were not at all hardy. Hassel- 
 rils, who showed marked talent for historic portraiture In 
 
414 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 Bust of Fru Hirschsprung, by Ludvig 
 Brandstrup 
 
 his Statues of Ewald and Kierkegaard, became only slightly 
 emancipated from his native school, despite his long resi- 
 dence abroad. Schultz, In his group Adam and Eve, showed 
 an Inclination to escape from the ranks and follow the more 
 general European development, but he soon weakened and, 
 on the whole, like his contemporaries, Aarsleff, Jorgen 
 Larsen, and Axel Hansen, he placed himself firmly on the 
 old Danish basis. A considerable sensation was caused In 
 artistic circles In the middle of the eighties by Kroyer's first 
 portrait busts. In which the treatment — as one might expect 
 from the great painter — was to a large extent founded on 
 the pictorial effect of light and shade. This example, how- 
 ever, found no Imitators, and generally speaking, sculpture 
 has not participated In any movements such as those that 
 brought about the complete liberation of painting. At the 
 present moment there Is nothing which may be called a new 
 school in Danish plastic art, but there is a group of able 
 
DANISH AR'I- IN 1111': XIX CENTURY 415 
 
 sculptors like Pedersen-Dan, Mortciiscii, Juichscii, Sciiulrup, 
 Bundgaard, nonncscii, BaTciit/cn, and so on, and outside 
 of this circle there are se\eral iiuli\iduals wh(j may chiini 
 separate consideration. One of these is Brandstrup, to 
 whom we owe the fine monument to Zoega in Copenhagen; 
 he has distinguished himself by a series of portrait busts, 
 unsurpassed in Danish art for thorough plastic study and 
 skillful handling of the surface of the marble. There is Fru 
 Anne Marie Carl Nielsen, an acute observer of animal life, 
 especially of domestic animals. There is Jarl, who shows 
 French influence, an artist with a genuine plastic gift, espe- 
 cially for the treatment of single figures. Rudolph Tegner, 
 on the contrary, has not the true plastic talent; his otherwise 
 laudable efforts on a titanic scale, for example his monument 
 to Finsen, lack the solid foundation of study, and, besides, 
 his work is often surprisingly deficient in taste. Nor Is Han- 
 sen-Jacobsen a real plastic artist, but It cannot be denied that 
 he Is a notable artistic personality because of his pathos. 
 Far from permitting himself to rest content with the inof- 
 fensive and Ineffective figures with which Danish sculpture 
 too often has been satisfied, he has frequently attempted to 
 give plastic expression to such difficult subjects as the powers 
 of darkness, demons, and nightmares. To this end, he has 
 frequently made use of Intaglio, which naturally deprived 
 his forms of all substance. Such a paradoxical, plastlc- 
 unplastic, treatment was perhaps appropriate to a paradox 
 
 The Shadow, by Niels Hansen-Jacobsen 
 
416 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 ^;iuiiA ,- like the statue in 
 
 which he represented 
 
 f the most incorporeal 
 
 ' .^ I ' °^ subjects, The 
 
 ' ■ i I S h a d o w. But in 
 
 other larger works 
 Hansen - Jacobsen's 
 ^ method has inevita- 
 
 bly failed. The big 
 ,-»*v scale, which for vari- 
 
 ous reasons he does 
 not master, Is on the 
 whole unsuited to his 
 bold fancy. His pa- 
 ^ ' thos finds its best 
 
 expression In a set of 
 very small statuettes 
 ; such as Lady Mac- 
 
 beth, and The Da- 
 naids, which he has 
 ^^^ executed In earthen- 
 B '^^R, ware — for he Is a 
 
 J ^ distinguished ce- 
 
 " — iiiiMiiiiMiiiiMUM ■■ Ill — iMiiiMiiiiiiiiiiii ■ II Ill ■iiiimS ramlc artist. 
 
 Memorial to the Artist's Father and What true monu- 
 
 Mother, by J. F. Willumsen mental quality In 
 
 sculpture really 
 means was first demonstrated among the younger men, sig- 
 nificantly enough, by two of the painters who were among the 
 leaders in the quest for style : by Niels Skovgaard, In his mon- 
 ument on Lyrskov Heath; by Willumsen, In a few colossal 
 heads in glazed clay, and In the memorial to his parents men- 
 tioned above. Wagner Is a pupil of Willumsen's; by means 
 of busts, tombstones, and garden statuary he has gradually 
 worked his way up until he has become a very able artist and 
 a thoroughly excellent craftsman, familiar, so to speak, with 
 every material, and understanding how to evoke from each 
 Its Inherent beauty. His wife, Fru Olga Wagner, has 
 acquired from him the same technical knowledge; but she 
 
DANISH ART IN 1111", XIX CI^N'IURV 417 
 
 is, in atitlitioii, :m iiuicpciulcnt artist with a capacity, uncom- 
 mon amon^ women, for carrying her work through to com- 
 pletion. Both of these industrious artists have had a notice- 
 able influence in the improvement of the technique of Danish 
 sculpture, which had previously been extraordinarily unpro- 
 o^rcssive in the matter of choice and treatment of material. 
 In this respect, the most talented of recent Danish sculptors, 
 Kal Nielsen, is indebted to the Wagners. He is, however, 
 individual and independent, and his strength lies in the 
 almost Impudent way that he uses models and motifs which 
 no one before him had considered appropriate for plastic 
 treatment. His art is a creed that proclaims a delight in the 
 female body — even the very heavy-haunched female body — 
 and proclaims It with a boldness that often approaches flip- 
 pancy. But he Is a born plastic artist, whom one is forced to 
 forgive almost anything, because he succeeds in combining 
 everything Into eftectlve lines and masses. He understands 
 peculiarly well the art of preserving his block effect, avoiding 
 anything piercing through the mass which might make his 
 
 Group Picture from an Exhibition of Kai Nielsen's Works 
 
418 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 composition seem discontinuous and restless. His style 
 therefore has a certain compactness, but also at times a cer- 
 tain clumsiness; this conscious gaucherie, which further ap- 
 pears in the primitive, half-Malay peasant type which he 
 usually employs, constitutes a danger to his uncommonly 
 vigorous talent. 
 
 A similar gaucherie and a similar partiality for a primi- 
 tive peasant type, appear in Bjerg's bronze. The Abyssinian, 
 so far the only important work by this artist, who is still very 
 young. Yet his style is entirely different: his ideal is exces- 
 sive thinness, instead of fleshiness. Jean Gauguin shows 
 a great deal of humor in his boisterous little bronze statu- 
 ettes of human figures, and of grace in his representations 
 of animals. Jens Lund is earnest and austere, and a little 
 jejeune in his form; he is one of the many who prefer to 
 work in granite. The predilections of the younger men are 
 divided between granite and bronze. In recent years bronze 
 has been successfully treated with artificial patina. A master 
 of this art is Thylstrup, who began with charming mountings 
 in the ware of the Royal Copenhagen porcelain, and later 
 turned to small figures in his own elegant, precieux jeweler's 
 style, which is quite as well adapted to bronze as to the porce- 
 lain for which he originally developed it. Closely related to 
 him in various ways is Utzon-Franck, who has shown consid- 
 erable skill in adopting the early Renaissance style, with per- 
 haps an inclination to follow it rather too closely. He also 
 is a distinguished worker in bronze, whose productions, at 
 least in decorative effect, are delicate and tasteful. 
 
 Thus the latest Danish sculptors, through their under- 
 standing of the possibilities of plastic materials, seem to be 
 on their way toward the attainment of a truly plastic style, 
 such as Danish sculpture might have attained earlier, if it 
 had not too often been doomed to remain in plaster. Con- 
 sidering the fact that for so many years it was only to a very 
 slight degree the object of private initiative; that it was 
 produced mostly in fulfilment of public commissions, or else 
 with the most anxious regard for public requirements; that 
 It was a passion to only very few people in the country, a 
 
DANISH ART IN THE XIX CENTURY 419 
 
 luxury to many, and a matter of iiuliffcrcucc to the majority; 
 that it was treated in a stepmotherly fashion, always sub- 
 ordinated to painting — it seems quite natural that, in gen- 
 eral, its expression of life should have been decidedly and 
 noticeably languid. But recently the conditions seem to have 
 improved, and therefore we may venture to believe that it 
 will have a brighter future. 
 
ARCHITECTURE 
 
 THE architecture, like the sculpture, of Denmark in the 
 nineteenth century was hampered by the restricted con- 
 ditions of the country and by the lack of appreciation 
 of its significance. In the newer quarters of Copenhagen 
 there are, Indeed, a few buildings which prove that the 
 country has not at any time been entirely devoid of good 
 architecture, but these buildings are too few and too scat- 
 tered to give any general artistic character to modern Copen- 
 hagen. Such character as the city has it owes chiefly to 
 earlier times, especially to the seventeenth and eighteenth 
 centuries; a number of buildings of this period are still 
 preserved, despite the catastrophes — the last of these be- 
 ing the English bombardment in 1807 — from which the 
 capital has suffered. 
 
 Like painting and sculpture, architecture in Denmark 
 had behind it, strictly speaking, no real national tradition. 
 The granite and tufa Romanesque churches of Jutland were 
 built after models in the Rhine district of Germany; the 
 somewhat later brick churches of Sjaelland partly after 
 French models, partly after models from the German Bal- 
 tic region. Of the Gothic churches in the country, some of 
 the most striking are adaptions of the German Hallenkirche. 
 When the Renaissance reached Denmark, simultaneously 
 with the Reformation, the relationship to foreign countries 
 was to a certain extent modified; after that it was chiefly 
 from northwestern Germany and especially from the Low 
 Countries that Denmark derived Its style known as Gothic 
 Renaissance because of its wealth of medieval survivals 
 such as stair-towers and lofty spires. This style had little 
 
 420 
 
DANISH ART IN 11 II', XIX CIINTURY 421 
 
 iiilliKMicc Oil tlic dcNclojimcnt of church architecture; on the 
 other hand it was extensively used in secular huildings anti 
 notably in a series of buildings erected under I'rederik II 
 and Christian IV (Kronborg, Vallo Castle, Frederiksborg, 
 Rosenborg, and the Copenhagen Exchange), which al- 
 though they unquestionably are modelled closely on build- 
 ings in the Netherlands, yet show distinct adaptation to 
 Danish taste, and have e\'er since been held in esteem as 
 something of a national product. The Dutch influence was 
 succeeded in the eighteenth century by the baroque and the 
 rococo, to which we owe some of the most beautiful work 
 in Copenhagen and its neighborhood. Hausser's Chris- 
 tiansborg, of which the interior was decorated under the 
 direction of Thura and Eigtved, has been burned down, and 
 so has Thura's Hirschholm Castle; but of the work of this 
 great builder, author of "The Danish Vitruvius," there re- 
 main, among other things, the Hermitage In Dyrehaven, 
 the Prince's Palace In Copenhagen, and Vor Frelsers KIrke 
 at Kristlanshavn. The four palaces of Amallenborg Plads 
 — perhaps In their way the most beautiful In all Europe — 
 still support Elgtved's claim to the title of the supreme rep- 
 
 Amalienborg in Copenhagen, designed by Nikolai Eigtved 
 
422 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 resentatlve of the restrained baroque style. By the time 
 the reaction set in against baroque and its form of expression 
 in interior decoration, rococo, Eigtved was dead. Jardin, 
 the French architect who was summoned to Denmarlc to 
 talce his place, was an adherent of the new tendency toward 
 the antique. His task was to complete the Frederikskirke, 
 for which Eigtved had furnished the design, intended to be 
 carried out in Norwegian marble. After ten years, how- 
 ever, work was suspended on account of lack of funds; it 
 has at last been completed in our own times in a form sub- 
 stantially different from that originally planned, so that it is 
 only from lesser undertakings, such as Bernstorff's Castle, 
 that one can form an idea of Jardin's work as an artist. He 
 is of greater significance to Danish architecture in his 
 capacity as teacher of Harsdorff. When Harsdorff went in 
 1757 to Paris, where a few years before Soufflot had com- 
 pleted his epoch-making Pantheon, he had already begun the 
 study of the forms of classical architecture under Jardin's 
 guidance. Naturally, for him as for the other architects of 
 his time, this study had to start from Palladio, but whatever 
 the course of his development inParis,he had only to go from 
 Paris to Rome in order to realize that Palladio was a bypath, 
 and that the straight road was the study of the actual monu- 
 ments of antiquity. Then and subsequently, by the use of 
 Stuart's book on the antiquities of Athens — although he 
 never saw Greece, or even acquired a real knowledge of 
 Greek art — he attained a sufficient understanding of the 
 Ionic style to be able to use the Ionic column long before the 
 majority of his contemporaries, without falling into error 
 in the matter of proportions. It was especially by his 
 introduction of the Ionic column into Denmark that he made 
 his mark in our architectural history. His talents, unfor- 
 tunately, were never satisfactorily turned to account. To 
 a great extent they were wasted on temporary decorations 
 in preparation for royal festivals and so forth, on buildings 
 of perishable materials, on alterations and restorations of a 
 trivial and restricted kind. Of comparatively important 
 works from his hand, there may be mentioned a mortuary 
 
DANISH AR'I^ IN 11 IK XTX CENTURY 423 
 
 chapel ill the Karise Church at Taxc, the llcrculcs I.odjjje In 
 R()senh()rj2; gardens; as his masterpiece, the colonnade he- 
 twcen the palaces of Anialienborg, which although made 
 only of wood, has, none the less, owing to its perfect beauty 
 of proportion and line, enjoyed from that day to this a 
 merited reputation as the standard of neo-Classic architec- 
 ture in Denmark. After the fire in 1795, which laid whole 
 quarters of Copenhagen in ashes, Harsdorff found an 
 
 Colonnade between the Palaces of Amalienborg, 
 designed by C. F. Harsdorff 
 
 opportunity to show his discriminating taste and his skill in 
 producing an imposing effect even on a small scale, in erec- 
 tion of a series of simple and nobly-proportioned houses for 
 Copenhagen citizens. At the same time he was occupied 
 on plans for the completion of the Frederikskirke, but 
 these were interrupted by his death, and all the great 
 undertakings that lay before him, the reconstruction of 
 Christiansborg, Frue Kirke, the Court-house in Copen- 
 hagen, devolved upon one of his pupils, Chr. Fr. Hansen, 
 whose heavier but also more magnificent Roman style, for 
 instance in Christiansborg and in the Court-house, has been 
 for the first time properly appreciated in the last ten years. 
 He had two faithful henchmen, of whom one was Mailing, 
 the builder of Copenhagen University and Soro Academy, 
 and the other was Hetsch, the son of the well known his- 
 
424 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 The Court-house in Copenhagen, designed by Chr. Fr. Hansen 
 
 torical painter and director of the Stuttgart gallery. The 
 latter, who had studied as a young man under Percier and 
 Lebas in Paris, never became an architect of any great con- 
 sequence (his most Important buildings are the Synagogue 
 and the Catholic church in Copenhagen) ; but as a repre- 
 sentative of the Empire style and as a persevering advocate 
 of the intimate connection between art and handicraft, he 
 had a decisive influence on the taste of the nation, assailing 
 its aberrations in his writings, speech, and actions, and con- 
 stantly pointing to antiquity as the only means of salvation. 
 In opposition to this dogmatism there came forward, from 
 about 1840 onward, a younger architect of bolder and more 
 unprejudiced vision, livelier imagination, greater original- 
 ity, and, combined with all these, a knowledge of the vari- 
 ous styles unusual for those days. This was M. G. Bindes- 
 boll. Actively inspired from his youth by Harsdorff, 
 influenced during his residence In Paris by Gau, whom he 
 knew through Semper's history, Bindesboll, too, had an 
 affection for the classical style. His sense of beauty, how- 
 ever, was open to impressions from all sides, so that he 
 
DANISH Ain^ IN nil-: xix ckntury 425 
 
 h;ul the capacity to enjoy eminent exaniples of jiractically 
 e\cry style. He differed notably from his predecessors in 
 his cntlca\'or always to introduce color and pictorial effects. 
 Thus on his trip to Italy and Greece (about 1835) he took 
 equal interest in Ponipcian houses, Sicilian churches, and in 
 the Turkish paxilions and mosques of Athens, where he had 
 an opportunity, during the excavations on the Acropolis, to 
 study at first hand the evidences of the use of color in Greek 
 architecture. With his head full of all these studies, he 
 
 The Thorvaldsen Museum, designed by M. G. Bindesboll 
 
 began his project of the museum for Thorvaldsen's work, 
 to which he devoted the best powers of his maturity; in its 
 final form it was not only his masterpiece, but the greatest 
 work of genius that Danish architecture has brought forth. 
 The motif of the beautiful facade with its five doors is 
 related to the sarcophagus of Mycerinus, but in its lightness 
 it is more Attic than Egyptian, and the plan of the whole — 
 a court in the centre, with Thorvaldsen's grave, surrounded 
 by a two-storied structure with galleries and series of com- 
 municating halls and smaller rooms — is neither Egyptian 
 nor Greek, but Blndesboll's own, and a better plan could 
 hardly be devised for a building which Is intended to be at 
 
426 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 the same time a museum and a mausoleum for an individual 
 artist. It is impossible to imagine a museum better arranged 
 to do justice to Thorvaldsen's work. In the great halls for 
 the colossal pieces, in the small rooms for a single statue and 
 a few bas-reliefs, in the long galleries for Alexander's Expe- 
 dition and the pediment group from Frue Kirke — every- 
 where the space appears to have been apportioned exactly 
 to the works which it was intended to accommodate. And 
 so it actually was. With his knowledge of every one of the 
 master's works, and his affection for them, Bindesboll cal- 
 culated everything for their disposition and contributed to 
 the variety of their effect by the free use of stucco and color 
 on ceilings and walls. In this building, which is polychrome 
 even to the terra cotta colored exterior walls with Sonne's 
 splendid but unfortunately almost vanished sgraffiato pic- 
 tures of Thorvaldsen's return to Copenhagen, which we have 
 already mentioned above, Bindesboll realized his dream of 
 transporting the beauty of Southern color to the dreary 
 Northern clime, and from that day to this there has been no 
 place in Denmark more pleasant to frequent than this, with 
 its warm and joyful beauty. 
 
 Unfortunately there was no place in the country for his 
 great talents either, and only this once could Bindesboll fully 
 accomplish his dream. Another project from his hand show- 
 ing genius, this time in a kind of medieval style, was a plan 
 for a zoological museum; it never got further than paper. 
 The work he did in his capacity of official architect often 
 had the stamp of his discriminating taste, sometimes also 
 of his originality, but it suffered noticeably from limited 
 scope and lack of regard for artistic considerations. "It 
 must be done as quickly as possible, and it must be done as 
 cheaply as possible; it must be finished to-morrow, and cost 
 twopence," said Hetsch bitterly of the conditions under 
 which architecture in Denmark had to labor; both before 
 his time and since, these handicaps have rendered useless a 
 great many noble impulses toward beauty. Unfortunately 
 for their country, but fortunately for themselves, two tal- 
 ented contemporaries and fellow artists of Bindesboll's, the 
 
DANISH ART IN THE XIX CEN'rURV 427 
 
 brothers I lanscn, escaped from the dreariness of their exist- 
 ence at home. The elder, Chr. Hansen, who settled In 
 Athens and built, among other things, the University there, 
 later returned to Copenhagen, where he built the Municipal 
 Hospital, the Natural History Museum, and other build- 
 ings; the younger, Theophilus Hansen, who was summoned 
 to Athens by his brother and soon attracted the notice of 
 the Germans there by his work on the observatory, later 
 settled in Vienna, where he made himself a great name by 
 his splendid buildings — the Waffenmuseum, the Helnrichs- 
 hof, the Erzherzog Wllhelm's palace, the Muslkvereln, 
 the Borse, the Akademle der Kiinste, the Reichstag building, 
 etc. But he was thus completely lost to Denmark. 
 
 Meanwhile, from the fifties onward, with the increasing 
 knowledge of the country's older architecture and a hitherto 
 unknown eagerness to preserve Its monuments by the help of 
 intelligent restoration, there developed in Denmark an 
 impulse toward a more national trend in contemporary 
 architecture — a tendency which found expression in various 
 ways, incidentally in the return of brick, a native product, 
 to a position of honor and dignity, displacing plaster, which, 
 in defiance of the Danish climate, had been used hitherto 
 to cover the natural building material. The leader of this 
 movement, Herholdt, did not confine himself to any one 
 style, but adapted himself to the circumstances of his subject, 
 and therefore did not hesitate to seek such motifs as he 
 needed beyond the boundaries of Denmark. Thus the 
 National Bank In Copenhagen, with Its massive rustication, 
 Is late Italian Renaissance; the Studenterforenlngen, with 
 Its lighter feeling. Is rather earlier Italian Renaissance; the 
 central railway station (since torn down), most nearly 
 Romanesque; the motif of the University Library Is from 
 San Fermo In Verona. Whether the style of this last build- 
 ing Is really suitable for a library Is perhaps doubtful, but 
 as to the beauty of the building there can be no doubt; both 
 the facade and the great hall for the books are among the 
 most splendid of the few real show-places of recent Copen- 
 hagen architecture. As much may be said of several build- 
 
428 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 Interior of the University Library, in Copenhagen, 
 designed by J. D. Herholdt 
 
 ings — notably Abel Kathrine's Home, the Soldenfeldt 
 Foundation, and Hirschsprung's Museum — by Storck, a 
 pupil of Herholdt's, as talented as his master; particu- 
 larly in the first of these buildings, an institution for 
 aged women, he has shown unusual ability to produce the 
 tone that is appropriate to the occasion — in this case, a feel- 
 ing of cloistered peace. Whatever else one may think of the 
 Danish architecture of this period, feeling was not its strong 
 point. Meldahl's Frederikskirke or his restoration of the 
 interior of Frederiksborg Castle; Dahlerup's Jesuskirke, his 
 Art Museum, or Ny Carlsberg Glyptothek, or the Royal 
 Theatre, which he did in collaboration with Ove Petersen; 
 the latter's Dagmar Theatre; Albert Jansen's exhibition 
 building at Charlottenborg or his Magasin du Nord; Klein's 
 Industrial Exhibition building and Art Industry Museum ; 
 
D7\NMSII AKI^ IN TIIJL XIX Cl'lNTURY 429 
 
 Abel Kathiine's Home, designed by 
 H. B. Storck 
 
 I'cngcr's technical 
 school, MathsEUS- 
 kirke, fire station, 
 electric lighting 
 plant, and municipal 
 schools; Vilhelm Pe- 
 tersen's Custom 
 House and Scientific 
 Society building; 
 even if among these 
 or other examples 
 of the work of such 
 architects as these 
 there are a few 
 which are entirely praiseworthy for the effort to attain 
 style or for the taste which they display (although some 
 of them are complete failures in these very respects), one 
 may fairly say, none the less, that to these practitioners 
 architecture was merely a matter of style, rather than a 
 real expression of personality. They set out to bring the 
 plan of their undertaking into conformity with their knowl- 
 edge of some particular style, instead of trying to get into 
 the spirit of their problem and make the building so far as 
 possible an expression of their interpretation of the function 
 that it is intended to fulfill. 
 
 At last it dawned on Danish builders that a piece of archi- 
 tecture does not have character merely because it is executed 
 in a certain style; that a man can carry over into a plan 
 and a facade his personal relationship to the problem in 
 hand, and that a happy solution of the problem depends 
 mainly on his ability to live in a human relation to his work 
 and infuse his own life into its innermost spirit. As has al- 
 ready been pointed out, Bindesboll has supplied a shining 
 example and Storck several fine examples of this tendency; 
 it should here be added that Hans Holm, likewise. In certain 
 of his works, such as the building of the office for the man- 
 agement of estates of orphans, and the laying out of Vestre 
 Cemetery, which shows remarkable feeling, has proved that 
 
430 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 this point of view was not entirely foreign to the best of the 
 older generation. But the most recent generation is the first 
 that has done it full justice. The work, to be sure, has 
 constantly been based on a foundation of history, and chiefly 
 of national history, on studies of the architecture either of 
 the Middle Ages, or of the Renaissance, or of the baroque 
 period, or the neo-Classic; but on the one hand the require- 
 ments which the building is intended to meet are brought out 
 more clearly than they used to be, and in general the building 
 is allowed more right to exist for its own sake; on the other 
 hand there is more indulgence of the pleasures of subjec- 
 tivity than men formerly dared to permit themselves. For 
 this new attitude has necessarily done away with much of 
 the dryness and sourness which for so long were among the 
 most pervasive characteristics of Danish architecture. The 
 new buildings often impress one as better humored than their 
 predecessors. They also have clearer consciences, for con- 
 struction In Copenhagen and its neighborhood nowadays Is 
 solider and sounder than it used to be. Formerly one never 
 saw granite or sandstone used for private houses; nowadays 
 neither is rare, and one even sees marble used. The more 
 generous attitude toward architecture on the part of Its 
 patrons Is certainly due not so much to better times as to a 
 more general understanding of the builder's aims. Such an 
 understanding has become possible because the builders are 
 no longer so anxious to make their work ornamental, and 
 are much more anxious to make It thoroughly appropriate. 
 A large number of younger architects share the honor of 
 Inaugurating this Improvement; on the average, perhaps, 
 they are not quite the equals of their elders in technical 
 training, but they are far superior In their understanding of 
 the demands of every-day life upon their art. In this con- 
 nection one may mention Schlodte, Ludvig Clausen, Wenck, 
 V. Koch, Levy, Clemmensen, M. Borch, Leuning Borch, 
 Axel Berg, F. Koch, Emil Jorgensen, Eugen Jorgensen, 
 Kampmann, Warming, Brummer, Ingwersen, Tvede, Rosen, 
 Ingemann, Magdahl-NIelsen, Thorvald Jorgensen. To the 
 last-named has fallen the heavy and arduous charge of con- 
 
DANISH ART IN THE XIX CEN lURV 431 
 
 structing the new Christiansborg; unfortunately, for many 
 special reasons, this building takes a place outside of the 
 wholesome course ol tievel()i)inent of Danish architecture in 
 general. With this exception, in the vast majority of cases 
 the artists in question, whether their problem has been a 
 railway station or a country house, a barracks or a school, a 
 theatre or an archive building, a library or a hotel, have 
 consciously endeavored to make the building unmistakably 
 express that particular phase of the Danish spirit, lay, aca- 
 demic, military, mercantile, or whatever else, in which the 
 life within the building might be expected to shape itself. 
 A still younger generation has lately taken up architecture 
 in Denmark and has made it more Danish than ever by 
 establishing the old Danish models as the only ones that are 
 natural and proper. This generation has taken for its ideals 
 not only the baroque buildings of the towns but the farm- 
 houses and parsonages of the country, habitations designed 
 exclusively to suit the needs of their owners, entirely simple 
 and unpretentious, yet for that very reason often very beau- 
 tiful. It cannot be denied that the younger architects who 
 represent these Ideals, Ivar Bentsen, Baumann, Carl Peter- 
 sen, Hygom, Henning Hansen, Fisker, Rafn, and others, 
 are even more closely than their predecessors In league with 
 the rural districts, nor that they know how to build so as 
 not to detract from the beauty of the country, but their 
 style Is perhaps less suitable for building In the capital. To 
 a certain extent these young architects are under the influ- 
 ence of Kllnt, who In point of age belongs to the preceding 
 generation. He has not done much building; his master- 
 piece, a memorial church to Grundtvlg, has not yet gone 
 beyond the model stage ; but he has had so much the more 
 time to think about his art, and both In speech and In writing 
 he has supported the tendency which the best of the young 
 men are now following. The first man In modern Denmark, 
 however, to point out to architecture Its mission among men 
 was Martin Nyrop ; his Influence Is still perceptible. It was 
 he who at the beginning of the new century completed the 
 Copenhagen Town Hall. In the style of that splendid build- 
 
432 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 The Copenhagen Town Hall, designed by Martin Nyrop 
 
 ing there were elements from many periods and many re- 
 gions. In the facade, with its battlements and tower, and 
 in the semi-circular open space before it, one easily recog- 
 nizes the influence of medieval Tuscan city halls; in the 
 great hall with the open loggia at the front, the influence is 
 unmistakable of Renaissance courts in Genoa and Rome; for 
 the blind arcade of the first story a group of old Danish 
 manor-houses supplied the model; many of the light-colored 
 decorations of the whitewashed rooms were taken from old 
 frescoes in Danish churches. Nyrop tried to work all these 
 very diverse ingredients into a unified whole, and in many 
 particulars he succeeded beyond all expectation. The exte- 
 rior, however, is not as successful as the interior. The great 
 hall — with the exception of the ceiling decoration and a few 
 details — is one of the most beautiful of modern assembly- 
 rooms, light in its effect, airy and bright, nobly conceived and 
 monumental, yet free from ostentation or pretentiousness. 
 What gave this building its peculiar attraction, however, 
 was the amiable spirit that prevailed in all the every-day 
 rooms and ofiices and corridors and stairways and so on. 
 
DANISH ART IN TlII^: XIX CENTURY 433 
 
 The Great Hall in the Copenhagen Town Hall, designed 
 by Martin Nyrop 
 
 In all such places a loving hand had so caressed the objects 
 of practical utility, giving them such artistic form, that even 
 the heaviest mind must feel itself lightened by moving In 
 such surroundings, where beauty is so liberal with Its smile. 
 Granted that the beauty was not always as exquisite as one 
 might have wished; that Nyrop was not always fastidious 
 enough in his choice of collaborators, that by no means 
 everything was first hand or first rate, that the taste here 
 and there, especially on the exterior, was a little childish and 
 showed a delight In details and trifles rather than a felicitous 
 sense of unified monumental effect — perhaps It was just be- 
 cause of all this, perhaps it was just because no very great 
 refinement of taste was needed for the appreciation of Its 
 artistic qualities, that this genuinely democratic building 
 won all hearts and was greeted with an enthusiasm such as 
 has never been shown for any other work of Danish archi- 
 tecture. 
 
 With Its mighty tower, bold yet not boastful; with its 
 portal, rich yet not ornate; with Its whole character perme- 
 ated with Danish distaste for the venturesome, the exag- 
 
434 MODERN NORWEGIAN ART 
 
 gerated, the presumptuous, and with Danish taste for the 
 intelHgible, the natural, and the simple, this building stands 
 as a symbol for future generations, as a testimonial to the 
 endeavor not only of Danish architecture but of all Danish 
 art throughout the nineteenth century and now in the twen- 
 tieth to be sincere, to offer nothing except what it really had. 
 to seem nothing except what it really was. 
 
MODERN NORWEGIAN ART 
 
 By 
 JENS THUS 
 
 Director of The National Gallery at Christiania 
 
MODERN NORWEGIAN ART 
 
 By Jens Tims 
 
 I 
 
 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY PIONEERS 
 DAHL AND FEARNLEY 
 
 THE new Norway that achieved independence in 1814 
 saw the foundation of its pictorial art contemporane- 
 ously with the foundation of its judicial and political 
 freedom. Norwegian painting thus belongs among the most 
 recent in Europe, in so far as its traditions can hardly with 
 good reason be traced farther back than to the beginning 
 of the nineteenth century. 
 
 Norway, to be sure, had art before this time. In our 
 saga period, in the early Middle Ages of European civiliza- 
 tion, Norway appears even to have had a prominent place 
 in the domain of the arts. The Oseberg antiquities bear bril- 
 liant witness to an individual and independent artistic cul- 
 ture; and the cathedrals of Trondhjem and of Stavanger 
 and Haakonshallen remain as precious monuments from the 
 era of our national eminence in the twelfth and thirteenth 
 centuries. Recent research has made it clear, furthermore, 
 that we had at this time also the arts of sculpture and paint- 
 ing In Norwegian forms, although they bore a close rela- 
 tionship to the cultivation of the arts in other occidental 
 lands. Not only were French and English artists, summoned 
 from abroad, at work among us; it is manifest, as well, that 
 there was emerging from the soil of Norway itself an art 
 
 437 
 
438 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 which actually took on the character of schools In the various 
 parts of the country. The names of the artists have been 
 forever blotted out by time; but their works have to some 
 extent been preserved in the form of antependia, crucifixes, 
 and painted decorations from our oldest churches. 
 
 This art life, however, declined with the decline of our 
 national independence, and received Its quietus upon the 
 coming of the Reformation. Even after that time, It is true, 
 artists of Norwegian nationality are to be found, and also 
 pictures of an ancient date which may be said probably or 
 certainly to have been done In Norway. Yet these sporadic, 
 for the most part ecclesiastical, pictures or portraits from 
 the sixteenth, seventeenth, or eighteenth century possess so 
 little originality that it Is difficult on the basis of these relics 
 to form the vaguest conception of an independent Norwe- 
 gian school of painting or of a consecutive pictorial tradition 
 In our country. 
 
 Nevertheless, such absence of a national art in the higher 
 sense is by no means to be understood as an evidence of lack 
 of artistic Impulses among the people. On the contrary. 
 The artistic tendencies which among other nations since the 
 days of the Renaissance have been directed steadily toward 
 greater individual expression took a peculiarly general form 
 under the special cultural conditions surrounding the rural 
 Norwegian people In the time of the Danish sovereignty. 
 These tendencies gave rise to a decorative art, which ac- 
 quired a sharply distinctive character in the various provin- 
 cial communities and, hedged about by vigorous tradition, 
 gradually spread farther abroad. 
 
 There are, however, from the period preceding the nine- 
 teenth century, a small number of artists of Norwegian birth 
 whose names and dates are known, as well as their works. 
 Among these Magnus Berg, a man of peasant origin who 
 died in 1739, stands preeminent for talents as a painter and 
 carver that made him illustrious to fame in his own day. 
 He was a highly developed technician, numbered as a worker 
 in ivory among the best in the baroque age. All of his activi- 
 ties, however, fall outside of his native land, since he lived 
 
MODKRN NORWl'XilAN AF^r 439 
 
 lOr (lie most p:irt in Cojicnha^cn, in the eniploy of the king, 
 and died there. 
 
 Ex'cn during the hist years of the union with Denmark, 
 intellectual lile in Norway began to assume independent 
 forms aiul to become conscious of its individuality. After 
 the bonds of adherence were severed, our nation spontane- 
 ously asserted its freedom also in the sphere of art, although 
 the Acaciemy in Copenhagen for a long time continued to be 
 the nearest and most ob\ious school for young Norwegian 
 painters. 
 
 As early as a decade or two after the rebirth of our 
 political independence in 1814 one could name a small group 
 of painters who were commonly regarded as forming an 
 actually Norwegian school of painting, though all of them 
 had sought their training abroad and still were compelled 
 to seek their livelihood there. The fact was that at home in 
 Norway the collective energies were so completely occupied 
 in the arduous struggle to establish the country economically 
 and to secure Its self-government In the new union with 
 Sweden, that a considerable number of years went by before 
 the Norwegian artists could take root In their native soil. 
 
 Yet though the entire older school of Norwegian painters 
 were trained at foreign academies, such as those of Copen- 
 hagen, Dresden, Diisseldorf, and Munich, and In a great 
 part lived abroad, none the less they painted the scenes of 
 home. By means of summer visits and frequent travels In 
 the land of their birth they maintained contact with the 
 people and the nature that their art portrayed. 
 
 In a survey of the history of Norwegian art no one is 
 more deserving of mention than Johan Christian Clausson 
 Dahl, who has been called the father of our national art of 
 painting. Not only with regard to time but with regard to 
 artistic rank he stands among the foremost, as the renewer 
 and regenerator of the art conceptions of his age and as the 
 most gifted Interpreter of Norwegian nature we have had. 
 
 Johan Christian Dahl, the son of a poor fisherman and 
 ferryman of Bergen, was born In 1788. After eight years 
 of experience as a journeyman painter In his native city, he 
 
440 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 became, at the age of twenty-three, a pupil at the Academy 
 of Art in Copenhagen. During his apprenticeship in Copen- 
 hagen, however, it was not the professors at the Academy 
 but old Dutch masters In Danish collections who developed 
 his feeling for nature and opened his eyes to the possibili- 
 ties of paint. How much he owed to these masters is most 
 clearly to be seen in certain youthful pictures which, together 
 with a selection of his splendid studies from nature, are 
 grouped in our National Gallery. Even in such a work from 
 Dahl's later period as the magnificent painting, dated 1838, 
 of Hougsfossen with its lowering heavens and its glitter- 
 ing birch bending over the cascade, there are reminders of 
 that great old Dutch nature poet and romanticist, Jacob 
 van Ruisdael; with this reservation, however, that Dahl's 
 
 Hougsfossen, by Johan Christian Dahl. In the National Gallery 
 
 realism is by so much the stronger that he does not hesitate 
 to drag salmon fisheries and the sheds and the piled timbers 
 of a saw-mill into his romanticism. 
 
 Moreover, Dahl's preparatory years fell within a time 
 during which a new and a fuller conception of nature was 
 coming to the fore in literature and art; and he became 
 himself one of those who, in the struggle against the older. 
 
M0I)I;RN NORWEGIAN ART 441 
 
 Copenhagen by Moonlight, by Johan Christian Dahl. Privately 
 owned 
 
 conventionally classical view of art, contributed to the 
 supremacy of a deeper and more personal understanding 
 of nature. What Henrik Wergeland was to be for Nor- 
 wegian poetry and national feeling, Dahl was to be for 
 Norwegian painting and the appreciation of nature. Be- 
 sides, just as Wergeland in his production worked his way 
 out from overwrought romanticism into clearness and real- 
 ism, so Dahl with the passing years became more and more 
 a confessed naturalist, and almost all of his later pictures 
 are deeply rooted in immediate studies from nature which, 
 during his entire life, he painted in great numbers. One 
 of these studies is reproduced here, Copenhagen by Moon- 
 light, painted in 1846. 
 
 On his return in 1821 from a sojourn in Italy Dahl was 
 offered a professorship at the Dresden Academy of Art; 
 and although he vacillated between this proposition and simi- 
 lar intimations from Copenhagen, he finally decided to 
 choose Dresden. At home in Norway, under the prevail- 
 ing conditions, there was, in fact, not the least probability 
 of a livelihood for a painter who was not willing to face 
 actual poverty; and Dahl was already well on his way 
 
442 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 toward European fame. Although as an academy profes- 
 sor in Dresden he was thus doomed to Hve far from the 
 land he loved, he never ceased to interpret and to glorify 
 through his art the nature of Norway. 
 
 It is no exaggeration to say that Dahl was the pictorial 
 discoverer of Norwegian landscape. Even in his youth he 
 writes of Norway as a virgin soil that is capable of yielding 
 a rich harvest. So on his summer travels he wandered over 
 valley and mountainside, followed the long coast line, and 
 penetrated the recesses of the fjords, to return afterward 
 to his studio in Dresden with a rich garner of wonderfully 
 fresh and colorful nature studies. 
 
 In Dahl's depiction of Norway the western part of the 
 country, the so-called Westland, naturally takes the most 
 conspicuous place; but his lively mind and liberal spirit 
 made him kindle easily into enthusiasm for the nature of 
 Norway in its entirety. Still he reached perhaps his high- 
 est attainment in the portrayal of mountain height and heath. 
 On his last tour through Norway he passed over Filefjeld 
 
 Stugunoset, by Johan Christian Dahl. In the National Galler 
 
MOI)p:kN NOkVVl'XilAN ARJ' 
 
 443 
 
 Stalheim, by Johan Christian Dahl. In the National Gallery 
 
 to Bergen; a fruit of his studies on this trip is the picture 
 called Stugunoset, painted in 185 i. Never, before or since, 
 has Norwegian mountain scenery been presented with such 
 power. One forgets the smallness of the canvas in contem- 
 plating the boldness of the outline. This mighty mountain 
 ridge, formed when the world was young, that pushes its 
 long moss-decked expanse, on which herds of reindeer are 
 grazing, down toward the abyss — that is mountain scenery; 
 it is great and dramatically composed landscape art. 
 
 If it comes to a question as to what Dahl was capable of 
 at the height of his artistic powers, Norwegians who believe 
 in his greatness can point to such works as the magnificent 
 nature symphony on a theme from Stalheim, now in the 
 National Gallery, or Birch-tree in Storm, privately owned 
 in Bergen. In the last-named picture, especially, his lyri- 
 cism and love of country together have created a work of 
 art that is a virtual symbol of Norway. 
 
 At the edge of the sheer mountain ridge, above sunken 
 valley and driving fog, there is a crevice so shielded from 
 
444 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 Birch-tree in Storm, by Johan Christian Dahl. Privately owned in 
 Bergen 
 
 northern storms that the moss has been enabled to clothe 
 the rocks and to gather mold. In this sparse earth, the 
 salvage of centuries, a birch has taken root and is clinging 
 fast. Year after year it has grown more erect against the 
 winds of the heath and the breath of glaciers; now it stands 
 in its full stature and maturity with glittering leafage on 
 every bough. Blonde and full-bosomed, fragrant and trans- 
 lucent, it bends over the deep valley; and the sap is flowing 
 
M0I)1:RN NORWEGIAN AR'l 445 
 
 through t()uj>h wood beneath tliat silken hark. One chiy 
 the sun pours a wealth of hght and warmth over its fohage; 
 the next day the western bhist lays a strangling hold upon 
 it and forces it toward the earth so that branches writhe 
 and leaves are twisted about. Dahl has seen the birch while 
 the two forces were in collision. The storm wrenches the 
 crown and bends the trunk into a bow ; but the sun pierces 
 through the rift in the clouds and throws glancing rays over 
 the struggling branches. It is only a birch, yet it is a poem 
 whose theme is meagre soil and ready growth. 
 
 Paintings by Dahl are to be found, besides In the National 
 Gallery and in the Picture Gallery In Bergen, also In the 
 Danish Art Museum and in various German collections, 
 such as the galleries In Dresden, Berlin, Cassel, Hamburg, 
 and Prague. 
 
 While Dahl Is under discussion, it should not be forgotten 
 that he demonstrated his love for Norway by other means 
 as well as by his art. He exerted himself In persistent and 
 enthusiastic efforts to awaken artistic life among our people. 
 It was Dahl who took the Initiative toward the founding 
 of the National Gallery, and it was he who was Instrumental 
 In establishing art societies In the larger cities throughout 
 Norway. His name is connected with the cathedral at 
 Trondhjem and with the restoration of Haakonshallen, and 
 in 1837 he published In German a volume on Norway's 
 medieval timber churches. Dahl died in Dresden, October 
 14, 1857. 
 
 Dahl's most talented pupil was Thomas Fearnley; he was 
 born at Fredrlkshald In 1802, and died at Munich in 1841. 
 Fearnley received his first instruction in painting In Copen- 
 hagen, and more especially in Stockholm under Fahlcrantz; 
 it was not, however, until he met Dahl on a sketching trip 
 through Norway that he found the right path. He was 
 at once strongly Impressed with the poetic naturalism of 
 the master, and during a considerable stay In Dresden the 
 two painters, working together, developed a close and 
 devoted friendship for each other. 
 
 Fearnley, for his part, was throughout life driven on by 
 
446 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 A Terrace at Sorrento, by Thomas Fearnley. Privately owned in 
 Christiania 
 
 love of travel, and his restless blood, which vt^as not wholly 
 Norwegian, yearned eagerly for new sensations. First to 
 Munich, later to Italy, thereafter to Switzerland, Paris, 
 England, Norway, and back to Munich — such were his 
 wanderings; but just as he had settled down, filled with 
 impressions of art and nature, and was about to do his best 
 work, death carried him off before his fortieth year. 
 
 In Fearnley's case the influence of the clear outlines of 
 Italian landscape and, next to that, the vision of the gigantic 
 Alpine world of contours became decisive. He was strongly 
 tempted to remain in Italy; here he painted the most splen- 
 did studies, and here in the land of sunlight and wine his 
 joyous and sensuous nature was at ease. Fearnley's dream 
 as an artist was this: without being false to the veracious 
 study of nature in which Dahl had schooled him, to develop 
 a more elevated ideal art than that which might be attained 
 
modi:rn norwfxjtan art 
 
 447 
 
 solely by the "nature" method of Dahl, an art in which 
 nionunicntal beauty of line and romantic sensibility were to 
 be johied in a richness of harmony else unknown to contem- 
 porary art. 
 
 In pure painting Fearnley did not attain so high a level 
 as Dahl; but as a creative and poetic artist he was Dahl's 
 equal. Henrik Wergeland says in his characterization of 
 the two men that Dahl's paintings indicate a genius of 
 sharper profile, of greater independence. This is true in 
 so far as Fearnley never reaches Dahl's exuberant liveli- 
 ness or the rich tone of his execution. Yet Fearnley's aim 
 is often the higher as regards firm and conscious composi- 
 tion; his draughtsmanship is sure and confident, and he ex- 
 presses what he wills with imposing calm. 
 
 Fearnley's masterpiece is Labrofossen, now in the Na- 
 tional Gallery, painted in England in 1837 after studies 
 from his last journey in Norway. A copious stream is flow- 
 ing directly toward the spectator in a broad, foaming cas- 
 cade. A dead pine tree stretches its withered branches up 
 toward a lowering, foreboding sky. On both sides are dark 
 
 Labrofossen, by Thomas Fearnley. In the National Gallery 
 
448 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 masses of pine forest rising Into ridges in the background. 
 Wet clouds sweep over them. In the foreground a log is 
 caught in an eddy of the river. Upon it an eagle has settled, 
 the only living thing In a lonely waste. 
 
 Among Norwegian landscapes there is hardly another 
 that Is composed more decidedly in the grand manner than 
 Fearnley's Labrofossen, and no other that has its resound- 
 ing power in the shifting harmonies of lights and shadows. 
 The coloring, to be sure. Is cold and clear, with something 
 of the monotony of enamels. Still this cold and reserved 
 color scheme gives an impression of distance and sublimity. 
 Like an ossianic mood which has become clarified and fixed 
 in permanent form, this picture remains as an enduring 
 witness that the great romantic movement swept with the 
 beating of wings over the work of one Norwegian artist 
 at least. 
 
 Among Dahl's other pupils brief mention will be made 
 here only of Baade and Frich. Knud Baade, who was born 
 at Stavanger In 1808, was a student in the Academy of Art 
 at Copenhagen before coming to Dahl in Dresden. Baade 
 took up a special feature of Dahl's many-sided landscape 
 art, namely moonlight painting, and made it a specialty. 
 In 1845 Knud Baade removed to Munich, where he lived 
 and worked as a highly esteemed artist till his death In 
 
 1879. 
 
 I. C. Frich, who was born at Bergen In 18 10, also came 
 under Dahl's direction after having been a pupil at the 
 Academy in Copenhagen. Dahl received his fellow towns- 
 man warmly, and Frich seemed at first Inclined to follow 
 Dahl's lead. The times, however, were full of temptations 
 to forsake the nature method professed by Dahl, and Frich 
 too departed for Munich, which was becoming the new seat 
 of more impressive and romantic color doctrines. Frich, 
 It should be noted, was the first among the Norwegian 
 painters trained In Germany who made a serious attempt to 
 live at home. Till the very time of his death in 1858 he 
 resided in Christlania, where he was a teacher in the School 
 of Design and a member of the board of directors of the 
 
M0D1:RN NORVVi'XilAN y\Kr 449 
 
 The Bjornsteg Beacon, by Johan Flintoe. In the National Gallery 
 
 National Gallery and of Kunstforeningen. His eight large 
 landscapes from scenically beautiful places in Norway, 
 painted In 1850 in the dining-room at Oscarshal, Oscar I's 
 newly erected country palace on Ladegaardsoen, are his 
 principal works. 
 
 Another artist who actually made his residence in Chris- 
 tiania during these formative years in our art life was 
 Johan Flintoe, He was born in Danish Holstein and died 
 at Copenhagen in 1870; yet by his activities and by the 
 themes of his art he belongs to Norway. In earlier days 
 Flintoe was best known as a teacher of drawing in the newly 
 established Royal School of Design and as a painter of views 
 and panoramas in the little town that was Christiania of 
 the thirties and forties. His importance as an artist, how- 
 ever, was not estimated at its proper value so long as his 
 Norwegian landscapes, painted in water-color and in 
 gouache, remained hidden in Danish private collections. 
 Now that they have become known and for the most part 
 have been acquired for the National Gallery or other Nor- 
 
450 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 weglan collections, they disclose a new side of Flintoe's 
 talent. They reveal him as an actual discoverer of an essen- 
 tial feature in the nature of Norway. Norwegian mountain 
 scenery, which at that time was virgin soil for art, he appre- 
 hended, in pictures such as those of Myrhorn, The Bjornsteg 
 Beacon, and Jostedalsbrasen, with a cold and keen vision 
 like that of the older Dane Eckersberg, and reproduced it 
 with unsophisticated and precise faithfulness to detail. Still 
 his depiction of these mountain heights has undeniable great- 
 ness and expressiveness of modelling. As a painter, though 
 he had an unusually fine sense of values, Flintoe was a puri- 
 tanical colorlst who with rationalistic persistence kept apart 
 from all romantic depth and mysticism, and continuously 
 moved within a gamut of cold, meagre, daylight colors. 
 Certain phases of his art touch phases of Dahl's ; but, unques- 
 tionably, Flintoe's talent is the drier and the more attenu- 
 ated, and its greatest strength lies in dispassionate sincerity. 
 Norwegian naturalism may properly look back to Flintoe 
 as one of Its earliest progenitors. 
 
 Another side of Flintoe's endowment is revealed by the 
 satirical drawings in the National Gallery, in which he pic- 
 tures humorously and with rare narrative power the diffi- 
 culties and dangers of travel under the primitive conditions 
 that surrounded the tourist in Norway at that time. Of 
 Flintoe as a teacher, Hans Gude, who became a pupil of his 
 at the age of twelve, says that this master was an artist by 
 nature, and that he was principally Indebted to him for the 
 early acquisition of a certain sense of beauty of form. 
 
 Figure painters are neither numerous nor very prominent 
 In this first period of the history of Norwegian art. The 
 most significant among them Is Jacob Munch. Munch was 
 born at Christlanssand in 1776, received the education of a 
 military officer, and became a captain In the Norwegian 
 army in 18 12. At the age of twenty-eight, however, he 
 entered as a pupil in the Academy of Art at Copenhagen; 
 later he travelled for a time, and saw David's art In Paris 
 and Thorvaldsen's in Rome. Subsequently Munch made 
 his home in Christiania, and many are the portraits he 
 
MODERN NOkWJXiiAN ARI' 
 
 451 
 
 painted of his countrymen and countrywomen. Best known 
 in his hirge picture representing; the Coronation of Carl 
 Johan in the cathedral at Trondhjem in 1818; this work, 
 now in the palace at Christiania, is weak as a whole, but has 
 occasional good portrait heads. On his youthful travels 
 he painted Oehlenschliiger in Paris in 1807 and Thorvaldsen 
 in Rome in 1810. 
 During the time of 
 his activities at 
 home he was the 
 portrait painter of 
 the Old Eidsvold 
 men, the elderly 
 generals and 
 landed proprietors, 
 somewhat dry and 
 wooden in form, 
 yet, as a pupil of 
 David, elegant and 
 genteel; moreover, 
 his portraits often 
 disclose a powerful 
 feeling for charac- 
 ter. 
 
 Munch was one 
 of the founders of 
 the Royal School 
 
 of Art and Design In Christiania, and was active as a teacher 
 in the Institution till his death In 1839. To the family of 
 which he was a member belong also the painters Edvard 
 Munch and Fritz Thaulow. Munch's heir as the portrait 
 painter of Christiania society was Johan Gorbitz. This 
 Bergen man, Munch's junior by six years, had received a 
 solid training, first at the Academy in Copenhagen and later 
 In Paris, where he lived for a long time as a painter of minia- 
 tures and portraits. Gorbltz's portraits are Impeccable and 
 skilful, but precise and dry. The best known work from his 
 hand Is the girlishly attractive miniature of Niels Henrik 
 
 Portrait of the Artist, by Jacob Munch. 
 Privately owned 
 
452 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 Abel as a youth. For that matter, Gorbitz painted nearly 
 all the prominent men and fine ladies who sat for their por- 
 traits in Norway during the forties. He also produced small 
 landscapes on Norwegian themes, and was not untouched by 
 the influence of Dahl. 
 
 Another artist who alternately painted portraits and 
 
 landscapes was 
 Jacob Calmeyer. 
 He was born at 
 Fredrikshald in 
 1802; like Fearn- 
 ley he went to 
 Stockholm to study 
 and later to Dahl 
 in Dresden; he 
 lived for a time 
 in Copenhagen but 
 afterward in Chris- 
 tiania till his death 
 in 1884. Calmeyer 
 never acquired par- 
 ticular note as an 
 artist. Yet he 
 painted a portrait 
 or two of the poet 
 Welhaven as a 
 youth which indicate a sense of beauty and a bright and lov- 
 able apprehension of his subject. 
 
 A painter whose artistic work received little recognition 
 until it was collected at the Jubilee Exposition in 19 14 is 
 Mathias Stoltenberg. Stoltenberg, who was born in Tons- 
 berg in 1799, lived a long life, the laborious and well nigh 
 thankless life of the peripatetic portrait-painter, wandering 
 about the country, especially In the so-called Uplands, in the 
 region of Trondhjem, In Romsdalen, and In Nordland until 
 he died in 1871 at Vang In Hedemarken, where he found a 
 tardy home, If such It was. While Captain Munch was the 
 artist of the Empire period, with his French training in the 
 
 Portrait of Fru Moiniche, by Mathias 
 Stoltenberg. In the National Gallery 
 
M()I)1<:RN NORWMCilAN AKI^ 453 
 
 school ol I);i\icl, and the jiortrait painter ol the aristocracy, 
 Stolteiiberg was the j)ainter ol the more everychiy official class 
 througiiout the country in the good old Biedcrmeier days. 
 He evidently received his schooling in Denmark, since his 
 pictures betray a most obvious relationship to the portrait 
 art of the Danes L'ckersberg, Kobke, and Jensen. The old 
 clergymen and county judges in their robes of office and 
 their elderly ladies in elegant fluted bonnets fastened with 
 silk bows beneath their chins — such was his clientele. By 
 preference he paints rather small portrait busts to be hung 
 above the damask-covered mahogany sofa in the living- 
 room, in full face so that all the features stand out, open 
 and straightforward countenances with a friendly, artless 
 expression and a wide-awake air, but with the furrows of 
 time frankly marked about the mouth and eyes. Stoltenberg 
 is a keen observer with a telling grasp of character, and in 
 the great range of his portraits one would search in vain 
 for mannerisms or repetitions. It can by no means be denied 
 that his simplicity and awkw^ardness in certain of the pictures 
 approach dilettanteism and that his draughtsmanship often 
 reveals its weaknesses. What saves him, nevertheless, is his 
 fresh, joyous sense of color, his juxtaposition of pure, clear 
 pigments in dresses, scarfs, ribbons, and flowers, collocations 
 which in all their unexpected innocence at times produce a 
 positively charming effect. Stoltenberg is one of those 
 painters who confirm the fact, w^hich, to tell the truth, we are 
 glad to have confirmed, that the strength of our painting lies 
 in color. 
 
II 
 
 TIDEMAND AND GUDE. DUSSELDORF 
 TECHNIQUE AND NORWEGIAN SUBJECTS 
 
 THE next generation of painters, who emerged In the 
 forties and whose tendencies became dominant in our 
 painting during the next decade or two, did not follow 
 in the foot-steps of Dahl and Fearnley. They proceeded 
 to Diisseldorf, where a new romantic school had grown 
 powerful and Indeed supreme; as distinct from Dahl's inti- 
 mate worship of nature, it was a more literary and eclectic 
 art of echoes, working according to fixed recipes of the 
 studio, an art with a leaning toward the theatrical, with a 
 taste for all that was sweet and sultry in coloring. Judging 
 it as a school, we cannot, with our present views on the 
 functions of painting, say that the tendency In Diisseldorf 
 was the most wholesome and beneficial for young talents. 
 The situation was quite clear to Dahl who, although him- 
 self resident in Germany, issued a warning against the new 
 German movement. Beware, he says, of the deceptive 
 glasses that color all things red and yellow, regardless of 
 aught but pleasing the great crowd, which is easily dazzled 
 by coquettish brilliance. He finds the Danish school of 
 the day much less contaminated and more faithful to nature 
 than the German. Therefore he also advises sending the 
 beginner first to Copenhagen and afterwards, when he has 
 gained experience, sending him farther, especially to Paris; 
 as a reason for this counsel he asserts that Diisseldorf has 
 not had so helpful an influence upon young Norwegian 
 painters as commonly supposed, and that the desirability of 
 a simpler point of view has frequently been manifest. 
 
 454 
 
MODERN NOKWi'X.IAN ARI" 455 
 
 What Norwegian painting might have become in the 
 hands of the group of talented youth who came to the fore 
 in those days if they had followed the path indicated by 
 Dahl — to Denmark and thereafter to France, where art life 
 was in healthy and luxurious flower — instead of going by 
 way of Diisseldorf, is a subject for dreaming and specula- 
 tion. How Tidemand's lyric vein might have developed 
 and how his characterization of humanity might have been 
 deepened through artistic impressions in the land of Dela- 
 croix and Millet! How Gude's mild and equable sense 
 of the beauty of nature and Cappelen's great talents as a 
 nature poet might imaginably have been clothed in other 
 picturesque shapes if, instead of graduating from the Acad- 
 emy in Diisseldorf, they had been privileged to come in 
 contact with the masters of landscape in Fontainebleau and 
 to acquaint themselves with the spiritual art of Corot ! How 
 the original and earthy strength of the Norse endowment 
 might conceivably have broken a new path for itself if It 
 had come under the sway of the brutal peasant genius of 
 Courbet instead of the Influence of the Diisseldorf practice 
 of art for the sake of art dealers ! Concerning these and 
 other possibilities one may dream and dispute. 
 
 The Indisputable fact remains, however, that Norwegian 
 painting was left a remote stranger to the greatest thing 
 that happened In the history of art In the nineteenth century 
 — the burgeoning of French painting In the romanticism of 
 Delacroix and Its bursting forth Into naturalism. This It 
 was reserved for a new generation to see — In part: the 
 generation of the seventies. Therefore, too, they gave their 
 entire energy to the breaking down of those German barriers 
 with which our art and the artistic perceptions of our 
 public had been walled in. Yet even If the foreign Influ- 
 ence which from this time forth becomes predominant was 
 not the most fortunate, the period of the forties and fifties 
 stands out as a kind of golden age In Norwegian art, 
 richly endowed as It was with talent, and great as was the 
 national contribution in the universal struggle toward a 
 larger culture. 
 
456 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 The years about 1830 — the year of the July revolution — 
 had witnessed In Norway a period of kindling national con- 
 sciousness after the time of trial following the war and the 
 union in 18 14. The regaining of freedom, the advance in 
 self-government, the great past of the nation and its antici- 
 pated revival filled all minds with faith in the capacity of 
 the land and the people — a faith in which Henrik Werge- 
 land was the glowing core. In verse and in speech resounded 
 the praises of the doughty Norse yeoman and his rock-ribbed 
 land. Little was actually known, however, either of the 
 yeoman or of the land. Accordingly there followed in the 
 forties a period of positive effort directed toward acquiring 
 a knowledge of the country and its inhabitants, a period of 
 intellectual self-discovery in which science, poetry, and art 
 proceed side by side. In the subsequent romantic revival 
 there awoke realization of the need of connecting past with 
 present. Researches in history were begun which had their 
 chief representative in P. A. Munch, and systematic work 
 was set on foot to uncover and to preserve our antiquities 
 and to collect the treasures of the popular imagination. It 
 was during these years that our folk-tales, legends, and 
 ballads were brought together and interpreted by Asbjorn- 
 sen, Moe, and Landstad, and that composers like Kjerulf 
 and musicians like Ole Bull began to draw upon the rich 
 wells of folk melody. In this national renascence belong 
 also the names of Tidemand and Gude. 
 
 Adolf Tidemand was born in Mandal in the great year, 
 1 8 14. At the age of seventeen he went to Copenhagen and 
 became a pupil in the Academy of Art, where he studied 
 continuously for five years. Later he proceeded to Diissel- 
 dorf in order to prepare for historical painting. He seems 
 to have had some idea of becoming the painter of our heroic 
 past; but he soon realized that there were more immediate 
 tasks before him. Hitherto no Norwegian painter or poet 
 had devoted his talents wholly to depicting the Norwegian 
 folk type as it appeared In the farmer, the farmer as he 
 actually existed at that day, the heir of the traditions of the 
 past. This became the life-long mission of Tidemand as a 
 
M()I)I:RN NORWiailAN ART 457 
 
 painter, to portray tlic Norwcjj^iaii larmcr, Ins manners and 
 customs, his distinctive inheritance of medieval culture, his 
 immemorial architecture, his particolored national costumes 
 and magnificent ornaments, his patriarchal mode of living, 
 and his simple, deep emotions. In this special field I'ide- 
 manci \cry soon became an extremely popular artist. 
 Throughout Norway his renown has long since over- 
 shadowed that of all others in the popular estimation; and 
 in Germany at the height of his career he was reckoned 
 among the most prominent painters in the Germanic world, 
 w^as honored with decorations and cumbered with commis- 
 sions. 
 
 The artistic conceptions of our own time have, mean- 
 while, progressed far beyond the ideals of that day. Meas- 
 ured by modern demands upon painting, Tidemand's colored 
 drawings, designed according to the rules of composition 
 dictated by a theatrical scheme of aesthetics, have only rela- 
 tive value as art; and his romantic portrayal of the life of 
 the people with its ostentatious ideality, its lingering Sunday 
 peace, and its idyllic air has greater interest for the ethnog- 
 rapher and the student of the history of civilization than 
 for the student of folk psychology. However that may be, 
 one should, in the interest of personal appreciation and the 
 understanding of aesthetic evolution, examine the art of the 
 past historically, laying aside so far as possible all ephemeral 
 prejudices. In estimating the art under discussion one ought 
 therefore to seek less after technical mastery and pictorial 
 refinement than after narrative skill, power of representa- 
 tion, and sense of harmony. All these qualities are to be 
 found to a marked degree in Tidemand's most celebrated 
 picture, his masterpiece The Disciples of Hauge, now in our 
 National Gallery. The composition dates from 1848. At 
 that time he painted the original, which is to be found in the 
 gallery at Diisseldorf ; the replica in our National Gallery 
 is from the year 1852. The picture represents a lay 
 preacher, of the sect founded by Hans Nilsen Hauge, con- 
 ducting a prayer-meeting in an old Norwegian cabin. The 
 interior itself, with its smoky, raftered ceiling, its louver, 
 
458 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 The Disciples 
 
 of Hauge, by Adolf Tidemand. In the National 
 Gallery 
 
 and its fireplace In the middle of the floor, engages our 
 Interest, as do the old-fashioned, variegated costumes. The 
 composition abounds in figures, and still is definitely and 
 harmoniously designed by means of groups which rise in 
 the form of a triangle to the resplendent central image of 
 the preacher. Gentle and fair of face he stands just beneath 
 the light, which streams through the louver and casts a trans- 
 figuring gleam over his features. As sunbeams are refracted 
 in a prism, so the words of the preacher are dispersed Into 
 rays in the minds of his hearers and reflected in the expres- 
 sion of their faces through the whole scale, from indifference 
 to awe, from doubt and brooding to resignation and faith. 
 By means of a chain of contrasts — in age, sex, type, tempera- 
 ment — the Impression is conveyed. The central link in the 
 chain Is the old giant in a red vest, seated In a chair hollowed 
 out of the solid trunk of a tree. What this old Norseman 
 really looked like before he was adapted to the picture 
 through the mediation of an Academy model in Diisseldorf 
 
MODERN NORWEGIAN ART 459 
 
 Study for the Disciples of Hauge, by Adolf Tidemand 
 
 the painter has permitted us to see in a magnificent portrait 
 study of a mountain farmer, to be found in the National 
 Gallery, an old fellow in a red cap, somber, weather-beaten, 
 and severe. On the whole, in order to know and to appre- 
 ciate Tidemand at his best, both as a painter and as a folk 
 psychologist, one must go to his studies. In them he stands 
 face to face with his people, far from German sentimentality 
 and school tradition, boldly realistic in outlook, and painting 
 what he sees. Especially in the studies of interiors he mani- 
 
460 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
MODERN NORWl'XilyXN ART 461 
 
 fcsts a line appreciation of color which his pictures, strongly 
 chromatic as they arc, do not give evidence of, Tideniand 
 was an unusually prolific painter; and it cannot be denied 
 that his production was extremely uneven, the deep and the 
 shallow, the true and the false, the seriously executed and 
 the altogether too fugitive alternating in his work. 
 
 In 1845 Tidemand established himself in Diisseldorf and 
 remained there the rest of his days; during this period one 
 picture of Norwegian rural life followed upon the other in 
 rapid succession. Among these is the Catechization in a 
 Norwegian Country Church, dating from 1847. This pic- 
 ture, which Tidemand executed for King Oscar I, now hangs 
 in the palace at Christiania. It Is probably the artist's most 
 popular canvas, partly on account of its own good qualities 
 and partly on account of the amusing and characteristic text 
 written for It by Asbjornsen. We all recall from our child- 
 hood this diverting Incident of the examination, the scene 
 of which Is laid In the ancient timber church of HItterdal. 
 We have all been entertained by this ludicrous typical school- 
 master with his wizened body and conceited air and by the 
 tall overgrown farmer lad whose Ignorance fills his pre- 
 ceptor with contemptuous pity — when all Is said, a successful 
 attempt at bold comicality on the part of a painter whose 
 talents ordinarily would be described as lyrlc-sentlmental. 
 
 Among his later works may be mentioned: A Norwegian 
 Funeral Feast, from 1854; A Fight at a Norwegian Rural 
 Wedding, from 1864, now In an English private gallery; and 
 The Fanatics, from 1866, now In the National Museum at 
 Stockholm. In these paintings, especially the last two, Tide- 
 mand reveals a surprising gift for dramatic presentation. 
 Here he has striven to create art In which the storms of life 
 roar and the waves of passion roll high. Adolf Tidemand 
 spent his life as a professor at the Academy In Diisseldorf; 
 he died during a summer visit to Christiania In 1876. Among 
 the generality of the people he Is still probably our most 
 beloved painter; and his popularly designed pictures have 
 contributed much toward opening the eyes of the many both 
 to art and to the people Itself. 
 
462 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 Mountain Heights, by Hans Gude, 1857. In the National Gallery 
 
 With the name of Tidemand the name of Hans Gude is 
 always closely associated; so closely, in fact, that the two 
 are more often mentioned together than separately. Born in 
 Christiania in 1825, Gude was, it is true, eleven years 
 younger than Tidemand; but he came to Diisseldorf at a 
 very early age, and the two painters were soon intimately 
 joined In friendship and co-operation. Accordingly the 
 landscape painter Gude stands beside the figure painter Tide- 
 mand as the second of the two chief personages in our art 
 in the middle years of the century. 
 
 Before 1854, the year in which Gude was appointed a 
 professor at the Academy In Diisseldorf, he lived alter- 
 nately In Norway and in the Rhine city. During the summer 
 he invariably travelled In Norway, and on these journeys 
 he learned to know the various scenlcally beautiful regions 
 of his native land. In the summer of 1 843 he met Tidemand 
 on a jaunt through Sogn and Hardanger; In the autumn, he 
 writes, they returned to Diisseldorf, their portfolios 
 crammed with sketches. The following winter he painted 
 
MODERN NORWEGIAN ART 463 
 
 The Entrance to the Christiania Harbor, by Hans Gude. In the 
 National Gallery 
 
 the first of the pictures that have borne the title Mountain 
 Heights; it was his debut, created a sensation, and was pur- 
 chased by Kunstforeningen in Christiania. At that time he 
 was only nineteen years of age. His next picture, which 
 made a stir at the exposition in Berlin and was sold there, 
 was A Norwegian Fjord in Sunshine. These subjects are 
 noteworthy. Gude's art was, during his entire life, princi- 
 pally occupied with the portrayal of Norwegian mountains 
 and fjords. 
 
 Between the years 1844 and 1858 there follows a long 
 series of paintings of mountain heights. Among them are 
 Mountain Heights at Sunrise, from 1855, and Mountain 
 Heights, from 1857, both of which are now in the National 
 Gallery. The last-named, particularly, belongs with the 
 best things Gude has produced, and indeed ranks among 
 the capital pieces in the landscape art of Norway. The 
 painting takes us up on the moors of a cold evening in 
 autumn. The long ridge of the plateau extends in toward 
 a distant chain of peaks upon which the fog lies heavily; 
 and, like an eye deserted by hope, the little mountain tarn 
 
464 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 The Bridal Procession in Hardanger, by Adolf Tidemand and Hans 
 Gude. In the National Gallery 
 
 gazes out from that dark-blue embodied solitude lying rigid 
 beneath angry skies and chilled through by the Icy gusts of 
 approaching night. 
 
 That Dahl's art made the strongest Impression upon him 
 in youth Gude has himself confessed in the warmest terms 
 in his Recollections. Without doubt It would have been 
 extremely fortunate, as well for Norwegian art on the whole 
 as for Gude himself, if from the very first he had escaped 
 Diisseldorf and had immediately become a pupil of Dahl, 
 who was then at the height of his powers and was engaged 
 In teaching at Dresden. The fact Is that In Gude's native 
 endowment there was a dangerous tendency toward theat- 
 rical spurlousness; The Bridal Procession In Hardanger Is 
 nothing else than reminiscences from an emotional evening 
 of tableaux and music at the theatre. Nor have his decora- 
 tive landscapes upon themes from Fridthjof's Saga, painted 
 in 1849 '^^ th^ dining-room at Oscarshal, any very profound 
 pictorial value. 
 
 At bottom, however, Gude was naturally a realist; little 
 by little he worked his way out of the mists of romanticism. 
 
MODERN NORWEGIAN ART 465 
 
 The decisive moment came in Gude's life as an artist when 
 it ihiwned upon him that the cleverness of Diisseldorf and 
 all its concessions to bad taste might be leading in the wrong 
 direction. At once he resolutely took flight, resigning his 
 professorship at the Academy and adventuring into the 
 world with uncertain prospects. In Wales, where he made 
 his first sojourn, he painted open air subjects the year round. 
 His charming Ivy Bridge was done in Wales In 1862. In 
 1864 he accepted an appointment as professor at the Acad- 
 emy in Karlsruhe. Here he exercised an active influence as 
 a teacher until 1875, when he was called to a professorship 
 at the Academy in Berlin; there he remained till his death 
 in 1903. Among well known Norwegian artists who were 
 pupils of Gude In Karlsruhe may be mentioned Otto SIndIng, 
 Eilif Peterssen, Fritz Thaulow, Kitty Klelland, Fredrik Col- 
 lett, and Thorolf Holmboe. 
 
 Gude's art has a very broad reach. In his earlier pictures 
 the subjects are preferably drawn from mountain heights 
 and from the widely contrasted scenery of the Westland; 
 in later years, on the contrary, it was more often the less 
 pretentious natural features of eastern Norway, the East- 
 land, that attracted him. From lofty mountain expanses 
 to the farms of Smaalenene and the groves of Jarlsberg, 
 from the stormy shores of the ocean to the smooth bays and 
 inlets of the Christiania fjord, from the highlands of Wales 
 or the misty mountain regions of Scotland to the low, sandy 
 coast of Riigen and its long, even ground swells — these are 
 the paths that Gude's art has traversed. 
 
 With the year i860 begins that long series of pictures 
 from the seashore which thenceforth are a constant feature 
 of Gude's production till the very last. He is, to be sure, 
 still able to paint mountain and foliage and river; but the 
 sea fascinates him most. He loves to observe the life of 
 the waves, to watch the moods of the ocean through all the 
 transitions between storm and calm. What are no doubt 
 the best of his marines had their origin out on the Christiania 
 fjord on a beautiful day in summer. One of the most popu- 
 lar among them is called The Entrance to Christiania Hai;^ 
 
466 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 bor, with Akershus and the BcErum Hills in the background. 
 It is a day of light, fair-weather clouds that half obscure the 
 sun, and a soft southern breeze is driving the white-caps at 
 a merry pace in toward the anchorage, while the veiled sun- 
 shine flows like molten silver over the undulating surface. 
 
 Paintings by Gude are to be found, besides the great 
 numbers in the public and private collections throughout 
 Norway, also in galleries in Stockholm, Copenhagen, and 
 Gothenburg, in Amsterdam and Rotterdam, in Dresden, 
 Berlin, and many other German cities. 
 
 Gude was admittedly a hard worker, but his work seems 
 never to have given him difficulty, never to have caused him 
 pain. The charming was to him a natural form of expres- 
 sion. Selection, moderation, fear of extremes mark every- 
 thing that he has done. All that might disturb his own poise 
 and harmony he avoided. Therefore he avoided also the 
 impressionism which in the eighties penetrated from French 
 art into Norwegian; he remained a stranger to it and hostile 
 to it. 
 
 August Cappelen was only two years younger than Gude, 
 having been born in Skien in 1827 ; but he became a pupil of 
 Gude in Diisseldorf, and no other romanticist among Nor- 
 wegian painters has possessed a richer endowment or a 
 talent more instinct with personality than he. Nor has any 
 of them come nearer to attaining European reputation than 
 Cappelen. Yet after six years of constantly ascending de- 
 velopment, his artistic career, which promised the greatest 
 things, was cut short by death. Overtaxed and overworked, 
 he died in Diisseldorf in 1852, not more than twenty-five 
 years of age. In him our painting lost a great nature poet. 
 
 Cappelen's Forest Landscape, disclosing a Telemarken 
 waterfall, is painted with deep feeling and represents typical 
 romantic art. A heavily wooded mountain side, overlaid 
 with fog that hides all but a narrow passage of sky over- 
 head, opens to permit the flow of a river in spring freshet. 
 In the mossy wild, among layers of gigantic boulders and 
 rotting windfalls, two great pines are still standing with 
 broken crowns and lopped trunks. The reddish, tawny trunk 
 
MODERN NORWECilAN AkF 
 
 467 
 
 Forest Landscape in 
 
 Telemarken, by August Cappelen. In 
 National Gallery 
 
 the 
 
 contrasts sharply with the black depths of the forest; and it 
 raises defiantly aloft the small remnant of a crown, which 
 stretches out to one side like a woman's clipped hair waving 
 in the wind. In the foreground the cataract foams directly 
 toward the spectator and breaks the silence with its white 
 clamor. Diminutive men are pottering about In this vast 
 domain of nature, some lumberers occupied in loosening logs 
 that have become jammed In the water-course. Their toil 
 in those cold spring waters remains almost unheeded. They 
 are lost among the boulders, the sounds of their labor are 
 overborne by the roar of the mountain torrent, their little- 
 ness is accentuated manifold by the tallness of the pines. 
 They are there only to increase the wildness and solitude of 
 the scene, which from the picture strikes out upon the spec- 
 tator with the smell of pines and with mist and spray from 
 the icy waters of the stream. This scene from nature is 
 painted in deep-toned, juicy colors, tints of brown and velvet- 
 black grading up to the creamy-yellow, bubbling, soapy white 
 of the river foam. 
 
468 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 The Dying Forest Primeval is the title of another picture 
 of his, the most romantic in Norwegian art: mighty boulders 
 carried hither by glaciers in the morning of time, gigantic 
 prostrate pine trees in whose crowns tempests formerly have 
 raged, the decayed trunk which lightning once splintered 
 and struck with palsy at the root, the luxuriant moss untrod- 
 den by the foot of man, the rotting earth in which not even 
 swamp vegetation can grow, and above all this dead and 
 doomed nature the quiet, golden limpidity of an evening sky. 
 The painting is Cappelen's very last, unfinished work. It 
 has the effect of a mood of death, felt by himself. Both of 
 these pictures date from 1852, and are to be found in the 
 National Gallery. More eminent still are Cappelen's small 
 studies from nature, of which the gallery likewise possesses 
 a respectable number. 
 
 One Norwegian painter, who hitherto had been all but 
 unknown to the art-loving public, but who was drawn into 
 the hght at the Jubilee Exposition in Christiania in 19 14 and 
 thus won a posthumous reputation which certainly neither 
 he nor any of his contemporaries ever dreamed of, is the 
 landscapist Lars Hertervig of Stavanger. Hertervig was 
 born in Tysvaer, near Stavanger, in 1830; he spent some 
 years as a journeyman painter in Stavanger, but came in 
 1850 to Diisseldorf, where he was a pupil in the Academy 
 at the same time as August Cappelen. Early in his career, 
 however, his health was broken, and as a consequence he 
 became a prey to mental afflictions that resulted in an incur- 
 able melancholia. Already in 1852 illness compelled him 
 to return to his home in Stavanger, where he passed the rest 
 of his life in the most straitened circumstances, partly as an 
 artisan and partly as an artist. In landscape painting he 
 seems for a time to have had a certain repute in Stavanger. 
 When, however, near the close of the eighties, Alexander 
 Klelland In a most warmly sympathetic article drew atten- 
 tion to the aged stricken artist, Hertervig was almost for- 
 gotten; and he died In the poor-house at Stavanger in 1902. 
 
 Hertervlg's landscape art Is the product of a dreamer's 
 fantasy, and yet Is brought about through close association 
 
MODERN NORWEGIAN ART 
 
 469 
 
 Ancient Pine-forest, by Lars Hertervig. Privately owned in 
 Stavanger 
 
 with nature. At first his work did not have any special 
 marks of individuality. The fjord pictures from the Diis- 
 seldorf period and the immediately succeeding period have 
 the customary dark and theatrical coloring that distinguishes 
 so many other men of that school; or, he would paint roman- 
 tic wood landscapes somewhat in the vein of Cappelen, dark 
 and golden, but softer, more veiled, and as it were steaming 
 beneath a vaporous sky. As time goes by a strong personal 
 feeling for nature enters into his expression and removes it 
 farther from the tendency of the school, not, however, in the 
 direction of naturalism but rather in the direction of a 
 species of clairvoyant nature mysticism. His coloring be- 
 comes hardened in deep, usually sombre and cold tones in 
 which blues prevail, and his draughtsmanship in the por- 
 trayal, let us say, of solitary, gnarled pines upon a stony slope, 
 may at times assume an almost supernatural energy of design. 
 His paintings in this kind are informed with a peculiarly 
 
470 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 dark and cold melancholy not to be found in the work of 
 any other. Yet there remain from his hand also luminous 
 pictures of rock-bound roadsteads in which with the sureness 
 of the sleep-walker he has brought about wonderfully expres- 
 sive color harmonies in blues, greys, and browns, otherwise 
 wholly unknown to the art of Diisseldorf. And finally, in a 
 state of isolation and ecstacy, this half dilettante painter 
 has produced Westland fjord landscapes of a dreamy and 
 transfigured unreality which none the less has much more in 
 common with nature than all the calculated studio effects of 
 Diisseldorf art. 
 
 In that Westland of his the stricken man spent his days, 
 lonely and unknown, and yet developed an Individual style in 
 which romantic sentiment is united with a delicate, clear 
 scale of tints, almost like water-colors — his version of the 
 plein-air method. His favorite subject is an expanse of 
 clouds that in quiet, damp weather tower up into banks, 
 reflecting their image in water, and fading away illimitably 
 toward the source of light. One cannot escape the impres- 
 sion that this landscape art is based upon religious rapture. 
 
 An artist of striking peculiarities, who hitherto perhaps 
 has not received due attention, is the painter of sea-pieces, 
 Peder Balke, who was born in 1804 and died in 1887. Yet 
 his pictures appeal to our interest for reasons wholly dif- 
 ferent from those that govern in the case of Hertervig. 
 Balke's facile and arrogantly handled marines and small 
 studies from Nordland in nearly monotone grey-green are 
 without parallel in Norwegian painting, but reveal patent 
 English influence. He was no doubt the first Norwegian 
 artist who used the palette-knife, and his treatment in gen- 
 eral is striking and piquant; but the effect is too much that 
 of external virtuosity to be of more than merely technical 
 importance. 
 
 Nearly contemporaneous with Cappelen was the land- 
 scape painter Johan Fredrik Eckersberg, who was born in 
 Drammen in 1822. Among all the men trained in Di^issel- 
 dorf he occupies a distinctive position, since after about two 
 years of study he made the firm resolution of returning to 
 
MODERN NORWEGIAN ART 471 
 
 From Jotunheimen, by Johan Fredrik Eckersberg. In the National 
 Gallery 
 
 the land of his birth and of forging his future there by 
 painting the nature of Norway on Norwegian soil. In 
 choice of themes and in character Eckersberg's art often 
 seems determined by the influence of Gude; yet Eckersberg 
 has a cooler, drier, less graceful talent. Mountain regions 
 became Eckersberg's special domain. His large picture 
 dating from 1866, now in the National Gallery, From Jotun- 
 heimen, with the naked expanses stretching in toward Glitre- 
 tind, which lies bathed in sheer morning light, represents his 
 manner very well. A particular significance in the artistic 
 development of our people attaches to Eckersberg as the 
 teacher of younger generations of painters. Till the time 
 of his death in 1 870 he conducted at Christiania an art school 
 in which he was himself enthusiastically active as an 
 instructor. 
 
 A typical Diisseldorf painter is Morten Miiller, who was 
 born in 1828 and died in 191 1. He showed exceptional 
 brilliance in the portrayal of the Norwegian pine forests. 
 In a great number of larger and smaller woodland pictures 
 he gave evidence of pompous decorative ability in which 
 there is decisiveness of stroke and juiciness of coloring but 
 no very profound sense of subtle values. In the National 
 
472 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 Gallery, it should be added, he is represented by an effective 
 picture on a theme from an entirely different source, A 
 Stormy Day on the Hardanger Fjord, dated 1866, and also 
 by a large canvas. The Landing of Sinclair in Romsdal, 
 dated 1876, the last of which he painted in collaboration 
 with Tidemand. 
 
 The pictures of Erik Bodom, whose life spanned the years 
 between 1829 and 1879, had somewhat the same tendency 
 toward the romantic in landscape art, while Christian Wex- 
 elsen, who lived from 1830 till 1883, in gentler vein painted 
 the Eastland summer and the natural features about the 
 Christiania fjord. 
 
 The Diisseldorf school also has a specialist of some rank 
 as an animal painter, namely Anders Askevold, born in rural 
 Sondmore in 1855. The life of the mountain dairies or 
 SEeters, with which he was familiar from childhood, became 
 his particular field. He paints the cattle on their way to 
 the mountain pastures, in ferry barges, or on the level graz- 
 ing grounds at the crossings of streams and mountain lakes; 
 always he presents them in groups or by droves, not by single 
 types or individuals as Paul Potter pictured animals for the 
 sake of their character, but by whole herds, lowing and 
 jangling their bells as they seek the water-courses at noon 
 or at evening are driven full-uddered, frisking and trotting, 
 into the sster enclosures. 
 
 An excellent painter of animals, who belongs only by 
 half to Norwegian art, was J. C. Dahl's only son, Siegwald 
 Dahl, of Dresden, He was born in 1827 and died in 1902. 
 His training he received in Paris and more notably in Lon- 
 don, where Landseer's celebrated animal pictures influenced 
 him especially. Siegwald Dahl on occasion also painted very 
 good portraits. 
 
 It is significant of Norwegian art in the nineteenth century 
 that landscape painting has a disproportionate place as com- 
 pared with figure painting. The foreign public for which 
 our Germanized Norwegian painters did a great part of 
 their work demanded above all Norwegian landscapes — 
 grand and impressive natural scenes from this remote and 
 
MODERN NORWEGIAN ART 473 
 
 remarkable land. 'I'hc peojilc of Norway were able to 
 arouse a certain ethnographic curiosity abroad only when 
 they appeared, as they do on Tidemand's canvases, in their 
 primitive cabins, decked in particolored national costumes, 
 and exhibiting the peculiar manners and usages inherited 
 from pre-Christian antiquity. Everyday life among us in 
 the present seemed too drab as subject matter for these 
 artists only half rooted in the home soil. 
 
 Popular as Tidemand's portrayal of the life of the people 
 really became abroad as well as at home, there were not 
 many imitators. It was more among Swedish than among 
 Norwegian men of the Diisseldorf school that the influence 
 of his art was felt. Almost the only one to continue Tide- 
 mand's traditions as a painter of the populace was Knut 
 Bergslien, a peasant lad born in Voss in 1827, who also 
 attempted historic subjects from the saga age. His best 
 known picture is one entitled, Birkebein Ski-runners Carry- 
 ing Haakon Haakonsson as a Child over Filefjeld. The 
 same year in which he did this work, 1869, Bergslien re- 
 turned home and took over Eckersberg's school of painting 
 in Christiania, where a number of the younger talents re- 
 ceived their instruction in the grammar of the art. 
 
 A few other figure painters are, It is true, to be found 
 among the landscapists of Diisseldorf. They were, how- 
 ever, inclined to go elsewhere for their schooling, and were 
 Indeed the first who went In earnest to Paris. This was the 
 case with the figure painters Arbo, Isaachsen, and Sundt- 
 Hansen. 
 
 The historical painter P. N. Arbo was born In 1831 and 
 died in 1892. His best efforts took shape in a large dramatic 
 composition on the subject of Welhaven's poem Asgaards- 
 reien; this picture, dating from 1872, Is captivating and Im- 
 posing by Its theme and by the academic skill with which the 
 design, crowded as It Is with figures, has been managed. The 
 artist has not succeeded, however. In imprinting upon his 
 presentation that stamp of an Old Norse myth which one 
 associates with the idea of Thor's wild hunt as It rages 
 through the air on nights when earth groans beneath tem- 
 
474 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
MODERN NORWEGIAN ART 475 
 
 pests. J. CSS seriously by far one is inclined to take the beau- 
 til ul shield maiden on the snorting black charger in the 
 colossal picture called Valkyrie, painted before Arbo had 
 gone through the strict schooling he received during a 
 lengthy stay In Paris. In later years this discerning and 
 cultivated artist put aside such bravura numbers and devoted 
 himself by preference to the representation of his favorite 
 animal, the horse, in small, delicately finished cabinet pieces. 
 Arbo was for many years an influential member of the board 
 of directors of the National Gallery and of the council of 
 the Arts and Crafts School. Among those who continued 
 Tidemand's tradition in treating the life of the people both 
 Isaachsen and Sundt-Hansen may after a fashion be counted. 
 Yet neither of them can be classed absolutely in the Diissel- 
 dorf school, since both received the strongest Impressions 
 during years of study at other places. 
 
 According to the taste of our time and its conceptions of 
 art, no other among the older figure painters is so Interesting 
 as Olaf Isaachsen, who was born In Mandal In 1835 and 
 died in Chrlstlanssand In 1893. Not only his gift for color 
 and his aspiring romanticism make him an engrossing per- 
 sonality In the generation to which he belonged, but also the 
 circumstance that as the first disciple of French painting In 
 Its great period he brought Into Norwegian painting a new 
 and valuable note. Unfortunately he did not become the 
 factor in the art life of his country which his talent and his 
 culture fitted him to be. At too early a juncture he broke 
 off the contact with French art and fell back upon Diissel- 
 dorf ; and when he returned to Norway, It was only to Isolate 
 himself In Chrlstlanssand and his beloved Saetersdal Instead 
 of making himself felt In the artistic awakening In the capital 
 during the eighties. His production, moreover. Is of ex- 
 tremely uneven quality, and very seldom, or never, has he 
 been able to summon his energies for works of large scope. 
 The really valuable material Is In his studies, which often 
 are excellent. Isaachsen began as a pupil of TIdemand In 
 Diisseldorf ; but later he went to Paris, where he became a 
 pupil of Couture and at the same time was strongly touched 
 
476 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 Sastersdal Interior, by Olaf Isaachsen. In the National Gallery 
 
 by the influence of Courbet, The unusual teaching gifts and 
 technical knowledge of Couture provided the best possible 
 foundation for Isaachsen's art, while the rugged pictorial 
 genius of Courbet gave to it a breadth and freshness which 
 no contemporary Norwegian painter dreamed of. There 
 are certain studies by Isaachsen that positively suggest the 
 great Delacroix's name. His boldly designed Saetersdal 
 Interior, with its solid, heavy furniture in the fashion of the 
 sagas, is reproduced here. In the National Gallery there is 
 a small picture by him of a girl, dressed in grey, beneath a 
 lilac in bloom, a painting whose voluminous coloring is dis- 
 tinctly reminiscent of Courbet, During the hegemony of 
 naturalism among us Isaachsen receded wholly into the back- 
 ground as an artistic personality, and was almost forgotten. 
 Later tendencies in our art have raised him once more to 
 honor and distinction. 
 
 The one who most directly continued Tidemand's por- 
 trayal of country life, though of totally different tempera- 
 ment, was Carl Sundt-Hansen, who was born in Stavanger 
 in 1 841 and died In Saetersdalen in 1907. He went through 
 
MODERN NORWE(;iAN AK'I' 
 
 477 
 
 IjEifc-J 
 
 A Hardened Criminal, by Carl Sundt-Hanscn. In the Bergen Picture 
 Gallery 
 
 an apprenticeship in Copenhagen and afterward under 
 Vautier in Diisseldorf ; later, however, he proceeded to Paris 
 in order to refine the handicraft of his art. The greater 
 part of his time he spent abroad, first for many years in 
 Stockholm, and subsequently in Copenhagen ; but toward the 
 close of his life homesickness led him up into Saetersdal, 
 where he settled down and passed the remaining interval, 
 far from the madding crowd. 
 
 Sundt-Hansen's gifts are quite unlike Tidemand's. His 
 narrative powers are not so lively in and prompt in picturing 
 
478 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 .ll 
 
 1 
 
 
 1 
 
 IHKI, « 
 
 p 
 
 P" ■ 
 
 1 
 
 i 
 
 1 
 
 
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 ^ 
 
 
 ^^ : 
 
 Jf 
 
 •l.. 
 
MODERN NORWFX;iAN ART 479 
 
 a situation; nor has he Ticlcmaiurs Ni^oroiis ahihty in com- 
 position or his easily awakened 1) rie sense, iiy way of com- 
 pensation his treatment ol humanity pkimbs profountler 
 psychological depths, and more frc(juently reveals a (juiet, 
 reserxed melancholy, a sobriety without pathos and without 
 sentimentality. Sundt-I lansen's art depends entirely upon 
 draughtsmanship, directed by a penetrating perception of 
 form and refined by an untiring, minute attention to detail. 
 Since his chromatic faculty is almost nil, his finical and 
 unimpassioned execution may at times border upon the pho- 
 tographic. Still the cool air of reality that often breathes 
 from his delineations has an invigorating effect after the 
 sultry atelier romanticism of the Diisseldorf group. Sundt- 
 Hansen's best known and most popular v/ork is the little pic- 
 ture called Under Arrest, which shows a youthful criminal 
 In irons spending his last hour of repentance with the old 
 prison chaplain, a scene that moves the beholder by reason 
 of the sombre, low tones in which the story is told. Less 
 known, but perhaps even more Impressive and powerful In 
 portraying the human subject, is another painting with a 
 related theme from prison life, reproduced here under the 
 title A Hardened Criminal, On the whole, Sundt-Hansen's 
 art Is disposed to occupy Itself with rather gloomy subjects. 
 Frequently It Is concerned with death, and In several of the 
 pictures death has some connection with crime. In the devel- 
 opment of art In Norway Sundt-Hansen's grave realism 
 forms a distinct transition between TIdemand's romanticism 
 and Werenskiold's naturalistic portrayal of country life. 
 
 Among landscape painters Ludvlg Munthe and Amaldus 
 Nielsen link the older era with the new. After Dahl and 
 Gude, Ludvlg Munthe Is of all Norwegian landscaplsts 
 probably the best known abroad. He was born In 1841 and 
 died in 1896. Although he learned his art In Diisseldorf 
 and lived there through life, this master establishes a con- 
 nection In the course of Norwegian art between the anti- 
 quated romantic school of Diisseldorf and the naturalistic 
 movement that came out of France. Old Dutch masters In 
 
480 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 landscape and newer French painters taught him to discern 
 what was simple and unassuming in nature and to refrain 
 from all trickery in the matter of subject. Munthe, even 
 in his day, saw that the silhouette of a naked patch of under- 
 brush against an autumnal sky or a newly broken path in 
 melting snow may be more suitable as a theme than the 
 whole array of natural prospects, peaks, and glaciers that 
 appeal to the tourist's eye. For Munthe had the painter's 
 vision which discovers lineal effects in the plainest motifs, 
 and, like the chromatic adept he really was, he had the requi- 
 site skill to modulate all gradations of the monotonous greys 
 and browns. The damp, cold west wind of a December 
 day, the cloggy snow along the beach, the woollen sky and the 
 dirty sea, people pottering about frost-bitten in the twilight 
 or hurrying home toward the red glimmering of lights in 
 the fishermen's huts — all these things are excellently con- 
 joined to create a mood and a unified picturesque tone In 
 the tepid, grey painting entitled Winter Evening on the 
 Norwegian Coast. This picture, which was shown at the 
 Universal Exposition of 1878 and there received a first 
 medal, has been presented to the National Gallery by the 
 artist himself. Ludvig Munthe had a decisive influence in 
 developing a feeling for nature In his highly gifted kinsman 
 Gerhard Munthe, who during his early years studied under 
 his uncle In Diisseldorf. 
 
 Another representative of the transition from German 
 atelier to Norwegian nature is Otto SIndIng, who was born 
 at Kongsberg in 1842 and died as a professor at Mranich 
 in 1909. The well composed and effective picture From 
 Reine in Lofoten, with its lofty, snow-clad mountains, the 
 winter fishing fleet on the grey fjord, and the little snow- 
 bound fishing village, Is a good example of his manner. In 
 this instance, too, a grey, subdued color scheme prevails. 
 
 Still another transitional figure In Norwegian landscape 
 art, yet very different from those mentioned above, is 
 Amaldus Nielsen. He was born at Mandal in 1838, and is 
 now living In Chrlstlania as the dean of Norway's artists. 
 Nielsen was a pupil of Gude In Diisseldorf and In Karlsruhe; 
 
MODERN NORWEGIAN AR'l^ 
 
 481 
 
 From Relne in Lofoten, by Otto Sinding. In the National Gallery 
 
 since he returned home In 1869, however, and settled down 
 in his native land, he has faithfully followed that safe path 
 which Professor Dahl in his day called the nature method. 
 Before painting in the open was established as a principle by 
 the naturalists, Amaldus Nielsen used to set up his easel in 
 the fields and work with his eye upon nature to the extent 
 permitted by his subjects; and his subjects are the bare 
 granite knolls, the small houses of the pilots, and the capri- 
 cious fjord of that southern region in which he was born. 
 This son of a Mandal skipper has become above all others 
 the painter of southern Norway, the so-called Southland. 
 He knows how to portray the fjord, now lying smooth as a 
 mirror to the leeward of sunny islands, now darkening be- 
 neath a fresh breeze from the open sea, now rolling gently 
 in morning haze with a lofty, fair-weather sky overhead. 
 His best known picture is Morning in Ny Hellesund, now 
 in the National Gallery. This morning is so transparently 
 clear that vision would extend for miles if those red islands 
 did not close in to form a narrow sound. A boat glides 
 easily over the crystalline water, and one seems to hear the 
 splash of the oars across the smooth expanse of the outer 
 
482 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 Morning in Ny Hellesund, bv Amaldus Nielsen. In the National 
 Gallery 
 
 harbor, while the morning sun cHmbs above the red stony 
 hillsides and the chill of night is borne away upon cold re- 
 ceding shadows. 
 
 It is noticeable in Amaldus Nielsen that he is of the old 
 camp, that he has been a pupil of Gude, and that he has a 
 studio schooling behind him. In Fredrik Collett this Is 
 
 Mesna, by Fredrik Collett. In the National Gallery 
 
MODI'.RN N()k\Vi:(.l\N \kl" 483 
 
 no loiiocr iiolkcablc. ( )l the- same a^c as Nielsen, COlletl, 
 liimseU a [)upil oi (ludc ami liMiiied in Diisseltlorf and Karls- 
 ruhe, was one of the iirst ol our open-air painters, wholly 
 modern, wholly naturalistie. 
 
 hredrik Collett was born in Christiania in 1839. He 
 came under the tutelage of (iude, Iirst in Diisseldorf and 
 later in Karlsruhe. He studied also in Denmark and visited 
 Paris; but early in the eighties he established a permanent 
 residence in Norway. Among the naturalists of the eighties 
 Collett was the oldest, and his production in its continuity 
 proves that he belonged to a period of transition. Yet the 
 artistic convictions he developed In the course of years were 
 clear and firm. By persevering energy he brought his art up 
 to the notable degree of Independence and maturity which 
 It possessed at his death. No Norwegian painter has had 
 a more manly profile. 
 
 Collett was one of a school of colorlsts, but his chief 
 strength lay In the plastic treatment of landscape. Profess- 
 ing the naturalistic dogma that art Is a transcript of nature, 
 he strove Intensely for the objective. There Is, however, 
 unmistakable temperament In his art, and with compelling 
 hand he retains his hold upon nature till It yields a resultant 
 of style. Collett's field of study Is the winter of eastern 
 Norway, with Its great banks of snow and half-frozen 
 streams. He chose his themes principally from the Mesna 
 River near Llllehammer, where he steadfastly continued his 
 work out of doors up to a very great age and where also 
 death came to him In 19 13. His Mesna pictures have a 
 masculine, almost harsh character, and are compactly de- 
 signed with massively modelled contrasts between the white 
 expanses of snow and the blue-black pools and open rapids. 
 His masterpiece Is the monumental composition entitled 
 Mesna, dated April 1891, now In the National Gallery. 
 
Ill 
 
 THE MUNICH SCHOOL 
 
 FOR the younger generation of Norwegian painters the 
 importance of Diisseldorf as the center of a school came 
 to an end when Gude left that city in 1862. In its stead 
 Karlsruhe developed into the seat of learning, at any rate for 
 the landscape painters, who flocked about Gude when two 
 years later he assumed the leading position at the Academy 
 in the capital city of Baden. Already toward the close of 
 the sixties, meanwhile, the prestige of Munich in the art life 
 of Germany was a settled matter; and from all parts of the 
 world eager youth in search of knowledge — young Norwe- 
 gians among them — streamed toward Piloty's and Diez's 
 studios. For the second time in a century Munich had its 
 period of artistic efflorescence. That Munich would give 
 fresher and more vigorous stimulus than Diisseldorf was 
 only natural. The larger aspect of affairs, the more abun- 
 dant art life in which the ranks of the painters were recruited 
 from the most various elements in all corners of the earth, 
 and representing the greatest differences in artistic tend- 
 encies; furthermore, the prominent individual artists and 
 teachers in the city itself, the voluminous collections of older 
 art in the Pinakothek, and the Schack Gallery with its pic- 
 tures by Schwind and Feuerbach and its early Bocklins; 
 and, finally, the large international exhibitions of modern art 
 in 1869 and 1879 — all these things in combination neces- 
 sarily offered facilities for development and served to keep 
 men's talents in a state of tension. 
 
 Among the Norwegian artists who went during these 
 years to Munich and received their first training there may 
 
 484 
 
MODERN NORWEGIAN ART 485 
 
 be mentioned the brothers Gronvold, Olav Rusti, Oscar 
 Wergeland, and Ekenaes. They were the vanguard. Later 
 came Otto Sinding, Eilif Peterssen, and Hans Heyerdahl, 
 Erik Werenskiold and Gerhard Munthe, Harriet Backer 
 and Kitty Kielland, Jacob (ihiersen and Theodor Kittelsen; 
 further, Karl Uchermann, Elisabeth Sinding, and Asta Nor- 
 regaard. Still later appeared representatives of a new gen- 
 eration, namely Fredrik Kolsto, Sven Jorgensen, Jacob 
 Somme, and Jacob Bratland. The greater number of those 
 named became pupils of Lofftz. To these young painters, 
 who for the rest of their lives faced the prospect of working 
 in a land such as Norway, where they would have to recon- 
 cile themselves to the absolute lack of good examples of 
 older art, the opportunities for study In the Pinakothek at 
 Munich were of Inestimable value. The culture and refine- 
 ment of taste which were thus added to their native endow- 
 ments during these impressionable years gave that inward 
 security which culture Is capable of providing against seasons 
 of ferment and strife. 
 
 Meanwhile the air in Munich was full of disquieting 
 vibrations. Without doubt such of the Norwegian pupils 
 at the Academy as thought at all deeply, Werenskiold espe- 
 cially, were conscious of something untenable at the bottom 
 of the dominating academic tendencies. Routine was fastening 
 Its grip round about them and even beginning to seize upon 
 their own circle. Not a few seem to have experienced a stifling 
 sensation and to have realized the desirability of getting 
 away. Nevertheless, it was not till 1878 that the general 
 migration commenced. Eilif Peterssen returned to Norway 
 and remained at home one winter, whereupon he went to 
 Rome and there made his first full surrender to realism. 
 Heyerdahl hastened to Paris, where he scored a success at 
 the Universal Exposition with his picture, Adam and Eve. 
 Harriet Backer also removed to Paris. In July, 1879, the 
 International Art Exhibition was opened in Munich. The 
 productions of the Frenchmen had the greatest effect on the 
 entire world of art In Munich. The French made such an 
 impression on Erik Werenskiold that he sent out the winged 
 
486 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 word that the day of Munich was past. The countersign ot 
 naturalism had, so to say, been floating in mid-air. It was 
 necessary only that some one should speak it. The French 
 group at the Exhibition did speak it; and they were strongly 
 seconded by men like Menzel and Liebermann. 
 
 In the combative generation of painters that follows, 
 Eilif Peterssen and Hans Heyerdahl have a somewhat 
 peculiar place. Both are in a way transitional figures, im- 
 pressionable natures who have been under the influence of 
 two totally distinct artistic tendencies, and therefore show a 
 sort of dual quality in their production. 
 
 Eilif Peterssen was born in Christiania in 1852. In the 
 autumn of 1873 he went to Munich to take up historical 
 painting under Diez. He became at once a so-called master- 
 pupil, and with the guidance of Diez painted in 1 874 his first 
 picture. The Death of Korfitz Ulfeldt, which is now in New- 
 castle. Shortly afterward he left the Academy, rented a 
 studio of his own, and attacked his large work. Christian II 
 Signing the Death Sentence of Torben Oxe, which was fin- 
 ished in 1876 and purchased for the gallery of the city of 
 
 
 1 ^m 
 
 ^■^i^H ^Kil^' 
 
 'Tl^^^^^^K^BBKk '^S^^^^M 
 
 
 tr -^"Su'x ' ^^^^3^,'^M 
 
 »^S'i -^^^^PW^^^-^'' ^fc 
 
 km 
 
 Christian II Signing the Death Sentence of Torben Oxe, by Eilif 
 Peterssen. In the Museum at Breslau 
 
M()1)I:RN N()K\VI-:(.IAN AKI 487 
 
 Bi-csl;ui, whcM-c it still remains. Christian II was a ^rcat 
 achievement on the part of an artist only twenty-three years 
 of age; at one stroke he gained a reputation in Munich and 
 thr()ui2;hout (ierniany. In a psychologically suhtle portrait of 
 Christian II by an old Dutch painter, in the Cojienhagen gal- 
 lery, Peterssen found his point of departure for the delinea- 
 tion of the king. High-strung and sensitive, passionate in 
 feeling and yet cold in revenge, he sits with the fatal decree 
 before him, deaf and dumb to assailing importunities. He 
 seems totally lost in memories of the young girl whom he 
 loved and whom merciless death tore from his side. The 
 queen and the ladies in waiting are interceding on behalf of 
 the distinguished noble who has been selected as a sacrifice; 
 on their knees they implore mercy for the innocent victim; 
 the queen beseeches the king with caresses. From the other 
 side, meanwhile, his evil genius, the crafty and vindictive 
 Didrik Slaghaek, presses forward and silently holds out a 
 pen for the signature. The subject is intensely dramatic, 
 almost too dramatic, and treated with histrionic explicitness 
 and suspense. The composition is well handled, and the 
 execution betrays the capacity of the true painter. 
 
 Even at this youthful period Ellif Peterssen came under 
 the influence, in the old Munich Pinakothek, of earlier art, 
 which he studied and copied with admiring assiduity. Here 
 he laid the foundation for his solid technical Insight and 
 developed his taste. Especially was he attracted by the 
 sonorous colors of the Venetians. He adapted his own 
 coloring to accord with Titian and his contemporaries, while 
 he improved his sense of form particularly by contact with 
 Holbein. 
 
 In may respects this sojourn In Munich constituted a bril- 
 liant phase of Peterssen's career. He soon made a name for 
 himself both among the artists and with the public, sold all 
 his pictures off the easel at high prices, received medals wher- 
 ever he exhibited, and In sum had made good progress 
 toward European reputation already In his twenties. Nev- 
 ertheless, in 1879 he permanently forsook Munich. He had 
 taken alarm at his experiences there. In a letter he explains 
 
488 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 that things were becoming too easy for him, that technique 
 and the choice of pigments suggested themselves with dis- 
 quieting facility, and that he had before his eyes too many 
 examples of men with respectable talents who had gone 
 under, lost their personalities, and succumbed to glittering 
 temptations, not the least of which was the ready-made 
 formula of commercialized art. 
 
 On reviewing what Eilif Peterssen painted during this 
 period, as, for instance, the beautiful portrait of Harriet 
 Backer or the portrait in the National Gallery of the woman 
 with the lovely hands, Fru Andrea Kleen, nee Gram, one 
 finds nothing to awake misgivings. The suggestion of the 
 tone of the old masters which graces these pictures by no 
 means carries the stamp of shallow imitation. Working in 
 a spirit of veneration for the old masters, the painter has 
 seen and caught the quality of style in his models and thus 
 has given to these portraits a certain distinction and exqui- 
 siteness which otherwise is rare in Norwegian art. 
 
 Strangely enough, it was on the classical soil of Italy that 
 Eilif Peterssen developed into a realist in the modern sense 
 and into an open-air painter. While all his comrades were 
 assembled in Paris, he was sunning himself in Italy and there 
 doing some of his best work. To this early Mediterranean 
 sojourn we owe the painting, replete with figures and care- 
 fully executed throughout, of Italian peasants taking their 
 siesta at an inn, painted at Sora in 1880, and the large street 
 scene from the Piazza Montanara, a motley crowd in a 
 Roman square, done in 1882. At Rome, in 188 1, Peterssen 
 finished in addition the large altar-piece for the Jakobskirke 
 in Christiania, called the Adoration of the Shepherds, prob- 
 ably his most significant performance. To it contribute in an 
 impressive way a powerful grasp of reality, a persevering 
 study of models, and vital influences from the older art of 
 the galleries. 
 
 When Eilif Peterssen returned to Christiania in 1883 it 
 was with the fixed purpose of remaining in Norway. During 
 the fiery strife which was going on at that tim.e between the 
 artists on the one side and the reactionary directors of Kunst- 
 
MODERN NORWEGIAN ARI' 
 
 489 
 
 Piazza Montanara, by Eilif Peterssen. Privately owned in Fredriks- 
 hald 
 
 foreningen together with a rather uncomprehending pubhc 
 on the other, it fell to the lot of Peterssen to act as a medi- 
 ator between the parties. His early maturity, the nature 
 of his gifts, his reputation abroad, and his gracious person- 
 ality pointed him out, among the entire body of artists, for 
 universal confidence and therefore led to his being selected 
 
490 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 I 
 
 Portrait of the Poet Arne Garborg, by Eilif Peterssen. In the 
 National Gallery 
 
 when negotiations were on foot or when threatening con- 
 flicts were to be averted. As a member of juries and of a 
 variety of committees, of the directorate of the National 
 Gallery, and of the representative committee of the artists, 
 Eilif Peterssen has left a great impression on the public 
 phases of our art life, next to Werenskiold perhaps the 
 greatest. Eilif Peterssen executed his masterpiece in por- 
 traiture when he painted Arne Garborg in 1884. The very 
 
MODERN NORWIXilAN ART 491 
 
 arrangement of the picture, the natural and thoughtful pose 
 of the sitter is captivating; and one does not easily forget the 
 large, sorrowful eyes, like the eyes of a hart, which gaze out 
 from that haggard face. 
 
 Hans Heyerdahl, who was horn in 1857, came as a youth 
 of seventeen to Munich and there studied under Linden- 
 schmidt. This conscientious and high-minded teacher soon 
 appreciated his brilliant gifts and turned them in the right 
 direction. By serious study and diligent practice the young 
 pupil in a short time became an excellent draughtsman, espe- 
 cially in portraiture, with an animated sense for details of 
 form, in the spirit of Holbein. In Munich Eilif Peterssen 
 and Hans Heyerdahl, his junior by five years, soon grew to 
 be close comrades. Later in life, to be sure, they were 
 widely separated, but in the history of art the two will always 
 occupy places near each other. Men of talent both, mature 
 at an early age, colorists and worshippers of beauty, easily 
 Influenced and open-minded, particularly as regards older 
 art, gifted with lightness of touch and ambitious for tech- 
 nical mastery, they soon took a position In Munich as equals 
 and side by side. 
 
 After three years of study It was possible for Heyerdahl 
 In 1878 to send from Munich to the Universal Exposition In 
 Paris a large picture which has continued to rank as one of 
 the principal works of the artist and, for that matter, as 
 one of the ripest and most remarkable achievements In 
 Norwegian painting The composition presents Adam and 
 Eve Being Driven Forth from Paradise, two nude figures 
 seen against a background of threatening darkness. They 
 are beautifully painted. Eve especially. In soft golden flesh 
 tints. The piece, however. Is no mere technical study. It 
 carries Its own challenging message, expressed In the figure 
 of Adam, a very young lad, hardly more than a child, with a 
 fine head of dark hair. They have sinned, those two; but 
 the glance he directs back toward the lowering heavens 
 burns with rage, and his hands are clenched In Impotent de- 
 fiance of that Providence which thrusts Its own children 
 without the gates of the garden of bliss. There Is youthful 
 
492 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 K^^W^ 
 
 Adam and Eve Being Driven Forth from Paradise, by Hans Heyerdal 
 Privately owned in Paris 
 
 revolt in this work by a man of twenty. The picture 
 naturally created the greatest sensation, both among artists 
 and with the public, received a prize, and was at once sold 
 
MODl^^N NOkVVJ'X.lAN ART 
 
 493 
 
 The Letter, by Hans Heyerdahl. In the Art Society at Kristianssand 
 
 to a Greek art collector in Paris. Not a bad success for an 
 academy pupil! The young master lost no time whatever 
 in quitting the Academy and hastening to Paris. 
 
 Other works from Heyerdahl's Munich period, too, such 
 as the Penitent Magdalene in Rasmus Meyer's collection, 
 and portraits of Eilif Peterssen and of Skredsvig from the 
 year 1878, now in the National Gallery, will remain as little 
 masterpieces from the hand of a youthful genius. Imme- 
 diately after his arrival in Paris he painted his Italian Girl, 
 
494 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 with Its fine silver tone reminding of Corot, and also the 
 austere and delicate full-face portrait of Laura Gundersen, 
 executed with untiring attention to modeling, after the 
 manner of Holbein. 
 
 In general, the intense study of the old masters and 
 their technique which Heyerdahl prosecuted in youth deter- 
 mined his develop- 
 ment and has left 
 itsmarksupon 
 his production 
 throughout. When 
 he found himself in 
 Paris, the focus of 
 modern art, he was 
 so far from cool- 
 ing in his passion 
 for the old masters 
 that, on the con- 
 trary, he settled 
 down in the Lou- 
 vre to copy a num- 
 ber of them. His 
 copies of Bellini, 
 Raphael, Rem- 
 brandt, and Ribera 
 are among the best 
 works of this kind 
 in our time, 
 Heyerdahl's greatest and most significant performance 
 from the early eighties was nevertheless the large figure 
 composition which he painted In Norway and exhibited at 
 the Salon of 1882 under the title The Dying Child, The 
 story Is simple and sincere, and the presentation has eminent 
 pictorial qualities. The cold daylight upon the half-clothed 
 figure of the mother with her disheveled hair and despair- 
 ing face is made to stand out in masterly fashion against 
 the twilight of the room. In which beneath the rays of the 
 night lamp the doctor bends over the cradle listening to the 
 
 Portrait of the Actress Laura Gundersen, by 
 Hans Heyerdahl. In the National Gallery 
 
MODI'lkN N()K\Vi;(,Iy\N ART 495 
 
 faint brcathiiifj; of the cliild. With this paint iii}^; I Icycr- 
 dahl's fortune was assured. The |)icture was bought by 
 the Trench Government, and the artist received a Grand 
 Prix dc Florence which had been oHered by the periodical, 
 VArt. 
 
 Heyerdahl's studies in Italy covered a span from 1882 till 
 1884. In Florence, where he diligently continued his tech- 
 nical exercises upon the old masters, he formed an inti- 
 mate acquaintance with Bocklin. This association with the 
 German romanticist came to have a considerable influence on 
 the further development of Heyerdahl, not wholly to his ad- 
 vantage. Through it he was to a certain extent led away 
 from that path into which his PVench training had carried 
 him, and led Into a round of primitive Germanic myth- 
 ological subjects for the treatment of which his intelligence 
 did not suffice and his individuality could ill adapt itself. 
 Meanwhile, before these Ideas gained the upper hand he 
 had experienced at home in Norway, in 1885 and the im- 
 mediately following years, a period of flourishing produc- 
 tivity during which portraits, landscapes, and nudes flow 
 from his brush, and during which he asserts himself In 
 general as one of the most gifted painters in the history 
 of Norwegian art. 
 
 In winter he executed portraits in Chrlstlania, and In sum- 
 mer landscapes with figures and nudes at Aasgaardsstrand. 
 To this happy season belongs the double portrait, now In 
 the National Gallery, arranged in the Venetian manner: 
 The Two Sisters, the ruddy and the blond beauty of the 
 fishing village. In the middle eighties appeared also his best 
 studies in the nude. He has painted bathing boys and girls, 
 often seen against a background of salt blue sea. In which 
 there Is a golden amber tone and a luscious sweetness In 
 form that might tempt one to call Heyerdahl the Renoir of 
 the North. 
 
 Unfortunately Heyerdahl's art has not always had the 
 direct Inspiration from nature which marks these pictures. 
 He has also turned out casual things, fleeting landscape 
 moods and cloying studies of heads, which properly belong 
 
496 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 in family magazines. Particularly in the case of commis- 
 sions for portraits, where the sitters have not sufficiently 
 interested him, he has succumbed to the temptation to lay a 
 flattering unction upon his all too supple brush. The 
 good things and the excellent, however, which the eye of a 
 refined painter who loved beauty has caught for us to look 
 upon will in themselves be enough to maintain for him a 
 long time that honored place in the history of our art which 
 is rightfully his. It must also be reckoned to Heyerdahl's 
 credit as an artist that he gave fruitful stimulus to the genius 
 of Edvard Munch. Heyerdahl died in 19 13. 
 
IV 
 
 THE BEGINNING OF FRENCH INFLUENCE 
 
 THAT period In the history of Norwegian art which 
 has been discussed so far was one in which Norwegian 
 painters received their training in Germany and were 
 dependent upon German art. This connection was broken, 
 little by little, about the time when the Universal Exposition 
 of 1878 in Paris and the subsequent exposition in Munich 
 demonstrated conclusively the preeminence of French art. 
 With this turn of events there begins a new phase of the de- 
 velopment of art in Norway, when Impressions from France 
 outweigh those from Germany, when our young artists in 
 a body go to Paris to see and learn, and afterward come 
 back to live and work In their native land. The period of 
 emigration Is at an end, and the wholly national period In 
 our art history begins. Herewith also romanticism Is at an 
 end, and naturalism begins. Norwegian painting from this 
 time forth Is no longer under the sign of German neo-ro- 
 mantlclsm but under the sign of French naturalism. This 
 was the conception of art that became dominant also among 
 us in the eighties as soon as It had been adapted to nature 
 In Norway and had been fashioned to accord with the Nor- 
 wegian temperament. 
 
 It must be allowed that It was not always the great and 
 epoch-making French artists who had the most direct in- 
 fluence on our young Norwegian painters, who In the closing 
 years of the seventies and on Into the eighties, thronged to 
 Paris. As teachers they had the more subordinate celebrities 
 who were attached to the art schools, realists like Bonnat, 
 
 497 
 
498 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 Roll, Cormon, or even academicians of the commonplace 
 type of Bouguereau. Still the art traditions and the great 
 technical eminence of France did not fail to assert them- 
 selves. It will perhaps be regarded as surprising even to-day 
 that it was a grey realist like Bastien-Lepage whom the 
 young Norsemen admired particularly, and that corypheuses 
 of the Salon like Carolus Durand, Roll, and Cazin counted 
 votaries among them side by side with or even before Manet, 
 Renoir, and the impressionists. One must, however, take 
 into account the inexperience of the youthful painters, their 
 German prepossessions, and as well the prejudice with which 
 even official France received its own true pioneers in art. 
 Daumier's painting was still unknown; the Inspired talent 
 of Delacroix was by reason of its romantic subject matter 
 precluded from the interest of the juvenile naturalists; 
 Manet was just In process of breaking his own path, and 
 Renoir was too much of a Frenchman for the Northern 
 students or else a total stranger to them. None the less, 
 the seeds scattered by genius were budding all about them 
 or flying like motes through the air. Deep is the soil of 
 culture in France and plentiful the increase. And art life 
 in Paris had seasonable weather for its thriving during those 
 good years. 
 
 One French artist there was, nevertheless, who had a 
 direct influence upon the young Norwegians through the 
 range of his subjects, his straightforward style, and his 
 great heart — the painter of peasants, Millet. Here was a 
 delineation of the life of the people and an art of the 
 peasantry totally different from Tidemand's Sunday idylls. 
 Millet's achievement was that of seeing men at their work 
 and in contact with the soil from which they sprang. There- 
 by a suggestion of the eternal came Into art which was not 
 there before. It was not the peasant for his own sake and 
 his rural occupations that this master sought to portray, 
 though he depicted all of these occupations — the labors of 
 the fields and of the woods, the life of herdsmen, tillage 
 and housework — but he did seek to portray man in concord 
 with his toil, as he expresses It himself. Herein Millet saw 
 
MODI'kN NOkWI'XilAN AR'I" 490 
 
 1 
 
 all l)(.'aut\. IkmuIv, he writes (o his Irieiul Scnsicr, has not 
 
 its scat ill the Icaturcs; it is rcllctleil I rom the li^iirc as a 
 
 whole, 111 \\liats()c\ cr accords with a man's tasks. 
 
 The laiulscape art of Corot also made an immediate im- 
 pression on the young Northern students, h.)t!i Norwegians 
 and Sweiles. 7'hose blonde, cool landscapes, wrapped as it 
 were in siNer tissue, with their dewy greenswards and those 
 ancient willows bending o\er a pearl-grey lake and silhouet- 
 ting themselves darkly and softly upon the atmosphere! 
 What the youthful strangers saw and admired in Corot, 
 besides the poetic content, was the fine sense of values with 
 which the colors are toned down and blended into harmony. 
 Corot was the first conscious painter of atmosphere in 
 modern art; he beheld objects immersed in the atmospheric 
 sea. This faculty made his palette what it was, with its 
 milky, blue-green tints and its unending scale of greys. As a 
 draughtsman also he was a forerunner of impressionism in 
 his grasp of the totality of mass and tone. 
 
 As a counter-balance against these late scions of roman- 
 ticism there is Courbet, the full-blooded peasant genius with 
 the indomitable desire to press nature herself between his 
 arms, as Zola puts it. He is a naturalist, a son of the new era, 
 with the child's positive conviction that it is indeed reality 
 which presents itself to our senses. All bounds between 
 good and evil, between the hideous and the beautiful, be- 
 tween noble things and ignoble, were dissipated before the 
 unveiled eye of this painter, before his ravenous nature, so 
 capacious of enjoyment that, as it has been phrased, he felt 
 himself drawn with all his flesh toward the material world 
 surrounding him. 
 
 Finally there is Manet, the first truly modern painter, 
 who brilliantly sums up all earlier approaches and technical 
 advances, from the Venetians and Velazquez to Goya and 
 Courbet, and so develops an art in which material and spirit, 
 stroke and tone are joined in a unity of impression found in 
 no other, 
 
 Manet has been called the father of impressionism; un- 
 
500 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 justly so, if one thinks of the impressionistic color-decom- 
 posing technique in itself; justly so, if by impressionism one 
 means a peculiar manner of visualizing, by hasty survey, 
 with a special feeling for the total result, for light effects, for 
 action — in a word, for the momentary singleness of the im- 
 pact upon the sight. 
 
 Manet was the first modern painter also in the sense that 
 he was the first wholly to devote himself to modern themes. 
 Allegory, history, myth moved him not at all. Paris, the 
 mundane career of Parisians and Parisiennes, on the street, 
 in cafe or cabaret, and at the opera ball, is the sole passion 
 of his art. The fever and restlessness of the great city in- 
 cite him; he loves life when its pulses beat high. The race 
 course, the bar, the Bois de Boulogne, the boudoir consti- 
 tute his field of study. He paints beautiful and elegant 
 Parisiennes — a multitude of them. And on fine spring days, 
 when the Seine lies blue and radiant, with the boats of the 
 rowing-club beneath the arched bridges, he is to be dis- 
 covered at Meudon and Argenteuil. 
 
 More and more it grew to be Manet's governing impulse 
 to paint life in strong colors and in the full light of the sun. 
 Plein-air became the new watchword of art. Even at this 
 day there lingers a glory of the joy of life about these pic- 
 tures that are given over to sunshine and the splendor of 
 summer, to dazzling blue water and white sails, to youth, 
 bright clothing, and flowers. 
 
 Manet's work underwent a continuously ascending devel- 
 opment, until an implacable disease struck down his prodigal 
 strength just as it was unfolding itself most completely, and 
 so broke off the most brilliant and epochal production that 
 modern painting is able to show. One day in the spring of 
 1883 Edouard Manet died. 
 
 No single painter was prepared to take over Manet's in- 
 heritance on equal terms. Yet about him had gathered 
 closely a small group of very capable artists and steadfast 
 comrades, who in serried ranks pushed forward the battle 
 lines: Monet, Pissarro, Sisley, Renoir, and others — the im- 
 pressionists, as they were at first scornfully called. 
 
MODERN NORVVrX.IAN ART 501 
 
 Among the impressionistic painters Claude Monet takes 
 the leading position. He was the protagonist who, conscious 
 of his purpose, with undeviating consistency carried the prin- 
 ciples of open-air painting farther and developed the impres- 
 sionistic method. Even in youth the goal was plain to 
 Monet, namely, to convey light and atmosphere upon the 
 canvas. To the realization of this idea he devoted his hrush 
 and indeed his life. In order to capture light he gave up 
 figure painting, in which he had early shown great talent, 
 fled the studio, and set up his easel out of doors. In order 
 to master light he made himself a chemist and a physicist, 
 studied the physics of color, and systematized the result 
 of his experiences in the technique of color division. 
 
 As is well known, the method consists in a mechanical 
 collocation upon the canvas of small particles of the pure 
 pigments instead of a chemical mixing of them upon the 
 palette. The fusing into tone takes place on the retina of 
 the observer's eye at a proper distance. The gain lies 
 therein that the colors lose nothing in power through being 
 blended, but speak with undiminished force from the canvas. 
 Moreover, since black and all heavy, dark tones are pro- 
 scribed from the palette, which retains, besides white, only 
 the three primary colors, red, blue, and yellow, the paintings 
 of the Impressionists attained a force of light and a vigor 
 which at the time of their appearance had a positively daz- 
 zling effect. 
 
 By means of this technique Claude Monet and his asso- 
 ciates pictured Paris and the smiling reaches of the Seine or 
 the Olse, burgeoning landscapes In summer green, and flow- 
 ing water. They portrayed the sea dashing against the 
 rocks at Etretat or expanding along the Mediterranean 
 coast. Monet himself has also painted several series of pic- 
 tures from the foggy city on the Thames, the tulip markets 
 of Haarlem, and the cathedral at Rouen. Through It all, 
 however, he has painted but one thing, light; light In Its 
 unceasing variations through the atmospheric medium in 
 changing weather and In the alternating phases of day and 
 night. 
 
502 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 As full-blooded naturalists and sworn adherents of open 
 air painting the young Norwegians returned home from 
 Paris with the passing of the early eighties. About the year 
 1883 nearly all the artistic capacities that our country could 
 muster were assembled in Norway's capital, and assembled 
 with the intention of remaining there. Now they were con- 
 fronted with the task of taking up the cudgels for their new 
 persuasions and of shaping a new art which should be wholly 
 Norwegian. This period of naturalism in the eighties 
 may well be called the golden age of Norwegian art. It 
 was strongly endowed with talent, and it was entirely 
 national. 
 
 A large collection of the pictures of that time, as it is to 
 be found, for instance, in the excellently representative can- 
 vases in our National Gallery, gives an impression of bright 
 and powerful colors, of the brilliance of sun and snow and 
 open air, of space and distance, of actuality; in short, it 
 creates a vivid illusion. Furtherm.ore, one notices that there 
 are comparatively few landscapes, that they are over- 
 matched by figure compositions, and that several of these 
 are of great scope and show figures of life-size, taken from 
 everyday walks, and almost insistently veracious. The faces 
 of well known men shine out upon us from these portraits — 
 poets, artists, composers whose names and works live and 
 hold sway over us. There is not a picture here whose sub- 
 ject is drawn from history, from poetry, or in any way 
 from the world of the imagination. Here is no dream, no 
 poem, no nocturnal vision, no twilight revery, but sunshine 
 and again sunshine, or cold, merciless daylight beneath a 
 Northern sky. 
 
 Only by very rare exception do we meet with a foreign 
 theme. We go with the painters up through the valleys and 
 with them visit actual Norwegian farmers, farmers who are 
 working or resting from their labors, farmers who are eat- 
 ing their bread or are about to eat it, farmers with tough, 
 capable fists and weatherbeaten physiognomies. We drop 
 in on fishermen and pilots. We step into the living-rooms 
 of common people In the cities, we surprise an artisan's little 
 
MODl-lRN N()K\Vi:(.IAN AKI" 503 
 
 family hall-ilrcsscii about the hrcaklast tabic on a winter 
 morning, or wc present ourseK es on a Sunday in the parh)!" 
 at a festivity incident to the ceremony ol conlir, nation, where 
 rchitix'es and friends are assembled and an old laniiliar ol 
 the house raises his glass in honor ot the son newly arri\ed 
 at grown-up dignity. We walk among the proletariat of 
 the capital and carry away somber impressions of enforced 
 idleness, of misery, of the bitter struggle for bread, of sick- 
 ness and privation. Finally, we even pass within the walls 
 of the police station and stand face to face with the curse 
 of pauperism and the social infamy. Vice and brazenness 
 have the same opportunity to address us through this demo- 
 cratic art as innocence and uprightness; the hideous has 
 equal rights with the beautiful. 
 
 Furthermore, if one looks not merely at the subjects but 
 also at the handling of these pictures, one finds a still greater 
 divergence from the art of an older generation. Almost 
 universally these paintings are executed with the broad 
 brush. The color is spread upon the canvas thick and juicy, 
 often with the living impress of the temperamental hand that 
 applied it. Moreover, although the brown and black 
 shadow-tones which would serve to give force to the lights 
 are to a greater or less degree crowded out of the pictures, 
 In some cases banished utterly, the coloring Is rich In con- 
 trasts. The pigments are twice as luminous as before. In 
 addition, wholly new color chords assert themselves, a pure 
 summer-green which prior to that time was not permitted 
 upon the palette, a vivid blue in shadows and atmospheric 
 tints, and frequent refractions of red lights and blue shadows 
 blending Into violet middle tones. In general, the total effect 
 of the pictures Is colder than before — less red and yellow, 
 more blue and green, and instead of the previous abundance 
 of brown, rather grey and violet. Further than that, the 
 modeling has become less sculpturesque than formerly, as 
 regards roundness of contour and distribution of light, more 
 pictorial In Its planes, broken with reflections, and wrapped 
 In atmospheric tones. In certain of the pictures the painter 
 has attempted to apply the principles of the division of color, 
 
504 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 and tried to attain a heightened effect from the pigments by 
 laying the components of the various hues side by side upon 
 the canvas in greater or less purity. 
 
 In drawing and composition, too, great changes have 
 taken place. The design is no longer clean and clear, as in 
 older works, showing a thousand details. It has been ab- 
 sorbed by the picture and has been indissolubly merged with 
 the brush-technique. All minutiae of outline have been 
 neglected, partly because the draughtsmanship has not been 
 of interest to the artist, partly for fear of deadening the pic- 
 torial effect. Even the perspective has undergone alteration. 
 The subject is seen at closer range, the foreground crowds 
 upon the spectator so that objects assume a larger appear- 
 ance, and the station point is higher than before. From ull 
 this it follows that the composition itself has suffered altera- 
 tion as well. 
 
 Naturalistic painting has often been criticized for faults 
 of composition. Among us particularly, where the artists 
 for the most part were self-taught, in the absence of an acad- 
 emy or an established school, it was well-nigh unavoidable 
 that the principles of composition should tend to relax. For 
 that matter, it was a feature of the programme of naturalism 
 itself to break old and traditional rules of composition. 
 According to the tenets of the new art a picture ought to be 
 a transcript from nature. Thus it was not so much a ques- 
 tion of what one transcribed as of how one did it. The 
 laying in of the subject itself became the principal thing, for 
 through it the lines of the picture were determined. It was 
 less a matter of elaborating a composition than of search- 
 ing out a theme. From fear of the academic the choice often 
 fell upon the casual, and from fear of the conventional there 
 was an inclination toward the bizarre. Instantaneous pho- 
 tography also had Its effect upon art. While previously it 
 had been out of the question to paint half of a figure or a 
 part of an object intersected by the picture frame, now 
 fragments of people and things protrude constantly within 
 the frame. Yet In spite of such fortuitousness among the 
 greater number, there was still among the best of our natu- 
 
MODIlRN NOKVVI-X.IAN art 505 
 
 rallsts a dawning decorative sense which, in great measure 
 unknown to themselves, gave poise to their pictures. There 
 is more of decorative power in the paintings from the eigh- 
 ties than in those of the older generations. It was not, how- 
 ever, before the following decades that the adorning ele- 
 ments were able to liberate themseh-cs sufficiently to become 
 pure decorative art. 
 
 This period of the emergence of Norwegian naturalism 
 was a time of contention and wrath, during which the welkin 
 rang with shibboleths, war-cries, criminations, and recrimi- 
 nations. The public was wholly without orientation as 
 regards the new open-air movement, and at first felt nothing 
 but a vast sense of Indignity. So far as the critics were con- 
 cerned, they were hardly more than tale-bearers in ordinary, 
 who by means of warning and abuse provoked one party 
 against the other, and so widened the cleavage between the 
 public and the representatives of the new tendency. The 
 artists, on their side, disported themselves gleefully upon 
 the waves of displeasure. Viewed impartially from without, 
 the battle that they were waging had somewhat the appear- 
 ance of a hailstorm of youthful challenges and Irritating 
 exaggerations. They most Indubitably were just what they 
 were accused of being — one-sided. None the less, they 
 gained In power as they narrowed their horizon, since they 
 made of one-sidedness a coat of mail. Through defiance 
 their strength Increased; for behind that defiance was a 
 stout faith in what to them was the only right thing. 
 Opposition among public and press was of the strongest; 
 but In a surprisingly short time it was conquered. At the 
 close of the eighties the victory was won beyond a doubt; 
 the leading naturalists were commonly acknowledged as our 
 foremost artists, and In their footsteps walked the new gen- 
 eration of painters. 
 
 That the struggle was so unexpectedly brief and that 
 recognition was at last so unanimous Is not to be ascribed 
 alone to the circumstance that In this group of painters 
 there really was an abundance of talent. Talent In painting 
 of Itself would not have brought triumph to the banners of 
 
506 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 Norwegian naturalism. The naturalistic tendency in art 
 had a background for its striving in the general development 
 of the nation and in revolutions that were taking place in 
 the various domains of culture during those years. The 
 painters themselves were only a small band in the advancing 
 army which at that period was breaking a way for itself 
 through barriers of tradition. 
 
 The salty stream which from the dramas of Ibsen flowed 
 through the intellectual life of the land, and of Europe, with 
 the lofty sky of individualism above it, the fresh mountain 
 wind which came forth from the poetry and the rousing 
 activities of Bjornson, the purifying fire of Georg Brandes's 
 criticism, the passion for truth in the books of Garborg and 
 Jceger, and the waves of radicalism that rolled high in 
 national politics, all these things formed the domestic 
 background for the battle in which the painters were 
 engaged. 
 
 The background, meanwhile, broadens out. Behind the 
 young pilgrims returning from Paris we descry revolutions 
 and formative events in the cultural life of Europe through- 
 out all the fields of thought, of art, of social consciousness. 
 The positivistic philosophy with its revaluation of old stand- 
 ards constitutes in a way the remotest part of the perspec- 
 tive. The sobering effect of naturalistic research upon 
 science, sociology, and art comes next in importance. Men 
 began to take into more systematic account the experiences 
 of the senses. As a twin brother of empiricism in science, 
 naturalism in art grew more vigorous. And under the influ- 
 ence of the individualistic and anarchistic tendencies that 
 gave the strongest incentives to the minds of men during the 
 nineteenth century, naturalism became impressionism. As 
 the actual soil from which all these things burst into being 
 we perceive democracy itself, vast, extensive, restlessly heav- 
 ing with repressed discontent and earth-bound dreams of 
 happiness — the desire for social revolution as the foundation 
 of it all. The revival in Norwegian painting was thus 
 merely a reflexion from deep intellectual currents that shook 
 the world in their passing. 
 
THE NATURALISTS: THAULOW, KROHG, AND 
 WERENSKIOLD. GERHARD MUNTHE 
 
 IN THE combative generation of naturalists in the eigh- 
 ties Thaulow, Krohg, and Werenskiold were the leading 
 spirits. Fritz Thaulow, who was born in Christiania 
 in 1847, was the oldest among them and the first to give 
 battle; but he was also the first to withdraw from the con- 
 test and to turn his back upon the narrow circumstances 
 that surrounded art in his native land. When Thaulow 
 came home to Christiania in 1880 and there met Christian 
 Krohg, it was as an avowed naturalist and as an enthusi- 
 astic European, so-called. Both were radical and eager to 
 take up the cudgels against the limitations of domestic taste 
 in art. Conscious of the oppressive atmosphere which 
 rested upon intellectual life in Christiania, the two Euro- 
 peans formed a close friendship, and by reason of their 
 contrasting characters and gifts they also influenced each 
 other professionally. 
 
 Upon his arrival from Paris Thaulow was a full-blooded 
 naturalist with a touch of impressionism. First and above 
 all, he was an adherent of open-air painting: the landscape 
 painter should be forbidden to have a studio; landscapes 
 should be executed out of ddOrs from nature itself, and the 
 picture should be an actual portrait and transcript of nature; 
 and love of truth should be the highest artistic requirement. 
 Still, Thaulow always had the knack of choosing his subjects. 
 A feeling for balance and pictorial effect was never wanting 
 in his tasteful and fastidious work. Krohg and Thaulow 
 were in so far opposites that while Krohg saw democratic 
 
 507 
 
508 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 proclamation of truth as the aim of art, Thaulow insisted 
 even at this early date that art in the nature of things must 
 be aristocratic, a pleasure of the few and a pleasure alone. 
 
 In the art life of Christiania during the eighties Fritz 
 Thaulow played an important role. He seemed to have a 
 native gift for attracting young people. Active and hand- 
 some, enthusiastic and amiable, well-to-do and independent, 
 full of good humor and confidence, with an air of foreign 
 culture and a certain quality that could not fail to make him 
 noticeable as a man about town, Fritz was the lion of the 
 day. Everybody knew him, almost everybody liked him ; his 
 comrades and all of Christiania with them called him only 
 by his first name. 
 
 In the long and acrimonious struggle with Kunstfore- 
 ningen he took an active part. This institution, the object of 
 which was to buy and parcel out works of art to its members, 
 and which commanded a considerable budget, measured with 
 the standards of the time, was governed by an altogether 
 incompetent board of directors. It was impossible in the 
 long run for the painters to be content with a state of affairs 
 in which all sorts of amateurish, untalented productions were 
 purchased and spread through the homes to assess for them- 
 selves the modicum of interest in art that existed in Chris- 
 tiania at that day. The conflict led to a long-continued 
 strike, which ended in victory for the artists: no picture was 
 to be considered for purchase that had not previously been 
 passed upon favorably by a jury of their own number. The 
 campaign, though difficult, had been conducted on the part 
 of the artists with unyielding persistency. Its leaders were 
 Werenskiold, Thaulow, and Krohg. 
 
 As a teacher, too, Thaulow exerted a great influence. It 
 was he who established the so-called open air academy at 
 Modum, a village near Christiania, whither a large group 
 of young painters followed him to practise under his direc- 
 tion the precepts of outdoor study. Here at Modum Thau- 
 low painted his large picture, now in the National Gallery, 
 of Hougsfossen in spring flood, tumbling down the moun- 
 tain-side in foaming cascades and dirty yellow eddies. 
 
MODERN NORWEGIAN ART 
 
 509 
 
 In the period that follows he chooses his ihciiics to a con- 
 siderable extent from Christiania itself and from the inmie- 
 diate environs. He has painted the Palace Park when leaves 
 are bursting and when snow covers the ground, the Storting 
 Square in Wind and Sleet — a picture from the year 1881, 
 and the hovels along the Aker River. lie had a happy 
 season of study down at Kragero in 1882, during which 
 on clear winter days he pictured coasting parties in the 
 
 The Storting Square in Wind and Sleet, by Fritz Thaulow. Privately 
 owned 
 
 streets between the little, motley houses of the skippers or, 
 as spring advanced, made careful observations of delicate 
 sunshine upon rocky knolls and of the naked branches of 
 apple trees against sunny walls. 
 
 With the passing of the eighties Thaulow painted mostly 
 winter pieces, which more and more became his specialty; 
 and they carried his fame beyond the bounds of his native 
 land. After the Universal Exposition In Paris In 1889, at 
 which Thaulow served as a juror together with Skredsvlg, 
 the Luxembourg Museum bought one of his typical snow 
 scenes from Vestre Aker, of the year 1887, entitled Ski- 
 runners. Later, during the nineties. In addition to the snow 
 themes, river pictures had a particular Interest for Thaulow. 
 
510 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 A Street in Kragerd, by Fritz Thaulow. In the National Gallery 
 
 The Luxembourg also has a pastel by him, The Old Factory 
 at Lysaker. 
 
 Thaulow's art has always been lacking in solidity and 
 rather inclined toward softness. So long as he had Norwe- 
 gian earth under foot he contended against this failing. In 
 the long run, however, Thaulow with his international lean- 
 ings was not to be contained within the limits of the ancestral 
 land, which according to him had no significance for art. In 
 1 89 1 he left Norway, and lived first in London, later in 
 Montreuil, a little old town in Normandy, and thereafter in 
 Dieppe; as the guest of the Carnegie Institute he visited 
 America in 1897, but subsequently returned to Paris and 
 remained there for several years. In the course of these 
 wanderings his art underwent many changes. 
 
 As a colorist Thaulow was possessed of sure and culti- 
 vated intelligence and above all of good taste. He never 
 grappled with pigments in their whole volume; his coloring 
 always played upon muffled strings. He was most at his 
 ease among soft intermediate tones with suave gradations. 
 In his landscapes form counted for very little, the arrange- 
 
MODERN N()RWFX;iAN ART 
 
 511 
 
 winter Scene from the Mesna River, by Fritz Thaulow 
 
 ment of the subject upon the canvas for considerably more, 
 but color was really all-important. Whatsoever he painted 
 he was enticed to paint by his love of color. He has caught 
 the paLe tone in the atmosphere of Paris; he has delighted 
 in the delicate patina with which time has woven a web about 
 a half-weathered city hke Venice ; and in a series of pictures 
 with differing light effects he has found pleasure In variations 
 upon the theme of an old brick-red, arched bridge in Verona. 
 It seems remarkable that this International art-Epicurean, 
 who toward the close of his life was influenced by French, 
 Scottish, and American painters such as Cazin, Cottet, and 
 Whistler, and who found his public and his markets In Paris, 
 in London, and particularly in America, should have gained 
 the reputation of being a distinctly typical Norwegian artist. 
 As a matter of fact, In his declining years Thaulow was 
 totally out of touch with art life In Norway. It cannot be 
 said of him to the same degree as of his comrades and the 
 greater number of his pupils that he remained true to natu- 
 ralism. Sated with the rank, earthy savor of open-air paint- 
 
512 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 ing, he returned in his final period to the laboratory of the 
 atelier. 
 
 He has been the object of reproach on this account. Yet 
 what should one say? In the end, naturahsm did not accord 
 with his gifts. His inclinations and tastes ran in another 
 direction. Noticeably enough, it is just with examples of 
 his later manner that he has created a furore at exhibitions 
 throughout the world, and it is with these that he is repre- 
 sented in the great museums and collections round about, not 
 excepting the White House at Washington, where now 
 hangs his Evening in Pittsburgh, done in 1897. He de- 
 veloped somewhat in virtuosity during these last years, but 
 his talents did not gain measurably in depth through this 
 concluding phase of his career, during which pictures flowed 
 from his hand with such facility, a downright uncanny facil- 
 ity, and with ingratiating and at times fundamentally false 
 effects. The Thaulow who is most likely to keep his ground 
 in the history of Norwegian art is he who worked hard at 
 painting skippers' houses and rocky knolls in his native 
 Norway in the merciless daylight of the eighties. Thaulow 
 died in Holland in November, 1906. 
 
 Christian Krohg was born in Christiania in 1852. He 
 bears the name of his grandfather, the celebrated jurist 
 Christian Krohg, who was one of the most prominent cham- 
 pions in our struggle for national independence during the 
 first period of the union with Sweden subsequent to 18 14. 
 After taking the degree of candidatus juris Krohg proceeded 
 in the early seventies to Karlsruhe, where he became a pupil 
 of Gussow. Later he studied under the same master in 
 Berlin, and there he was a friend and fellow-student of Max 
 Klinger. In 1879 he returned to Norway to enter upon 
 what was to be his principal work; painting the life of the 
 poor in Christiania, 
 
 Endowed as he was with the most powerful grasp of 
 reality and with great pictorial gifts, a democrat by innate 
 disposition, a journalist inclined toward the literary in his 
 art as well, a disciple of Zola quite as much as of Manet, 
 he was the man, more than any other among us, who pro- 
 
M()1)I<:RN N()K\Vi:(ilAN y\RI 513 
 
 claimed the cjooina of tlic social mission of art. Witli j)ciicil 
 no less than with pen he published his convictions. J'"-\en 
 the themes of his iirst pictures are evidential. In 1880 he 
 painted The Dawn, which at once gave offence to the cul- 
 tured. This canvas shows a poor seamstress just as she 
 has fallen asleep in her garret over a silk dress upon which 
 she has been at work during the night. Her chest is sunken, 
 the lamp smokes, the blue winter morning sifts in through 
 the window-shade and touches with cold light the face and 
 hands of the exhausted girl. In her lap lies the expensive 
 lace-trimmed gown designed for the ball that is to speed 
 the coming night for a woman more happily situated in 
 society. People scented the socialistic tendency and were 
 startled. The picture finally found a lodging in the Gothen- 
 burg Museum. In Krohg's next painting also, A Call for 
 the Doctor, it is the social contrasts that engage his atten- 
 tion. Here it is a contrast between abundance and want, 
 between the happy, wined and dined company about the 
 glittering board from which the doctor is summoned and 
 the bowed, thinly dressed working-woman who begs him to 
 visit a death bed in her poverty-stricken home. 
 
 There is one reservation to be made with respect to all 
 of these pictures, and the objection attaches also to some 
 among Krohg's later works: it is suspiciously literary art. 
 There is something of German genre painting in it all, and 
 something sentimental. The youthful Krohg was not merely 
 in possession of a pair of sound eyes and a painter's faculty 
 for enjoying what he saw; he also had a democratic philoso- 
 phy of life to propound. And with his gift for painting 
 he had a real gift for writing. Thus It came about that on 
 occasion he attempted to paint novelettes with a purpose. 
 
 In the National Gallery there hangs a picture by Krohg, 
 typical of this early period and belonging among his best 
 pieces. The Sick Girl, painted in 1880 immediately after his 
 return from Berlin and the precepts of Gussow. The scene 
 is unforgettable by reason of the intensity with which the 
 subject is conceived and the steadiness of hand with which it 
 is committed to the canvas. The momentary Illusion is so 
 
5L4 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 vivid that the first 
 impression is one 
 of Hfe and not of 
 art. Those large 
 burning eyes in the 
 waxen face, sur- 
 rounded by all that 
 mass of white in 
 the invalid's chair, 
 the woollen blan- 
 ket, the night- 
 gown, the pillow — 
 those eyes will not 
 loosen their hold, 
 they penetrate to 
 the inmost soul and 
 touch strings that 
 vibrate to the most 
 veritably human of 
 emotions. Still 
 there is something 
 obtrusive in the 
 painfully direct 
 gaze that trans- 
 fixes the spectator 
 and In the pale 
 rose dropping Its 
 petals, which the consumptive holds In her hands. On look- 
 ing more closely one is further struck by the hard-handed 
 manner in which certain passages are painted, the dry zeal 
 with which the folds of the night-dress are modelled, as If 
 the artist were handling plaster. To what purpose such an 
 illusion of the wax-works ! 
 
 Edvard Munch, too, has painted a youthful picture upon 
 a similar theme. The Sick Child, probably not without a 
 knowledge of Krohg's accomplishment. The contrast Is 
 striking and Instructive. Krohg has limited himself to mak- 
 
 The Sick Girl, by Christian Krohg. In the 
 National Gallery 
 
M()I)i;kN NOkWI'.CIAN AkI 
 
 515 
 
 iii^ a poi-traK ol Ins slrickcn motlcl ; Miiiuh has ;^i\cn scope 
 to his Iccliiios in a coiiiposilioii rich with color, in which the 
 mother ol the chiKl is pi-eseiit ami (ieteniiincs the lines. 
 Kroh^'s painting is, in short, realistic still life. It {j;ives 
 evitlence of a model, of material, of form, and of hues which 
 the artist has had before his eyes and which he has imitatetl. 
 Munch's work is a tone poem, and yet a comjiosition with 
 tOLiehingly simple line effects. Not more than six years sepa- 
 rate the two canvases, but they represent art from two dif- 
 ferent epochs. 
 
 Krohg had a happy season of creative activity while he 
 lived in 1883 at Skagen and there painted the daily life of 
 tisherfolk in their little cottages. As Michael Ancher and 
 Kroyer portrayed the stout seadogs in hip-boots and south- 
 westers at their work on the water, Krohg gave his attention 
 especially to those who were left at home, old people mend- 
 ing the nets and women at their household tasks with the 
 children. Two of his most admirable achievements from 
 the Skagen period are a glorification of motherhood. 
 
 The Sleeping Mother and Child, by Christian Krohg. In the Bergen 
 Picture Gallery 
 
516 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 Mother and Child, in the National Gallery, is a simple and 
 clear composition disclosing a sailor's young wife at the bed- 
 side of her child. The mother's broad, arched back forms 
 a culminating mass of violet and stands out in a character- 
 istic manner against the whitewashed background. As re- 
 gards color scheme The Sleeping Mother and Child in 
 Rasmus Meyer's collection at Bergen is still better. More 
 straightforward and sincere it is impossible for a picture 
 from life to be, and as painting it possesses inimitable beau- 
 ties. Beside the white bed stands the red cradle with the 
 sleeping babe. The young mother has perhaps sung the 
 infant to sleep with her knitting between her hands. Now 
 she has herself fallen into slumber, her head resting against 
 the bedstead. Her entire body is relaxed in deep repose. 
 On the coffee-stained table stands a dish of porridge half 
 eaten; and all is so quiet that one seems to hear the buzzing 
 of flies in the evening sun and the rhythmic breathing of the 
 sleepers. The picture is executed with unexampled loveli- 
 ness, with firm and easy touch, and with equal finish and 
 strength of tone. Smaller canvases, admirable in coloring, 
 from the same brilliant period in Krohg's production, with 
 related motives from Skagen are on the walls of the Na- 
 tional Gallery. Nevertheless there is a rise in the quality 
 of Krohg's work from these splendid paintings to the mas- 
 terpiece of his life, the Albertine. 
 
 In 1885 appeared Hans Jaeger's book. The Christiania 
 Bohemians, with its ruthless self-revelations and its violent 
 attacks on existing society. Upon a large number of youths 
 this first Norwegian naturalistic novel, as It has been 
 called, made a profound impression, an impression fur- 
 ther strengthened by the treatment which the book and its 
 author received at the hands of the reputedly liberal gov- 
 ernment of Sverdrup : the edition was seized, and the 
 writer was committed to prison upon sentence by the su- 
 preme court. This violation of the freedom of the press 
 consolidated all true radicals; and Christian Krohg came 
 forward in the first rank to defend Jasger and naturalistic 
 literature. 
 
M()I)I*;RN NOKWI'XilAN ART 
 
 17 
 
 Albertine, by Christian Krohg. In the National Gallery 
 
 The following year Krohg himself published a novel of 
 similar stamp under the title of Albertine, an unveiled 
 account of a poor Christiania girl's joyless life and putative 
 fall, her shocking seduction and resultant degradation to the 
 prostitute's caste by means of the brutal medical examination 
 under police authority which at that time was in vogue, 
 Krohg's book, too, was confiscated, and he was subjected to 
 a fine. The novel, however, which was accepted as a denun- 
 ciation of the system of prostitution, brought about a popu- 
 lar movement against the government which muzzled litera- 
 ture while it tolerated mercenary vice. 
 
 In the following year, 1887, the painter came before the 
 public with his large canvas, Albertine in the Waiting-room 
 of the Police Doctor. Great as was the commotion aroused 
 by the book, the painting suffered a corresponding degree 
 of neglect on being shown in a vacant shop. Critics took 
 exception to it, and the best society did not venture to look 
 at it, much less to buy it. None the less, while the novel, 
 having fulfilled its mission, was forgotten, the picture sur- 
 vived and will survive as one of the greatest achievements 
 in Norwegian art. What Krohg had in mind and what he 
 so brilliantly accomplished was that depiction of milieu upon 
 
518 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 which the naturalistic doctrine laid such stress, and which 
 never before had been expressed in Scandinavian painting 
 with even approximate power. For that matter, the canons 
 of naturalism have in no instance been more boldly and 
 vigorously exemplified. As a narrative it may be that the 
 work is not exactly obvious, yet that only adds to its value as 
 a picture. It has its faults of composition no less than its 
 excellences; but as a document in typology it is probably 
 without parallel in the whole range of naturalistic art. As 
 a painting it exhibits the most splendid details. With what 
 skill the two powerful foreground figures are managed, 
 the woman in velvet and the woman in watered silk, what 
 firm and flowing outlines, what adroitness in the use of the 
 brilliant carnation and the bedizened finery to enhance the 
 total color effect — it is all magnificent. This canvas reveals 
 a master hand. Here the question might actually arise of 
 a trial of strength between French and Norwegian painting, 
 a comparison of Norwegian force and immediacy with 
 French esprit and taste. 
 
 To discuss Krohg further after dilating on this picture is 
 hardly worth the trouble, in part because he has done noth- 
 ing better, in part because he has not been able to maintain 
 this height. Still Krohg's production has been very copious 
 and full of surprising things among the terrific quantity of 
 routine work that has come from his brush. His next large 
 social subject, The Struggle for Existence, from the year 
 1890, in which Hans Jaeger put such great faith, was an 
 effective contribution in the campaign against pauperism ; but 
 as art it is far from equalling its predecessor, despite excel- 
 lently handled details. It is significant that while this new 
 colossal canvas was immediately bought for the National 
 Gallery, the Albertine has had to wait half a generation for 
 a place in the art museum of the State. It is now there. 
 
 It is usually in pictures whose subjects crowd the canvas 
 somewhat that Krohg's composition is at its best, particu- 
 larly in the representation of seamen. Here he has really 
 a special field and a knack of his own in painting at close 
 range on board a boat or a cutter or from the deck of a 
 
MODERN NORWEGIAN ART 
 
 519 
 
 On the Look-out for the Pilot, by Christian Krohg. Privately owned 
 
 ship. Under such circumstances he demonstrates a peculiar 
 facility in balancing the composition by means of lines cut- 
 ting obliquely within the frame, horizontals and verticals 
 in careening position with reference to the free balance of 
 the living human figure. The effect is striking and amusing; 
 but it must be admitted that in the detailed arrangement of 
 his subjects upon the canvas he has learned very much 
 from the Frenchmen, notably from Degas. 
 
 Finally it should be borne in mind that Krohg has dis- 
 tinguished himself as a portrait painter. With Werenskiold 
 he shares the supremacy among his own generation. There 
 is a tremendous difference between the two, nevertheless: 
 Werenskiold has the searching, striving, delving method of 
 characterization that plumbs the depths to discover diversi- 
 ties of soul and explores the surface in quest of precision; 
 Krohg boldly hits the mark by direct force of vision and 
 intrepidity of hand. A milieu portrait so spirited and pic- 
 torial and intellectual as that which he painted in 1883 of 
 Gerhard Munthe in his fur coat entering the Grand Cafe 
 has about it something of the quality of portraits by Manet, 
 although it has less firmness and solidity. Take another 
 instance, his full-length portrait of Johan Sverdrup hang- 
 
520 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 Portrait of the Painter Gerhard Munthe, by Christian Krohg 
 
 ing in the Storting, done in 1882 — how it depicts character 
 in attitude and gesture and effective setting: the little, ele- 
 gant, reserved man in the large dark canvas. 
 
 Krohg has produced many excellent portraits, yet two of 
 them surpass the others. One is the noble and heart-stir- 
 ring likeness from the year 1893, of his own aunt, the aged 
 Froken Krohg with the kind, bright eyes and the wrinkled 
 
M0D1<:RN NORVVFCilAN ARl 521 
 
 Portrait of Prime Minister Johan Sverdrup, by Christian Krohg. 
 In the Storting 
 
522 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 Agnes, by Christian Krohg. In the National Gallery 
 
 hands. The other is an almost unknown study from his 
 Albertine period, probably dating from 1889, entitled 
 
MODERN NORWEGIAN ART 
 
 523 
 
 Study for Albertine, by Christian Krohg. Privately owned 
 
 Agnes or, as he called It later, The Girl of the Eighties. 
 She is a child of the streets with large burning eyes, an 
 animal type of woman from the lower classes, presented 
 with a feeling, a masculine Instinct, and a masterly sim- 
 plicity which make the work a classic for all time. Krohg 
 Is still living In Christlania and continuing his production, 
 a production of extremely uneven value. 
 
 The third and in some respects the most significant 
 personality in the art life of the eighties was Erik 
 Werenskiold, who was born at Kongsvinger in 1855. Dur- 
 
524 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 "In the Evening They Came to a Big, Fine House." Vignette 
 
 for the tale of The Three Princesses in the Mountain Blue, by 
 
 Erik Werenskiold 
 
 ing the years of the battle for naturahsm he was hi fact the 
 strong, unswerving leader of the modern movement. So 
 buoyant and capable of development are his intelligence and 
 his talents that Werenskiold even at this day, in spite of his 
 sixty-six years, is a fighter in the ranks of the young, with 
 an open vision for other artistic values than those which 
 stirred the enthusiasm of his own youth. In Werenskiold's 
 temperament there is a blending of will-power, clear, cold 
 calculation, and something of the quiet, gentle visionary. 
 He is a compound of logician and lyrist. 
 
 Werenskiold spent his first period of study in Munich, 
 where the instruction of Lofftz particularly had a certain 
 influence on his early development. Even in Munich, how- 
 ever, he felt himself to be a naturalist; even here his aim 
 was national. The first large canvas that he sent home, one 
 that attracted real and lasting interest in his talent, has a 
 genre subject in which peasants appear; it was painted in 
 1880 and entitled A Meeting. The picture impresses a 
 thoroughly modern observer as being rather German, both 
 in color and in narrative appeal. Yet it has a characteriza- 
 tion that is markedly realistic for its time and it denotes a 
 resolute advance beyond Tidemand's and even Sundt- 
 Hansen's depiction of peasant life. The laconic lovemaking, 
 the heavy, rustic joking between the young, slender hay- 
 maker and the girls that meet in the fields all reveal a subtle 
 and sure perception of the manners and the peculiarities of 
 rural people. Meanwhile Werenskiold had, as early as the 
 period 1 878-1 880, made his first drawings for the popular 
 tales. By these illustrations he had given evidence of both 
 the originality and the astonishing maturity of his talents. 
 
MODI'.RN NORWI'.CIAN ART 
 
 525 
 
 There are lew things in Norwegian art of which it may 
 be saitl with full assurance that they are classic; 
 WerenskioKl's illustrations for the talcs arc among those 
 few. It is easy enough to explain why this is the case. It is 
 
 
 „^^/^iK '• 
 
 ■ 
 
 
 
 If 
 
 k 1 
 
 1 
 
 # , 1 
 
 i 'l^Wj^ll 
 
 * 
 
 ^ 
 
 r ' ;f^ 
 
 f. ' 
 
 "And Then they All Three Begged and Pleaded with the Watchman." 
 
 Illustration for the tale of The Three Princesses in the Mountain Blue, 
 
 by Erik Werenskiold 
 
526 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 because the form is as good as the subject matter and the 
 subject matter significant and valuable in itself. Just as 
 Asbjornsen and Moe's retelling of the tales was the first 
 literary portrayal of folk-life that had a dependable and 
 really Norwegian tone, so Wereiiskiold's illustrations were 
 the first reliable artistic representation of Norwegian folk- 
 life. In happy fashion he has dipped down into the 
 character of the people and exhibits the figures from the 
 tales as though seen by the eye of the rustic himself, with 
 his notions of the great and the small, the fine and the 
 funny, with his fresh humor and equable judgment. There- 
 fore the king of the tale appears as a big-wig in dressing 
 gown and slippers, with a long-stemmed pipe in his mouth 
 and his crown askew. The princesses are metamorphosed 
 into country gentlemen's slender, overgrown daughters in 
 white muslins, and the palace has been changed into a spa- 
 cious old farm establishment in eastern Norway with its 
 dinner-bell belfry, its balconies, and its huge outbuildings. 
 With masterly discretion the portrayer of rustic life in these 
 illustrations harks back to an uncertain, yet not very distant 
 past, in which the wonderful events of the tales are quite 
 possible; the real and the imaginary counterbalance each 
 other in the most attractive way. And about these scenes 
 from folk-life he has made a sort of framework of fresh 
 and genuine Norwegian nature, full of charm and sweet 
 scents, conceived in a new spirit — wood and heath, lake 
 and swamp, farmyard and field, animals, too, in the forest 
 and about the enclosures — all told, those summer days and 
 those winter evenings from which the popular tales have 
 drawn their poetry, their gay humor, and their goblin fear- 
 someness. 
 
 During his studies in Munich Werenskiold saw for the 
 first time, at the Exposition of 1879, the French naturalists. 
 It was at once apparent to him that he had nothing farther to 
 do in Munich. He finished the work upon which he hap- 
 pened to be engaged, packed his trunk, and set out for Paris. 
 It was in January, 1881, that he arrived in the French 
 capital. Among Norwegian painters who had preceded him 
 
MoDPlkN N()R\Vi:(.l\N Airr .^27 
 
 he loiiiul 1 Icycrilalil, still l)askin^ in llic renown which y\chini 
 ami I'.NC had hrouoht him; he lOiind Skrcdsxi^, who during 
 that yt'ar made a success witli liis lerme a Vcnoix, and with 
 whom he associated most; he lOiiiul Uchermann, Harriet 
 Backer, and Kitty KieUand; among later comers, Ulfsten 
 and Krohg. Besides he found here almost the entire group 
 of Swedish artists known as the "Opponents," and several 
 Danes, in their number Joakim Skovgaard, with whom he 
 formed a close acquaintance. 
 
 In Paris Werenskiold felt himself strongly drawn to the 
 impressionists, whose work he saw in the displays of art 
 dealers on the boulevards, to Manet, Monet, Renoir, 
 Cezanne, and Pissarro. In a private letter of a subsequent 
 date he expresses regret at not having sought to establish 
 greater intimacy with these men and at a later time with 
 Van Gogh, whose brother he knew. Outside of artistic 
 circles, too, Werenskiold received deep impressions during 
 those years in Paris. Both Bjornstjerne Bjornson and Jonas 
 Lie at this period were living in the city on the Seine, and 
 with each of them he entered upon a warm and lasting at- 
 tachment. 
 
 At the close of the year 1883 Werenskiold returned to 
 Norway with the intention of remaining there. It was clear 
 to him that naturalism alone could nationalize Norwegian 
 art and make it known and loved at home. When he 
 reached Christiania with a completed plan of campaign for 
 the laborious battle in behalf of a national art, he discovered 
 Thaulow and Krohg already on the scene and the struggle 
 with Kunstforeningen well under way. Now the contest 
 between the artists and the public, or rather the guardians 
 of the public, really burst into full blaze. And In the long 
 run It became clear that Werenskiold was the actual leader 
 of the movement, persevering and consistent in all that he 
 did, the man of deep convictions and with the will to achieve 
 power. 
 
 It was not until he had spent three summers among the 
 country people at Gvarv In Telemarken during the years 
 1 883-1 885 that Werenskiold found himself definitely as a 
 
528 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
M()I)I'-RN NORWI'XilAX ART 529 
 
 painter. I Icrc he Imisiicd such mature aiul meritorious 
 works as Telemarken (iirls and A Country J'uiieral. In 
 these pictures and in his illustrations to the tales he has 
 struck the vein of the romantic succession, hut in a modern 
 and realistic spirit. In continuation of, and yet in contrast 
 to, Tideniand's sentimental and idyllic portrayal of the 
 farmer, Werenskiold has given In his Country Funeral a 
 strictly realistic and unsentimental exposition of the Nor- 
 wegian rural population, keenly characterized from the 
 typical anci still Individual point of view. It is a hot midday 
 in summer. Over the blue valley the air Is vibrating with 
 heat, and the farmers who have carried the coffin stand 
 blinking at the sun while the schoolmaster, in the absence 
 of the clergyman, reads a passage from the hymn book. No 
 man weeps, no face betrays positive sorrow. Stolid and 
 steady, laconic and slow of movement, these rustic Norwe- 
 gians are; no emotion Is capable of disturbing their out- 
 ward calm. 
 
 Still Werenskiold Is not simply the merciless realist as In 
 this picture. In his landscapes he has shown himself capable 
 of treating nature In a gentle, mellow, lyrical manner. One 
 of the finest of his paintings Is Summer Night, done In 
 1893. Beneath willows and alders, on the margin of a 
 placid lake at the foot of a mountain touched with the 
 lingering rosy tints of the heavens, "the bay" and "the 
 black" horse are grazing. It is a clear night. In which 
 sounds would be carrying far; one seems to hear the fresh 
 cropped grass being champed between the jaws of the horses, 
 and one expects to hear the sound of the bell when they move 
 their feet In the verdant meadow. 
 
 Werenskiold Is an excellent and highly esteemed por- 
 traitist. His knowledge of men, his keen vision, his zeal 
 for discriminating observation fit him for portraiture. In 
 sobriety of characterization and solidity of execution 
 Werenskiold's portraits are superior to those of other Nor- 
 wegians, elder or younger. As for impulsive conception 
 and poetic Interpretation of personality, he is perhaps sur- 
 passed by Edvard Munch. Nevertheless, as the great Nor- 
 
530 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 weglan portrait painter, Werenskiold is known far beyond 
 the confines of his own country. 
 
 The Hvely and excellently designed portrait of Professor 
 Helland is a good example of his manner during the 
 eighties. From the early nineties there is the soulful like- 
 ness of Erika Nissen at the Piano. Against a dream land- 
 scape of old faded Gobelin tapestry the pale profile of 
 the pianist delineates Itself with an almost painful ex- 
 pression of the nervous intensity of her art, and one catches 
 
 all but audibly the 
 deep and sonorous 
 tones streaming 
 out from the great, 
 dark mass of the 
 piano, which forms 
 a background to 
 the glowing red of 
 her velvet gown. 
 
 From Weren- 
 skiold's brush there 
 are two portraits 
 of Bjorn s t j e r n e 
 B j o r n s o n. The 
 first, done in 1888, 
 is now in the Na- 
 tional Gallery. 
 Here the hands In 
 particular are 
 beautifully paint- 
 ed and matchlessly 
 characterized 
 through the poet's argumentative tapping with a paper-cutter 
 upon his palm. The other, from the year 1900, is in the 
 National Gallery of Denmark. Here it is no longer Bjorn- 
 son the fighter and agitator, sharp of eye and impetuous of 
 hand; it is Norway's securely enthroned poet-king, gazing 
 proudly out from his own domain, conscious that the very 
 land itself Is his background. 
 
 Portrait of the Artist's Mother, by Erik 
 Werenskiold. Privately owned 
 
M()1)I<:rn N()k\vi;(;iA\ y\k'i" 
 
 531 
 
 Henrik Ibsen, by Erik Weienskiold. In the National 
 Gallery 
 
 Werenskiold's most eminent portrait, however, is the 
 colored drawing on canvas which he made in 1895 of 
 Henrik Ibsen. The subject is drawn in the open with un- 
 covered head and with his hands behind his back. The 
 mouth is tightly closed, the forehead firmly arched, and the 
 mane of hair rises abruptly from the abrupt brow. A pene- 
 trating oblique glance comes through his spectacles and 
 
532 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 Ships Returning After the Battle of Svolder. Illustration for 
 Snorre's Sagas of the Norse Kings, by Erik Werenskiold 
 
 pierces unforgettably the memory of the beholder. Behind 
 him, lightly sketched, is a winter landscape with mountains 
 of cold, pure snow, the country of the sparsely peopled ex- 
 panses which gave birth to the author of Brand — the country 
 of his own clear, frosty thought. Many other portraits by 
 Werenskiold might be enumerated, such as those of Edvard 
 Grieg, Fridtjof Nansen, Christian Sinding, and the bold 
 likeness of his friend Fredrik Collett, produced In 1894 and 
 now in the Swedish National Museum. 
 
 Together with other Norwegian painters, Egedlus, 
 Munthe, and several more, Werenskiold has provided the 
 Illustrations for Snorre's Sagas of the Norse Kings. Among 
 Werensklold's contributions are many that are magnificent, 
 as regards both narration and execution. The nature of 
 Norway and her rustic manners are joined in a representa- 
 tion which has the most striking truthfulness. Erik 
 Werensklold's talent has always possessed mobility. In his 
 art one discerns constant struggle and exertion of energy. 
 During his entire life he has been in process of development, 
 has made experiments, has changed his theories and his 
 technique. Just at the time in his Munich period when he 
 had found his classic manner he broke sharply and suddenly 
 
MODERN NORWEGIAN ART 
 
 533 
 
 with his previous acquirements, went to Paris, where he be- 
 came a professed naturalist, and a few years later returned 
 home as a devoted apostle of genuine open-air coloring. 
 
 Yet the essential and decisi\'e rc\'crsal in his art is that by 
 which he made a conscious transition Irom the draughtsman's 
 procedure to the 
 painter's. When 
 h i s eyes were 
 really opened to 
 the technique of 
 color division as 
 practised by the 
 impressionists, to 
 their sense of tone 
 and totality in pic- 
 torial effect, he vig- 
 orously set about 
 revitalizing and 
 strengthening his 
 own work in the 
 same direction. 
 He now interested 
 himself In the sur- 
 face effects of a 
 picture almost as much as in its theme, made experiments 
 with palette knife and with brush, built up the painting with 
 his knife or knitted it together by means of short strokes of 
 the brush, in brief, tried the most varied methods of attain- 
 ing his dream, namely pictures in which values predominate, 
 which have compactness and weight and still have atmos- 
 phere. The change may be dated from the portrait of Head 
 Master Knudsen, done In 1903, a painting no less remark- 
 able for psychological power than for color. 
 
 Werensklold Is still the man of ardent and onesided con- 
 victions, always wholly committed, heart and soul, to his 
 altering points of view. Herein lies his youthfulness, which 
 he still preserves despite his silver hair. If a nature like his 
 loses Its pliancy, Its day Is done; It becomes barren, doctrl- 
 
 Portrait of Head Master Knudsen, by Erik 
 Werenskiold 
 
534 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 naire, rancorous. Erik Werenskiold is just the contrary 
 of all these things, a consoling exemplar of rugged 
 youth, a master who still strives with himself and has 
 faith in his striving, a critical mind which withal has 
 retained its receptivity and capacity for consecration. 
 Beyond question he is the greatest moral force which 
 remains to our art life from the sturdy generation to which 
 he belongs. 
 
 To these leaders among the open-air naturalists, 
 Werenskiold, Thaulow, and Krohg, is to be added as the 
 fourth in the four-leafed clover, Gerhard Munthe, Norway's 
 most distinguished landscapist in this period and in a later 
 period the imaginative renewer and reviver of decorative 
 art in the Old Norse spirit. Gerhard Munthe was born at 
 Elverum in 1849. ^^^ father was a district physician in 
 this heavily wooded region of eastern Norway. From the 
 distinctive Eastland country in Osterdalen and Trysil, 
 Gerhard Munthe carried away his earliest impressions, of 
 broad, tranquil farmsteads and their simple, self-reliant 
 population. He is fond of the spacious freeholds, with 
 their unrestricted situation on the slopes, their balconies and 
 storehouses and ample barns and outbuildings grouped about 
 the farmyard, with a wide compass of cultivated ground 
 in front and a mixed wood of spruce and deciduous trees at 
 the rear. He is quite at home on a farm of this sort. He 
 has wandered through the overgrown garden, has followed 
 the haymakers to the most distant fields, and has helped to 
 round up the horses in the enclosures. He is familiar with 
 the agricultural implements, counts the watchdog his friend, 
 knows minutely the appearance of everything in the living- 
 rooms and the blue-painted kitchen, and has seen the hidden 
 treasures of old variegated finery in the gaily-painted chests 
 in the stabur. 
 
 In 1874 Gerhard Munthe went to Diisseldorf, where he 
 associated a great deal with his older relative, Ludvig 
 Munthe, without really being his pupil. Yet he was much 
 influenced by Ludvig Munthe's masterly, mature facility in 
 coloring and by his commanding personality as a man of 
 
MODERN NORWFCilAN ART 535 
 
 the world. 'IMie art of Andreas Achciihacli also left a decj) 
 impress upon him. 
 
 In 1877 Cierhard Miinthe left Diisseldorf and, following 
 his kinsman's athicc, settled in Munich for the purjiose of 
 painting on his own initiative. There are lovely things from 
 Munthe's Munich period, done in dark warm tones, softly 
 harmonized pictures upon simple, realistic themes. Yet it 
 went with him as with the others: he became fearful of re- 
 maining too long. It was altogether too easy to paint in 
 Munich. He became apprehensive of the routine, and fol- 
 lowed the example of his comrades in returning home for 
 good in 1883. He understood that the path to self- 
 expression lay through the naturalistic method of working 
 in the open. His first attempt was the Summer Scene from 
 Eidsvold, which was shown at the Autumn Exposition of 
 the same year. 
 
 At home it was impossible for him to avoid being drawn 
 into the battle between the artists and the public, and 
 Munthe was as active as any one in preaching by word and 
 deed the virtues of open-air painting and naturalism. To 
 that group in which Ellif Peterssen was the most tactful, 
 the noble and winning personality, In which Krohg was the 
 element of uncompromising force, Werenskiold of persever- 
 ing energy, and Thaulow of good spirits, Gerhard Munthe 
 contributed the brilliant and bizarre fancy. It was he who 
 cracked the saving jokes, and who, on the whole, was the 
 waggish fellow. He has a comfortable way of talking, all 
 his own. He likes to talk, and the steady flow of his con- 
 versation sparkles with happy thoughts, flashes of wit, and 
 paradoxes. And Munthe's art, like his manner, has a sur- 
 prising dual quality. 
 
 Out from a fundamental natural simplicity, the soil in 
 which good, everyday characteristics thrive, there springs 
 in capricious opulence a growth of marvellous imaginings. 
 In this placid mind, with Its strong love of home. Its fidelity 
 to childhood impressions, its delight In all that Is comfort- 
 able and cosy and unsophisticated, there dwells a devil of 
 ingenuity who is both refined and coquettish, and who oc- 
 
536 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 '#^ 
 
 r^P- 
 
 Evening in Eggedal, by Gerhard Munthe. In the National Gallery 
 
 casionally is permitted to disport himself at will. There is 
 a suggestion behind it all of dark spacious garrets of the 
 imagination whose wonderful furniture and goblin in- 
 habitants neither the artist himself nor any one else can 
 fully comprehend, but which yet provide sustenance for his 
 art. It was not, however, till a late period that Munthe's 
 
MODERN NORWEGIAN ART 
 
 537 
 
 A Farm Garden, by Gerhard Munthe. In the National Gallery- 
 
 talent for the fantastic actually emerged. He began as a 
 landscape painter pure and simple, and he remained sin- 
 cerely devoted to the naturalistic view. 
 
 The first Important evidence of the transformation In 
 Munthe's art was the large scene from Vik in Stange which 
 he painted In 1884 and which under the title of Haymaking 
 now hangs In the National Gallery. It made a great im- 
 pression by its sparkling effect of light when it was shown 
 at the Exposition In the autumn of that year. In the 
 National Gallery he Is further represented by a smaller 
 canvas, painted in 1888, and entitled Evening In Eggedal. 
 This picture, reproduced here, gives a wide view of summer 
 nature In Norway across meadows and fields and stabur 
 and dwellings toward the blue mountains out of which the 
 river winds like a gleaming ribbon of silver in the twilight. 
 Munthe's masterpiece In landscape, however, Is one from 
 the year 1889 called A Farm Garden, which is also repro- 
 
538 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 Daughters of the Northern Lights or the Suitors, by Gerhard Munthe. 
 In the National Gallery 
 
 duced here. Evening Is coming on, and the grey, two- 
 storied farmhouse, filling up the entire background, shows 
 in dark relief against the sky, A man stands leaning in 
 through an open window and talking to some one Inside. 
 Under the immense morel-tree In the unkempt, disordered 
 garden is a white mare with sleepily lowered head. There 
 Is nothing more In the picture, but that Is enough. The 
 hour and the season, the country and the particular region 
 in It, the circumstances of human life and an animal type 
 are all represented In this summer evening from Hede- 
 marken, so vividly has the artist seen and felt and rendered 
 his theme. 
 
 Among Munthe's gifts there was room for still other 
 possibilities than those that are exemplified In his naturalistic 
 landscapes. In his recollections of childhood the im- 
 pressions from nature were woven together with impressions 
 from survivals of the ancient Inheritance of rustic culture. 
 He had a feeling for the Norwegian character of the arts and 
 
MODERN NORWF.GIAN ART 539 
 
 Odin. Illustration for Snorre's Sagas of the Norse 
 Kings. By Gerhard Munthe 
 
 crafts of the farmer. Sagas which he had read in early 
 youth, tales and songs, jingles and verses from the servants' 
 room and the kitchen, the rhythms of antique lays, the 
 picturesque refrains of ballads had in the course of time 
 spun a tangled and variegated web in his imagination which 
 must be disengaged. Splendid colors in the dresses of girls, 
 in the flower-designs upon old chests, upon pied cupboards 
 and ale tankards and naive, venerable tapestries had 
 fastened themselves in his memory and there lingered to 
 demand renewed life in Norwegian art. Upon such im- 
 pressions and reminiscences Munthe's decorative art is built. 
 His fantasies on Norse popular tales — The Daughters of 
 the Northern Lights or the Suitors, Hel's Horse, "TroUe- 
 botten," The Sagacious Bird, Black Apples — belong to a 
 group of themes in which the arbitrary chances of a world of 
 fable predominate. Both in the drawings for the tales and 
 in the splendid frieze illustrating the old popular ballad of 
 Aasmund Frsegdagjasver we are in touch with a primitive 
 Norse set of Ideas. Over these pictures there passes a 
 gusty breath from glaciers and from a sea that Is black as 
 ink. Bears rustle through the leaves, wolves patter about. 
 
540 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 The Horses of the Waves. Vignette, by Gerhard Munthe 
 
 and ominous night birds flap their wings. Rusty iron gates 
 creak upon their hinges, blood courses beneath closed doors 
 and drips from mirky vaults. And the rout of trolls, 
 loathsome and lumpish, undergo their metamorphoses. 
 Yet amid all of this devilry there is a dash of bucolic humor 
 and animal comedy; amid all that is sinister there Is some- 
 thing that is idyllic and childlike In charm. In the entire 
 series of pictures, moreover, the colors are positively jubi- 
 lant, strong and pure and refreshing to the eye. 
 
 Munthe's greatest achievement, nevertheless, Is the group 
 of drawings for Snorre. From the fabled world of the 
 tales he has made his way to the solid ground of history. 
 He has had recourse to the unearthed art relics of the 
 bronze age. He has proceeded with the determination of 
 reaching what is most fundamentally Norwegian In tradi- 
 tion and temperament; and his intuitive and self-willed 
 Intelligence has actually found the way. He has solved his 
 problem with the sureness of genius. It is not merely 
 somnabulistic certainty. Much wide-awake reflection and 
 thorough study precede his results. This fact Munthe has 
 made evident to us in a few thoughtful and brilliant pages 
 on the subject of Illustrating our primitive past. With 
 regard to the best of his drawings for Snorre one has the 
 impression that they could not have been done otherwise. 
 
 Munthe understood, as Egedlus also understood, that 
 without archaizing nothing was to be accomplished. All 
 attempts at naturalism would Inevitably glance off from the 
 
moi)i:rn norwecjIan art 541 
 
 remoteness and the stony solidity of style in the text. 
 Therefore he has also wisely avoided so far as possible the 
 historical events themselves. Seldom has he drawn scenes 
 in which figures appear; and in the exceptional cases his 
 manner is broad, decorative. On the other hand, he 
 has woven about each saga and particularly about the 
 enigmatical Skaldic verses an ornamentation of freely in- 
 vented friezes and vignettes which serve as an accompani- 
 ment to the text. Against this decorative background, in 
 which dragons snort and spear-points are being sharpened, in 
 which arrows darken the sky and blood flows in streams, 
 the events stand out in larger and ruder proportions. 
 
VI. 
 
 OTHER PAINTERS OF THE SEVENTIES 
 AND EIGHTIES 
 
 VIRTUALLY all of the painters in the older genera- 
 tion of naturalists were products of an urban cul- 
 ture. Collett, Thaulow, Krohg, Werenskiold, 
 Munthe, Diriks, Gloersen and others were sons of men in 
 the official class or of men who had received an academic 
 training. For their own part, they had perhaps finished a 
 Latin school or taken some examination or other at the 
 University. The only farmer's son among them was 
 Skredsvig. The more remarkable it is that this man of 
 country origin permitted himself to a greater extent than 
 other painters in the group to be overwhelmed by French 
 influence. The grey keynote that he acquired in Paris about 
 1880 he has retained throughout life. Christian Skredsvig 
 was born at Modum in 1854 of a family in straitened 
 circumstances. In early youth, however, he received assist- 
 ance toward developing his natural aptitudes. At the age 
 of fifteen he became a pupil of Eckersberg in Christiania ; 
 later, in 1875, he went to Munich, where he remained three 
 years. Skredsvig has a lighter and more diaphanous color- 
 ing than other young Norwegian painters who learned the 
 elements in German schools. The Munich brown which 
 many of them had a great deal of trouble in getting rid of 
 has never given him any difficulty. 
 
 In 1879 Skredsvig came to Paris, where he continued his 
 studies and associated much with the Swedish artists known 
 as the "Opponents." It is amusingly characteristic of the 
 Modum boy's stay in Paris that it was a heavy snowfall that 
 first engaged his interest there. As it happens, one of his 
 
 542 
 
MODJ'IRN NOKWKCjJAN AR'l 543 
 
 earliest Krench pictures, done in 1879, is entitled Carting 
 Snow Along the Seine. Yet it was not until he exhibited 
 Ferme a Venoix at the Salon of 188 1 that he attracted 
 general attention. He received that year, at the same time 
 as Kroyer, one of the gold medals of the Salon; the paint- 
 ing was bought by the French government, and until the 
 outbreak of the war hung in the Museum at Kheims. 
 
 It was natural that Skredsvig, poetical and idyllic of 
 temperament, should become fond of Corot and Millet. 
 The soft grey keynote in his color is probably owing in large 
 part to Corot. Early in his career he made a specialty of 
 painting animals, preferably in landscapes, together with 
 the herdsmen. One of his pictures from this period is 
 October Morning in Grez, now in the National Gallery. 
 The canvas gives rather a French effect by reason of its flat 
 French landscape beneath a milky sky, the huge Norman 
 horses, and the boy on horseback meeting the shepherd girl 
 in the midst of her flock, the boy in his wide, blue blouse and 
 the girl In her Millet capuchon. Not the least considerable 
 part of the French impression is due to the pale grey Salon 
 tone used In painting the picture. 
 
 Skredsvig's masterpiece is called Ballade. It was 
 executed after his return from France, and is now in a 
 private gallery near Christiania. The artist once saw three 
 of the sturdy horses of Northern France standing saddled 
 outside a gate on a grey, cold, windy day in autumn, and was 
 struck by their lonely, foresaken appearance. He recalled 
 the ballad refrain about the riders who went forth to battle 
 and whose coursers came home bloody and with emptied 
 saddles; and he gave expression to his sentiments in this 
 narrative painting with the animals deserted In storm and 
 mire on the highway as a theme. 
 
 When Skredsvig returned to Norway In 1884 after his 
 French apprenticeship and his foreign triumphs, It was not 
 long before the rustic lyricist in him dominated the Paris 
 artist. Now that he was sure of himself, he carried his 
 art back to the soil from which he sprang, to the memories 
 of his childhood, and to rural life. One of his best pictures 
 
544 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 in the National Gallery is that entitled Pladsen, presenting 
 the early home of the poet Vinje. He has also painted 
 Vinje as a Shepherd Boy, and the poetic picture, The Willow 
 Whistle, reproduced herewith. 
 
 Still Skredsvig's ambition has turned, too, toward the 
 larger historical compositions, the great canvases with nar- 
 rative themes abounding in figures or with symbolic content. 
 
 "Pladsen," Birthplace of the Poet Vinje, by Christian Skredsvig. In 
 the National Gallery 
 
 In The Son of Man he depicts, in agreement with von Uhde 
 and Tolstoy, the return of the Savior in our own time as a 
 lay preacher and miracle-worker of the laboring classes, 
 who wanders about from one region to the other performing 
 good deeds and supernatural acts. This very spacious paint- 
 ing has fine picturesque details and is obviously the fruit of 
 ardent and sincere feeling; the total effect, nevertheless, is 
 rather thin. 
 
 In Valdrisvisa Skredsvig's warmhearted, imaginative lyric 
 note resounds full and rich. Valdrisvisa is a series of 
 
M0DI:RN NORWEGIAN ART 
 
 545 
 
 The Willow Whistle, by Christian Skredsvig. Privately owned 
 in Christiania 
 
 aquarelles which he composed after his removal in 1894 to 
 Eggedal, where he married a farmer's daughter and built 
 himself a home. Here he painted the evening calm on 
 
 %m-|g|y.^g^-^::...r .\'.-'-W^ 
 
 From the water-color series "Valdrisvisa," by Christian Skredsvig. 
 In the National Gallery 
 
546 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 slopes and mountain ridges, the cries and calls of the saeter 
 girl, and the dairy-maid's life among her cattle in barn and 
 field and meadow. In these scenes Skredsvig gives free 
 play to his copious gifts by flashes of capriciously changing 
 fancy in which there is a touch of the marvellous, of innocent 
 jocosity, and kindness of heart — the whole upon a ground of 
 gentle melancholy. Just so is the man himself when, in a 
 circle of comrades, he lets himself go and unbends, sings 
 his Eggedal ditties, flings himself from sadness into joviality, 
 and permits all of the chords in his nervous, sensitive spirit 
 to vibrate. It should be mentioned, finally, that Skredsvig 
 in later years has gained a considerable reputation as an 
 author in his native land. His books. The Miller' s Son and 
 Even's Ho^necoming, possess an originality and a naive 
 freshness of contents and language that have won the ad- 
 miration of many. 
 
 An artist who belongs to the same generation of painters 
 as Werenskiold and the others of the Munich school, but 
 who has followed curious paths of his own, is Theodor 
 Kittelsen. Theodor Kittelsen was born at Kragero in 1857. 
 His father died comparatively young, and Theodor had to 
 contend with poverty and hardship throughout his entire 
 early youth; but eventually he came to Munich, where he 
 found it possible to spend three and a half years during the 
 most fruitful period in the experience of the Norwegians at 
 the capital of Bavaria. He studied at the Academy under 
 Lofftz and Lindenschmidt. Later he went to Paris on a 
 stipend, but was not content to remain there; and the next 
 time he left home it was to return to the congenial 
 atmosphere of Munich. This last stay covered four and 
 a half years. 
 
 Thereafter he made his permanent residence in Norway. 
 Characteristically enough, Kittelsen began as a markedly 
 realistic genre painter with a leaning toward social subjects. 
 That was during the years when the ideas born of Bjornson's 
 and Ibsen's social dramas were producing their strongest 
 ferment in the minds of men, and the problems of society 
 were insistently demanding a place in Art. A Strike is the 
 
Monr:RN norwi^xjian ari 
 
 547 
 
 Strike, by Theodor Kittelsen 
 
 title of Kittelsen's first large figure composition. Before 
 Christian Krohg or any one else, Kittelsen here takes up 
 a theme from the life of the laboring classes and places the 
 contrasting social forces in sharp opposition to each other. 
 A deputation of workingmen has brought forward Its de- 
 mands and stands respectfully awaiting the decision of the 
 two employers in their comfortable office. The light from 
 a large hanging-lamp falls brightly upon the masters of 
 Industry and upon the green covering of the table, and just 
 glances upon the group of employees, who lose themselves 
 In the farther darkness. The seriousness of the situation 
 Is evident. The argumentative calm of one of the em- 
 ployers and the Ill-boding nonchalance of the other hardly 
 Indicate that the strike will have an outcome satisfactory 
 to the workers. The picture Is rather blackly painted, yet 
 clearly composed and handled in such a way as to give a 
 powerful characterization of the types. Meanwhile It was 
 in an entirely different field that Kittelsen was to make his 
 reputation. 
 
 Theodor Kittelsen is by no means an ordinary painter, 
 but an extra-canonical artist, a peculiar dual nature, humorist 
 
548 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 and lyrist, yet at bottom a visionary. It was in Munich that 
 he drew the imaginative series of illustrations for the 
 Homeric poem, The War of the Frogs and the Mice, a 
 masterpiece of animal comedy, much more amusing than 
 Grandville. In a later series of animal caricatures which 
 he published under the title, Have Animals Souls f the satire 
 is more caustic, although still comparatively innocent. 
 There are pages here so diverting or so grotesque that their 
 creator may with full justice be designated as the Oberlander 
 of the North. Not until one comes to the illustrations for 
 the popular tales, however, does one learn to know Kittelsen 
 the humorist in all his ingenuity. It was Werenskiold who 
 first discovered Kittelsen's gifts for drawing subjects of 
 this kind, and secured his co-operation in illustrating 
 Asbjornsen and Moe's Tales for Children. Their col- 
 laboration, covering the period 1 883-1 887, began in Munich 
 and was continued 
 In Norway, notably '' 
 during a sojourn at 
 Taato near Kra- 
 gero, where each of 
 the two produced 
 his most admirable 
 drawings. It was 
 an Ideal combina- 
 tion of efforts, in 
 which Werenskiold 
 contributed his 
 solid, penetrating 
 realism and fine 
 draughtsmanship 
 and Kittelsen his 
 fabulous Imagina- 
 tion and gift for 
 expression. 
 
 Kittelsen is by 
 and large the illus- 
 trator of tales par 
 
 
 ^ 
 
 Veslefiik Meets the Beggar Who Asks Him 
 
 for a Penny. Drawing by Theodor 
 
 Kittelsen 
 
MODERN NORWEGIAN ART 549 
 
 A Forest Path, by Theodor Kittelsen. Privately owned 
 
 excellence among all of those who have done such work either 
 in Norway or in other countries. He has delineated the 
 entire race of Norwegian trolls, those of the mountain and 
 those of the woods, the nixy and the water-troll, in fact, 
 all the goblins and demons of the land. How ingeniously 
 realistic is the drawing of the beggar whom Veslefrik the 
 Fiddler met on the mountainside and who asked him for a 
 penny in God's name! Altogether this man appears to 
 recognize no bounds whatever to the possibilities of repre- 
 sentation. He can depict the hen mourning and weeping in 
 
550 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 the churchyard, the fox preaching in ruff and cassock, and 
 the rabbit that laughed till he split his mouth from ear 
 to ear. 
 
 Besides being the master of grotesque humor and fantasy, 
 Kittelsen is notwithstanding probably the most sensitive and 
 the most lyrical nature poet in Norwegian art. For a period 
 of about two years he lived on one of the lonely Lofoten 
 Islands in a lighthouse among the breakers, companioned 
 by gulls and cormorants. It was here, in the course of 
 luminous summer nights and dark winter days that he 
 reached maturity as a landscape artist and poet. He has 
 collected his impressions from these days of isolation In the 
 lighthouses of Rost and Skomvoer under the title, From 
 Lofoten, a series of aquarelles published in 1890. 
 
 Three years later, in 1893, ^^ ^^e great Exposition in 
 Christiania, In addition to his caricatures, his rabble of trolls, 
 and the wild scenes from Lofoten, he was able to show 
 fourteen excellent aquarelles from his childhood home, 
 Jomfruland. The drawings were at once bought by Olaf 
 Schou, during those years our sole Norwegian Maecenas, 
 and by him presented to the National Gallery. The 
 Jomfruland series is the maturest fruit of Kittelsen's talent. 
 By extremely few and simple means — pencil and water 
 colors — he has perpetuated a sequence of distinct and 
 authentic landscape moods, almost all of which are captivat- 
 ing by reason of their pristine sentiment and naive execution. 
 Kittelsen died in 19 13. 
 
 Harriet Backer, bom at Holmestrand in 1845, rn^Y 
 doubtless without contradiction be called the master among 
 the feminine painters of Norway. Her specialty Is interiors, 
 and no artist in our country has managed to render colors 
 within doors more delicately, more voluminously, or more 
 thoroughly harmonized by force of personality. The man- 
 ner in which she can paint light, as it sifts into the living- 
 room of a farmhouse, flows over the worn surface of a table, 
 is shattered against a faded wall, glances upon a face, flames 
 in a red jacket, and finally in the corners of the room sinks 
 away in shadows saturated with color, is not excelled by any 
 
MODFRN NORWFXilAN ART 
 
 5S1 
 
 Paris Interior With Young Woman Playing the Piano, by Harriet 
 Backer. In the National Gallery 
 
 Other painter In the land. In 1874 Harriet Backer found 
 herself In Munich, where she spent four happy years In the 
 society of the most gifted generation of painters that has 
 gone forth from Norway. Here she met at the very outset 
 Eillf Peterssen, Heyerdahl, Werenskiold and Munthe, 
 Skredsvlg and Kitty Klelland. 
 
 In Munich Froken Backer painted several significant pic- 
 tures, among others a sixteenth century Bavarian peasant 
 Interior showing a lacewoman In the costume of the period 
 sitting bowed In melancholy thought. This painting, called 
 Solitude, was exhibited at the Salon of 1880, received an 
 honorable mention, and may be found reproduced In the 
 Gazette des Beaux-Arts of that year. As it happened, 
 Froken Backer had left Munich In 1878 in order to make use 
 of a Norwegian government stipend in Paris. Here Bonnat 
 became her teacher, and when she showed him as an example 
 
552 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 Interior from Stange Church, by Harriet Backer. In the National 
 Gallery 
 
 of her work the Bavarian Interior with the lacewoman he 
 pronounced her a born painter who would some day do 
 honor to her native land. 
 
 Bonnat's judgment was justified In the event. Froken 
 Backer Is In fact the one among the feminine artists of Nor- 
 way who Is most truly a born painter, and even In the ranks 
 of her masculine colleagues she maintains a high standing. 
 There are few things In Norwegian art that have such a 
 degree of coherence In color and at the same time show such 
 delicate sentiment and powerful handling as distinguish 
 the best of her Interiors, as witness the Brittany Interior In 
 Rasmus Meyer's collection at Bergen or the Peasant Inte- 
 rior In the gallery at Trondhjem or, to continue, the beauti- 
 ful picture, done In 1888, of a young lady with a piece of 
 embroidery in her hands sitting in a Paris interior with chairs 
 upholstered in blue and blue curtains at a window filled with 
 flowers. The last named canvas is now in a private gallery 
 In Chrlstlania. 
 
MODERN NORWEGIAN ART 553 
 
 Peat-bog at Jaederen, by Kitty Kielland. In the National 
 Gallery 
 
 Harriet Backer lived in Paris ten years, ten years of 
 glorious study, by her own testimony. In 1889 she returned 
 to Norway in order to paint nature in Norway and studies 
 on Norwegian subjects. During recent times she has spent 
 the winter in Christiania and has occupied her summers in 
 various parts of Norway, industriously engaged in painting 
 interiors of Norwegian farmhouses and churches. In later 
 years she has been specially attracted to old picturesque 
 church interiors. The grey plastered vault of an ancient 
 stone church, the greenish light of a summer day without, 
 shining through the windows of the choir, the dark figures 
 of the little congregation distributed over the floor spaces 
 
554 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 The White House by the Water, by Kitty Kielland. Privately owned 
 
 or kneeling at the altar, it is all seen with a vital sense for 
 pictorial effect and reproduced with untiring care and truth- 
 fulness in which there is no manner of sacrifice to dryness 
 and pettiness. Harriet Backer has also been a good and 
 persevering instructor of younger generations of Norwe- 
 gian painters, almost all of whom owe to her the foundation 
 of their training. 
 
 Kitty Kielland, a sister of Alexander Kielland, was born 
 at Stavanger in 1843. In 1873 she came to Karlsruhe as a 
 pupil of Gude, but two years later she removed to Munich 
 and joined that group of talented painters and good com- 
 rades to which Harriet Backer also belonged. Here Kitty 
 Kielland produced as a beginning her first still life, yet as 
 early as the spring of 1876 she returned home in order to 
 paint nature in Norway. In her own country she found at 
 once her special field. The early studies from the peat- 
 bogs of Jasderen with their black, swampy earth spreading 
 for miles beneath lofty, marching skies have the character 
 and individuality of true art. One of her pictures from 
 Jsderen with a theme of this sort. Peat-bog, now in 
 the National Gallery, is weighted with melancholy and 
 
M0I)I:RN NORWIXJIAN ART 555 
 
 majestic loneliness. Nc\cr since that time has Kitty Kiel- 
 land struck so deep a minor note. Still she has often come 
 hack to the pcat-ho^s ol Ja'deren and recorded other moods. 
 Kitty Kiclland died in 19 14. 
 
 Another able portrayer of the nature of Jaederen is 
 Nicolai Ulfsten, who was born in 1854 and died in 1885. 
 He, too, was a pupil of Gude; later he studied one winter 
 in Paris, and in 1879 made a journey by way of Trieste and 
 V^enice to Egypt. It was the desert sands and the blazing 
 sunlight which drew him thither. Among his paintings are 
 A Street Scene in Cairo and A Halt in the Desert, both of 
 which are now in the Bergen Galley. His eyes, however, 
 could not endure the blinding sunshine, and he had to turn 
 his course homeward. On his arrival in his own country he 
 settled down in Jsederen. Here he worked intensely, pro- 
 ducing several large pictures the themes of which are drawn 
 from the life of fisherfolk and from the natural features of 
 the region. Later he removed to Christlania, but only to die 
 of consumption at the early age of thirty-one. Ulfsten has 
 depicted the fisherman of Jasderen in sea-boots and south- 
 wester, in his boat or ashore, fishing for roach in the waters 
 of Stavanger, seeking shelter in the smooth anchorage of a 
 harbor of refuge, or arresting his walk along the beach at 
 the sudden discovery of a dead body washed into the shal- 
 lows by the last storm. 
 
 Karl Edvard Diriks was born in Christlania, 1855. After 
 taking the examination preliminary to matriculation at the 
 University Diriks went abroad to study architecture; in the 
 course of his work he visited Stuttgart, Karlsruhe, and even- 
 tually the Bauakademie in Berlin. Here he saw much of 
 the group to which Krohg and Klinger belonged, and at 
 length he decided to forsake architecture in favor of paint- 
 ing. For a time he studied In Weimar, but returned later to 
 Christlania, where he made his home and continued painting 
 till 1882. In that year he went to Paris, and fell under the 
 influence of the impressionists. He has made two trips of 
 some duration to Spain, Southern France, and Italy, and 
 since the late nineties has resided permanently in Paris. 
 
556 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 Pier in a Storm, by Edvard Diriks. Owned in Bergen 
 
 In spite of his long sojourn abroad there is in reality 
 nothing of the European cast about Diriks' art. On the 
 contrary, he has in recent years attracted attention among 
 foreigners as a peculiarly Norwegian type, as regards both 
 his personality and his art. Nor is it possible to detect in 
 his paintings any evidence of his architectural beginnings. 
 It is just the architectonically constructive or draughting ele- 
 ment that is lacking in his landscape art. For that matter, 
 the subjects he chooses by preference, such as storm, sleet, 
 wind, fog, are not adapted to the stricter methods of design. 
 
 Diriks is a decided impressionist, and his work as a whole 
 stands or falls according to the intensity with which he is 
 able to express a mood through color. In his earlier years 
 he was closely associated with the youthful Thaulow; in 
 certain respects he was also influenced by Krohg. It has 
 always been his chief aim to bring pervading atmosphere and 
 light into his canvases. Beyond that, Diriks has become 
 more and more a painter of the weather, particularly of bad 
 weather. Atrocious winter weather drifts and storms and 
 howls and whines through his pictures. There is everlasting 
 slush and mud and mire on roads and piers, and fog that lies 
 wallowing above crashing drift ice In the harbor. It is the 
 
MODERN NORWEGIAN ART 
 
 557 
 
 From Vestre Aker, by Edvard Diriks 
 
 beloved, inhospitable winter of our own Norwegian coast 
 that speaks to us through this art, and therefore we love It. 
 
 Diriks' pictures have of late years attracted considerable 
 attention in Europe, especially in the radical art circles of 
 Paris. It is probably just the brutal strength in his paint- 
 ings that has appealed to the refined Parisians because it 
 carries proof of real temperament. And therefore French- 
 men have honored Diriks — the painter of the wind, they call 
 him — much more than have his own countrymen. Of recent 
 times, during which Diriks has lived continuously in Paris, 
 he has of course treated French themes, themes of a wholly 
 different and lighter character, as witness, for example, the 
 large sunny canvas. Isle de France, in the National Gallery. 
 
 Intimately allied with the naturalist Werenskiold and the 
 landscapist Munthe we find Jacob Gloersen, the painter of 
 the forests in the Eastland. The son of a clergyman in Tele- 
 marken, he was born at Vinje in 1852. He, too, first visited 
 the schools of Munich; but at an early age he came to the 
 conviction that the right thing was to keep in immediate 
 touch with nature and to follow it alone. These principles 
 he faithfully persevered in throughout life. The sum of 
 
558 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
MODERN NORVVl<:(ilAN Mil 559 
 
 his aesthetic tenets may be fornuihited in a single sentence: 
 One should paint nature as it is; yet there are things in nature 
 tiiat arc not worth painting. Hunter, lover of the open, and 
 tenacious pedestrian as he was, he lived for the most part 
 in the woods and among the mountains and so became the 
 portrayer of the spruce forest and of winter in the inland 
 regions of eastern Norway. His pictures bear titles such 
 as Winter, Hauling Timber, The Snow Storm, A Thaw. 
 The line picture, Hunting Woodcocks, is to be found in the 
 National Gallery. Gloersen's art is so unaffected and sober 
 that his paintings at times narrowly escape photographic 
 dryness. Even so they carry the appeal of truth and sin- 
 cerity. Moreover, if he lets himself go and uses the broad 
 brush, he shows a fresh and flowing style equalled by few. 
 Still his stroke can be suave and careful. Nothing else is so 
 soft as motionless air filled with falling snow. This Gloer- 
 sen has painted. Jacob Gloersen died In 19 12. 
 
 Fredrik Kolsto was born at Haugesund In i860. At the 
 age of seventeen he came to Munich, and there painted in 
 1880 his first genre picture, A Norwegian Fisherman's 
 Home. He reached maturity so early that, after his return 
 to Norway the following spring, he was able during the sub- 
 sequent summer to finish the large painting which in Its way 
 still remains his masterpiece, A Stril at the Bergen Fish- 
 market. By Its realism and bold, broad, palette knife tech- 
 nique the picture created a sensation at the Exhibition of the 
 same year, and contributed considerably to the current talk 
 about a school of daubing. After a sojourn in Paris in 1885 
 he painted a Studio Interior, now in the gallery at Trond- 
 hjem, which probably Is the best work he has done. It is a 
 thoroughly impressionistic canvas, executed with the extreme 
 decomposing technique used by the polntillists. 
 
VII 
 THE INTERMEDIATE GENERATION 
 
 THE group of painters who received their initiation 
 during the stress and struggle of the eighties has been 
 called the Intermediate Generation. Between the gen- 
 eration of the seventies, which returned home from Munich 
 and Paris, and the generation of the nineties, which again 
 sallied forth, this time to Copenhagen and Italy, there Is the 
 younger company of naturalists who went through their 
 apprenticeship at home in Chrlstiania, mostly under Thau- 
 low and Krohg. Almost all of the painters in this class are 
 to a greater or lesser degree to be counted as colorists. Their 
 weakness lies throughout in draughtsmanship, their limita- 
 tion in an imperfectly developed sense of style. On the other 
 hand, freshness and Immediacy of conception, a natural 
 vision for what Is pictorial, and boldness of treatment have 
 been their strength. Certain among these colorists have 
 used to advantage the Impressionistic method of color divi- 
 sion and attained great things in rendering the force of light. 
 The sunshine of the pupils often caused the paintings of their 
 masters to pale by comparison at the exhibitions. Just as 
 frequently, however, they took delight in dull and mournful 
 harmonies In grey and blunt colors. 
 
 The lives of the poor and the homes of the lowly have 
 a conspicuous place In their art. When It comes to land- 
 scapes, too, they avoid all ostentatious beauty. With the 
 democratic thinking of the time they are In close sympathy, 
 and the pessimism of the eighties throws Its shadow over 
 their cheerfulness. The full measure of opposition and con- 
 tempt that fell to their share goaded them to bitterness and 
 
 560 
 
MODERN NORWEGIAN ART 561 
 
 a desire to offerul. Still a beneficial sense of standing with- 
 out the pale of society and of being free Bohemians sustained 
 their longing for independence. On the whole, they were 
 most successful in maintaining themselves artistically so long 
 as naturahsm still awaited recognition. The wave of polit- 
 ical and intellectual radicalism that swept over the country 
 bore them up. When the reaction came, the weaker char- 
 acters among them were washed into back eddies and 
 remained floating there. Others of their number, more 
 adaptable and fitted to survive, shaped a fresh course at the 
 breaking of the new day. 
 
 Among the intermediate men Wentzel is the most impor- 
 tant and the first who assumed a leading position. Nils 
 Gustav Wentzel was born in Christiania In 1859. He made 
 his debut as a painter with a picture from his father's car- 
 penter shop, which the principal connoisseurs of Kunst- 
 forenlngen judged to be too realistic and therefore refused 
 to show at the exhibitions of the society. It was the rejec- 
 tion of this work that drew attention to the young painter 
 and made him known, for the refusal of his picture precipi- 
 tated open warfare between the artists and the reactionary 
 directors of the society. And it was on this occasion that 
 the artists In 1882 Instituted a systematic strike against 
 Kunstforenlngen, which lasted about two years and resulted 
 in victory for the artists. 
 
 Wentzel's masterpiece. The Breakfast, now in the Na- 
 tional Gallery, is from the same year, 1882. The picture is 
 the most skilfully painted and the most authentic example 
 of milieu portraiture In Norwegian art. With a keenness 
 of vision that captures all details the artist gives us a glimpse 
 of a worklngman's simple home in Its morning neglige. The 
 room with its lilac-grey wallpaper, the woman In her night- 
 dress cutting bread, the boy gulping coffee from a cup while 
 holding a piece of bread and butter In his hand, the break- 
 fast table without a cloth, the sooty copper kettle and the 
 flowered dishes — it Is all there and It is all presented with 
 brilliant verisimilitude. Further, the Interior revealing the 
 trundle bed packed with bedclothes, the photographs on the 
 
562 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 The Breakfast, by Nils Gustav Wentzel, li 
 
 In the National Gallery 
 
 wall, the skirt tossed over the stove, and the view of the side 
 room with its painted shade through which the morning sun- 
 light falls coldly — the whole is reproduced with intense love 
 of the theme and with vivid delight in the material itself. 
 The coloring, as well, shows an admirable mastery of the 
 subject. 
 
 Three years later Wentzel painted a new, a larger. Break- 
 fast Table, which also is in the National Gallery. The 
 artist had in the meantime been abroad, had visited Paris, 
 and had seen the impressionists. He had developed in tech- 
 nique and had strengthened his perception of color. Every- 
 thing which in his first Breakfast Table was pettily conceived 
 or pedantically executed because the painter was blinded 
 through staring at details, is here spacious, broad, pictur- 
 esque. As a whole It is one of the most vigorously painted 
 canvases In Norwegian art of the eighties. A working- 
 man's little family is assembled about the breakfast table 
 on a winter morning beneath a lighted lamp. The charac- 
 terization of the figures Is excellent, the story is told with 
 truth and sincerity, and the small fairhaired girl kneeling 
 
MODKRN NORWFXiTAN ART 5r,3 
 
 The Confirmation Party, by Nils Gustav Wentzel. In the National Gallery 
 
 half-dressed on a chair, clad in a red skirt and a white 
 chemise, is a fascinating piece of painting. The great value 
 of the picture lies, however, in the dexterity with which the 
 twofold light is managed, the conflict between the warm 
 orange tones from the lamplight and the cold blue shadows 
 and reflections from the morning light that sifts in at the 
 window behind the lowered shade on which is pictured Our 
 Savior's Church. It is excellent painting by a young master, 
 rich with promise for the future. 
 
 Unfortunately it cannot be said that Wentzel has fulfilled 
 this promise in his later production. He has painted several 
 good interiors from the living-rooms of farmhouses with 
 country people about the table, and the like. He has also 
 painted figures in the open, as in the large picture called 
 Rural Dance in Saetersdal. Yet not even the best of these 
 paintings approach his breakfast pieces in pictorial quality. 
 Still less valuable are his many hastily executed, roughly 
 
564 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 handled landscapes, particularly winter scenes. The narrow 
 circumstances of art in Norway compelled him to descend 
 to production in mass. For a tim.e his work even degener- 
 ated into inexcusable daubing, altogether unworthy of his 
 great native talent. Meanwhile the canvases by which he is 
 represented in the National Gallery, the two breakfast pic- 
 tures and the splendidly told, sedulously treated figure com- 
 position, The Confirmation Party, dating from 1887, be- 
 sides two or three other capable performances from his 
 earlier period, will always assure an honorable place for 
 Nils Gustav Wentzel in the history of Norwegian painting. 
 
 At Wentzel's side stands Eyolf Soot, who was born in 
 1859. -H^is mother, Birgitte Lie, was a sister of Erika 
 Nissen, and was herself a gifted pianist. Eyolf Soot spent 
 his early boyhood in America, but after the death of his 
 father the family returned to Norway. He received his 
 first training in Christiania ; later he studied under Krohg's 
 teacher Gussow in Berlin, Soot has also been in Paris, 
 where he worked in Bonnat's atelier. 
 
 Soot's production has not hcen ahundant; but he has 
 brought out certain exceptionally soliJ things. The little 
 picture from the year 1886. which he has called The Bridal 
 Procession, In which one does not see the procession at all 
 but only the reflection of It in the observant faces of two 
 children on a balcony, who follow the absorbing pageantry 
 with their eyes. Is painted in brilliant sunshine and still de- 
 spite the light effect has a fine greyish tone. The reputation 
 that he gained by this small work Soot has farther Increased 
 by two or three other sunlight scenes, and especially by the 
 excellent portrait of Jonas Lie and his wife and the large 
 figure composition entitled Welcome, both of which are now 
 in the National Gallery. 
 
 Soot's contribution, though not very copious, gives the 
 impression of being the result of a tremendous exertion of 
 energy by means of which all that Is frolicsome and restless 
 in his temperament has been subjugated to a will that Is 
 determined to see things soberly. Nevertheless, the unquiet 
 spirit crackles and sparkles through the pigments. Soot 
 
MODKRN NORWI'XilAN AIM 
 
 56: 
 
 Jonas Lie and His Wife, by Eyolf Soot. 
 National Gallery 
 
 In the 
 
 has the blood of the Lies in his veins. His mother and Jonas 
 Lie were cousins, and it would almost seem as if the half- 
 tamed, runaway, visionary temperament that gives to Jonas 
 Lie's style its polychromatic, impressionistic vitality is dis- 
 coverable once more in the coloring of Soot. His themes 
 may be simple enough, and may even have an everyday cast. 
 A door opens, and a youthful peasant couple steps into the 
 room and bids the aged mother-in-law good-day — the wife 
 first, the husband after her. They shake hands in the slow, 
 measured fashion of country people. Yet the way in which 
 the incident is narrated in color is positively ebullient; and 
 through the open door, border.ed by the dark shadow tones 
 of the balcony, we catch a glimpse, behind the two who are 
 coming in, of a lush landscape in summer green lying bathed 
 
566 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 in glittering sunshine and of two diminutive men walking 
 far down in the fields. The contrast gives an excellent effect. 
 
 The Jonas Lie portrait is also good; it presents very natu- 
 rally an episode from daily life. The novelist is sitting with 
 his legs crossed, reading a paper before a white lacquered 
 door in his apartments in Paris. His wife comes in and 
 bends over him to ask a question about something or other. 
 He lowers the paper and lifts his head in an interrogating 
 attitude, yet with an absent gaze behind his eye-glasses. The 
 long, sinewy, nervous hand rests idly on the arm of the chair. 
 The whole presents a picture of a man who lives his own 
 individual life of imagination and thought, far from the 
 world. The coloring is strong and animated, impression- 
 istically decomposed in a manner hitherto unknown in Nor- 
 wegian painting, handled with a sensitive and as it were 
 quivering touch. Soot's more recent production unfortu- 
 nately cannot be said to have fulfilled the great promise of 
 his youthful works in the National Gallery. 
 
 In the first rank of the younger company of naturalists 
 who followed upon the master group of the eighties headed 
 by Krohg, Halfdan Strom took a place at his initial appear- 
 ance. Strom was born in Christiania in 1863. At an early 
 age he journeyed to Munich, where he worked about half a 
 year at the Academy, but soon returned to Christiania and 
 continued painting on his own score. He was still under 
 twenty when he showed his first picture, and from 1886 he 
 went on exhibiting each year at the Autumn Exposition until 
 he set out for Paris in 1892 in order to prepare his ground 
 anew under the direction of Roll. Like Wentzel, Strom 
 began by practising the principles of naturalistic painting 
 upon his Immediate surroundings. In the corners of small 
 workshops, in the doorways of cramped living-rooms, in 
 third-class cafes, and in narrow streets Inhabited by working- 
 men he set up his easel; and he drew his themes from the 
 veriest reality. Examples are his Tailor's Shop, dated 1886, 
 A Shoemaker's Shop, 1887, and In the Restaurant, 1888. 
 
 Furthermore, when he spent the summer in the country, 
 unlike the others he did not scour the open for beautiful sub- 
 
^K)l)l^kN NOKWrXilAN ART 567 
 
 jccts. RatluM- he Insinuated himscll into the men's (|uarters 
 during tlie niidchiy hour of rest, into tiie rank, close air where 
 ir.en with hca\y linihs sprawled upon the beds, sleeping and 
 puffing and snoring. lie delighted in turning his artist's 
 e\e toward an interior of this kind, illuminated by the cold 
 blue light filtering in from the north through small muddied 
 window panes. Such surroundings had for him a certain 
 mood and a finely adjusted beauty of color. A case in point 
 is his Midday Rest, done in 1890, and now in the Gallery 
 in Venice. 
 
 Strom's principal work from this earlier period is never- 
 theless The Restaurant, now in the National Gallery. When 
 this canvas, with its life-size figures from the cafe of the 
 Workingmen's Society, was shown at the Autumn Exposi- 
 tion of 1888, it was received with decided Ill-will. The press 
 and the public were as one In rejecting art of so low an order 
 and on themes so commonplace. The selfsame picture was 
 exhibited at the International Exposition In Munich of 1901, 
 was there awarded a gold medal, and now occupies a place of 
 honor in the National Gallery. The painting deserves nothing 
 less. It is one of the most promising and most mature works 
 from the hand of a young artist that has ever appeared In 
 Norway. The characterization of the figures is superb, 
 whether one looks at the big, clumsy waitress, the flirtatious 
 cavalier leaning over the counter with his top hat pushed 
 back on his head, or the grey, starveling boy who lolls on a 
 stool in the foreground, munching a thick slice of bread and 
 butter. The coloring of the picture Is excellently managed 
 by means of deep grey, brownish, and yellow tones. The 
 piece shows such maturity as a pictorial achievement that 
 it is difficult to believe that it could have been done unless 
 the artist had previously seen Manet and the other modern 
 Frenchmen. Yet It was not until the following summer 
 that Strom was enabled to make his first little journey to 
 Paris on the stipend of 250 kroner, his sole perquisite from 
 the picture. 
 
 Things of this sort Strom painted preferably during his 
 youth. He was no parlor naturalist. Cold, grey, pesslmis- 
 
568 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 tic were his canvases, with a touch of blue frost in the 
 coloring, with the merciless light of common day upon nar- 
 row circumstances and daily toil. There was in Strom 
 the metal of a socialistic painter. He had just the right 
 acridity in the pigments and never the slightest concession to 
 lukewarm bourgeois notions of the beautiful, the attractive. 
 Nevertheless, Strom did not become a socialistic painter. 
 
 In the Restaurant, by 
 
 In the National Gallery 
 
MO|)i:kN NOkWFXilAN ART 
 
 569 
 
 Under the Pines, by Halfdan Strom. In the National Gallery 
 
 Apparently missing among his gifts was that stiff steel spring 
 that pushes a work to the very end, and makes of the artist's 
 life one single, inflexible effort directed by consciousness of 
 a fixed purpose. 
 
 He left Norway, came under the influence of French 
 Salon art, and in 1892 made use of a larger stipend in 
 studying under the guidance of Roll. This French artist 
 stamped an ineradicable impression upon Strom, not least 
 through his personality. Roll, too, had begun as a socialistic 
 painter. His Strike in a Mine Is a celebrated picture from 
 the eighties, bearing the stamp of Zola's social view of art; 
 but in time Roll's work became lighter and more insouciant, 
 even approaching a noisy expression of the joy of life. Open 
 air, sunshine, green meadows and spring foliage, nude 
 women, laughing nymphs, and desirous fauns dance over his 
 canvases. His method also changes, and becomes broad, 
 light, superficial. 
 
 These qualities were in part communicated to Strom's 
 art, and they altered Its character. Thereto must be added 
 
570 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 personal experiences — wedded happiness and family life. 
 His production showed a sudden reversal, and became an 
 actual flight from poverty and the proletarian world and 
 the shabby restaurants. Now it grew to be rather a glorifi- 
 cation of woman and of home. Sunshine and summer and 
 children, maturity and motherliness in a beautiful woman 
 — these are the constantly recurring themes for a period of 
 years. Technically, too, his pictures are changed, his brush 
 has taken on a dashing and sweeping stroke, now and then 
 approaching superficiality, or he leans toward soft, subdued, 
 refined harmonies like those cultivated by Thaulow. 
 
 Strom's best painting from this tim^e is without much doubt 
 The Young Mother, which was bought for the Luxembourg, 
 an intuitive seizing upon the subconscious, vegetative soul 
 life of woman in the office of motherhood, executed with 
 tender feeling for the subject. Strom's later work, in which 
 there is a large number of portraits to order, has been of 
 inconstant value. Occasionally it has tended toward soft- 
 ness and blandness. Yet suddenly he takes a fresh grip 
 and by great expense of energy produces a larger and more 
 serious performance which once more brings his original 
 and ample talents into notice. Such is the piece entitled 
 Under the Pines, done in 1908, and now in the National 
 Gallery. 
 
 Since 191 1 Strom has been actively associated with Krohg 
 as a professor at the little Academy of Painting which the 
 government finally has allowed to our art life and which is 
 being conducted with very humble means in Christiania. 
 Strom has undoubtedly given much of his strength to this 
 teaching service, in which he is truly zealous. Furthermore, 
 a good part of his time has been taken up with various 
 positions of public trust in our art life, which his inter- 
 mediate station between the parties has frequently assigned 
 to him. Thus for several years he has been reelected as a 
 member of the board of directors in the Society of Artists, 
 of the juries at the annual exhibitions, and of the purchasing 
 committee of the National Gallery. 
 
 Among the painters belonging to this group of naturalists 
 
MODERN NORWECilAN ART 
 
 371 
 
 The Pavilion After Snowfall, by Jorgen Sorensen. In the National 
 Gallery 
 
 may be enumerated also Jorgen Sorensen, Sven Jorgensen, 
 Kalle Lochen, Signe Scheel, Marie Tannaes, Jacob Bratland, 
 and Gudmund Stenersen. The most gifted of the land- 
 scapists who followed the banner of open-air naturalism and 
 gathered about Thaulow at Modum was Jorgen Sorensen, 
 who was born in Christiania in 1861. His production has 
 been fluent, he has painted many things, and always after 
 nature. His most important picture, called February, 2° 
 Centigrade, Vestre Aker, done in 1887, now hangs in the 
 National Gallery. The title may appear affected, but is 
 in reality very appropriate as an indication of the character 
 of the piece, with such fineness have the shadings in the 
 mood of this winter day been observed and with such pre- 
 cision and truth have they been reproduced. In just this 
 manner the frozen roadway crunches under foot; just so a 
 leafless tree delineates itself against the sky in the clear and 
 delicate atmosphere of winter, and just so palely falls the 
 sunshine with blue shadows upon patches of snow and upon 
 
572 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 yellow tussocks along the road skirting the parsonage of 
 Vestre Aker on a beautiful day in February when light frost 
 gives a tang to the air. Here naturalism has reached the 
 goal. It is impossible to go farther than this in the actual 
 imitation of nature and In expressive sincerity. 
 
 Related to this picture, but lighter and more brilliant, is 
 the other winter scene by Jorgen Sorensen In the possession 
 of the National Gallery, The Pavilion after Snowfall. The 
 old Empire summer house is lying like a golden Greek 
 temple beneath snow and sunshine In the middle of the 
 garden of an old country seat In the environs of Christiania. 
 The contrast between the antique architectural forms and 
 the half impressionistic, modern style of painting has a 
 charm of its own; and the coloring is diaphanous and light 
 as in an early Sisley or Pissarro. 
 
 Jorgen Sorensen has also executed with true feeling 
 summer landscapes from the Eastland on a small scale, 
 watercourses with grist mills, and the like. As a painter of 
 winter scenes he stands out as the best pupil of Thaulow, 
 and sometimes excels his master In sincerity and strength 
 of tone. Now and then his talent approaches the vein of 
 Gerhard Munthe in the green summer pieces. After an 
 Individual and personal fashion he combines the qualities 
 of these two masters. The artistic life of Jorgen Sorensen, 
 however, was not of long duration. He was a cripple, his 
 health was frail, and he soon succumbed. Edvard Munch, 
 a friend of his youth, has painted his portrait The large 
 soulful eyes speak Impressively fromx the open countenance 
 with Its gentle and sensitive features. The portrait may 
 be seen in the National Gallery. Jorgen Sorensen died in 
 1894, and In his death Norwegian painting suffered a real 
 loss. 
 
 Sven Jorgensen was born In Drammen In 1861, and dur- 
 ing his early years studied both in Munich and In Paris. 
 Before and also after his stay abroad he has lived at Slagen, 
 a fishing village near Tonsberg on the Christiania fjord. 
 Among the fishermen and farmers living there In humble 
 circumstances he found abundant material for his simple 
 
MODKRN NORWEGIAN ART 
 
 573 
 
 Unemployed, by Sven Jorgensen. In the National Gallery 
 
 and intimate treatment of life. His pictures bear titles 
 such as Unemployed, The Widow, Religious Devotion, 
 The Son, Departure from Home, and others of the kind. 
 Quite evidently, the titles are like Tidemand's. The pic- 
 tures decidedly are not. Sven Jorgensen's view of life is 
 by no means gay; nor is it bitter. A gentle resignation 
 speaks through his art. Even when he portrays an unem- 
 ployed man sitting in the midst of his family with idle hands 
 and dully gazing eyes, there is no really didactic tendency 
 in the painting. And he has been able to picture the widow 
 and her children, gathered about a dish of herrings and 
 potatoes, with such warm sympathy and such equipoise of 
 mind that a tinge of good fortune actually seems to illumine 
 the brave struggle against poverty that is being waged in 
 the crowded cottage. 
 
 Sven Jorgensen's art is unpretending as his themes. No 
 creative delight in the material itself casts a gleam about It, 
 as in the case of Wentzel. Still his unostentatious and 
 
574 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 indigent orchestration is by no means lacking in color 
 quality. On the contrary, it is almost always expressive, 
 homogeneous with the subject, and a vehicle of the mood. 
 In linear construction Jorgensen's pictures are the strongest 
 that have come from this group of painters. They are not 
 merely casual, more or less engaging excerpts, but well 
 planned and built up from within. 
 
 Among the youthful naturalists of the epoch none was 
 more notorious for a kind of pettifoggery than Kalle 
 Lochen, who was born in 1865. Canvases such as After a 
 Sleepless Night and From My Window irritated the better 
 part of the public and incensed the press, both by their 
 themes and by their dashing, reckless handling. Yet his 
 best pictures approached Munch's in simplicity and refine- 
 ment of coloring. 
 
 An artist with true and fine gifts for color, though with 
 a limited technique, is Signe Scheel. Behind her heavily 
 laboring brush, which seduously heaps up treasures of shad- 
 ing, one discerns a delicate and shy womanliness. In 1896 
 she showed her first picture of Importance, entitled Behold, 
 I am the Handmaid of the Lord, In which there are traces 
 of cross Influences from old Italian art and French im- 
 pressionism. Her best picture, however, has for Its sub- 
 ject a farmyard with the whitish-grey wall of a house 
 shining in the sunlight and shifting Into a multiplicity of half- 
 tones in the shadows. Her persevering attention to the 
 wealth of tone gives to this piece unusual materiality and 
 power. She has also made interesting studies of lamplight 
 which betray her enthusiasm for Rembrandt, an enthusiasm 
 that nevertheless makes no diminution of her originality. 
 
 Marie Tannaes stands close to Signe Scheel, and divides 
 with her the honor of being the most significant of the 
 many feminine painters who associated themselves with the 
 open-air movement In the eighties. She has been an in- 
 dustrious and very productive landscapist; and her land- 
 scapes, for the most part upon autumnal themes, are exe- 
 cuted with a broad and juicy brush. 
 
MOnr:RN NORWECilAN ART 575 
 
 Jacob Bratlaiul painted his most important picture in 
 icS88, under the title After a Night of Watching, showing a 
 father and mother at the sickbed of their child. This work 
 was awartled a second-class medal at the Uni\crsal l^xposi- 
 tion. In the National Gallery hangs a painting of his 
 called Sunday, done in 1891, a well told and naturally 
 treated country idyll representing a young boy and a girl 
 instituting an acquaintance of a Sunday morning on the 
 green adjoining the church. 
 
 Gudmund Stenersen also is among those who made their 
 debut in the late eighties, but who still belong to the 
 naturalistic group. His best things originated In the region 
 of Jaederen. Here he got his theme for the large canvas, 
 instinct with feeling, that presents young men and women 
 resting about a bonfire on St. John's Eve and listening to 
 the notes of a violoncello, each wrapped In his own thoughts, 
 beneath the flickering, fantastic firelight. There Is a kind 
 of Protean variety about Stenersen's art. He Is most suc- 
 cessful with pen and Ink, In which cases his technique ap- 
 proaches that of Werensklold. 
 
 The most gifted among the young figure painters who 
 about 1890 took up rural life for renewed treatment Is 
 August Elebakke, who was born In 1867. He studied dur- 
 ing one winter under Zahrtmann In Copenhagen, an ex- 
 perience that came to have decisive Importance for his 
 subsequent development. Later he continued his training 
 in Paris, and thereafter through a longer sojourn In Italy. 
 In the National Gallery Is to be found his most notable 
 work, from the year 1891, entitled Making Preparations or 
 The Arrival of Visitors. With excellent power of charac- 
 terization and brilliant technique he portrays here the main 
 living-room In a country home, In the foreground a table 
 decked with linen upon which a young girl Is placing the 
 best that the house affords, while the guests wait In the 
 background. As regards material the picture Is one of the 
 most skillfully painted In Norwegian art. In addition the 
 figures Indicate close observation of rustic manners and 
 usages. It Is the last word In Imitation of reality. 
 
576 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 Making Preparations, by August Eiebakke. In the National Gallery 
 
 It may well be said that in Eiebakke's Making Prepara- 
 tions the illusionism of the eighties finds its last pregnant 
 expression. Even In the large, pale Summer Night's Land- 
 scape with which Oda Krohg made her debut in 1886 there 
 is a new and more lyric mood, a mild echo of Edvard 
 Munch's color poetry. There is something remarkably 
 delicate and tender and occult about this picture of the flesh- 
 colored house sleeping in the bosom of the blue summer 
 night. A young woman's longing for the poetic and the 
 mystical here declares itself. Oda Krohg, the wife of the 
 painter. Professor Christian Krohg, was born in Christiania 
 in i860. She is not a painter by vocation, but something of 
 a brilliant dilettante in taste and force of emotion. She 
 spent a number of years in Paris, where she was occupied 
 with a sort of colored work upon leather in the form of 
 book-bindings for the Parisian art market. In 1900 she 
 resumed painting and produced a very good portrait of the 
 author Gunnar Heiberg, done In lamplight with great 
 breadth and power. This work was one of the chief can- 
 
MODERN NORWFXilAN ART 
 
 577 
 
 Portrait of the Author Gunnar Heiberg, by Oda Krohg. 
 National Museum, Stockholm 
 
 In the 
 
 vases at the Norwegian exhibition in Stockholm in 1903, 
 and was bought for the Swedish National Museum. 
 
 That departure from the naturalistic and realistic style 
 which most strikingly marks the nineties also had a strong 
 effect on the lyrical painter of Nordland, Thorolf Holmboe. 
 Holmboe was born in Helgeland in 1866, and in 1886 went 
 to Berlin, where he became the last pupil of Gude; later 
 he visited Italy, and for a considerable time lived in Paris. 
 His studies under Gude were of decisive Influence upon his 
 development, particularly as a marine painter. Holmboe's 
 earlier sea-pieces were of an altogether realistic character. 
 
578 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 The Aker River, by Thorolf Holmboe. In the National Gallery 
 
 No sooner, however, did the conventional decorative move- 
 ment In art, which during the nineties spread from England 
 throughout Europe, reach us than he took part In It. More- 
 over, In sympathy with the new romantic-lyrical poetry 
 that came Into vogue at the same time, especially in the 
 verse of Vilhelm Krag, Holmboe drew farther and farther 
 away from realism and open-air painting. The soft evening 
 moods of the enthusiast, with simplified lines and decorative 
 contrasts in color now became characteristic of his painting. 
 In recent years, however, he has abandoned these literary 
 moods. More resolutely and directly he attacks the 
 artistic problems that reality brings before him. His 
 palette has gained thereby in richness and force of ex- 
 pression. The National Gallery has a good picture of his 
 from this period In a view of the Aker River at Vaterland 
 
M0I)I<:RN NOkWPXilAN AkI 57n 
 
 with misty sjiring iiioonli^lit upon tlic wilderness of roofs 
 and tlic gleaming course of the river. I lolmhoe is a \ ery 
 prolific artist. lie has also been ae(i\ e as an illusli-ator. In 
 sketches for co\'crs and title pages, lor book-hintiings wwil 
 tapestries he has demonstrated an inexhaustible and Ihuiit 
 gift for decorative composition. 
 
 Lars Jorde, too, who was born in 1865, is most properly 
 to be placed in this transitional period. His Christmas 
 Festival, with the brilliantly illuminated farmhouse and the 
 sleighs waiting In the moonlight, now hangs In the National 
 Gallery. He associated himself with the group which went 
 to Denmark and Italy, and there he received lasting im- 
 pressions from foreign and from ancient art. Since that 
 time he has lived at LUlehammer, and has dedicated his 
 brush to the portrayal of nature in the Uplands of Norway, 
 winter and spring, now In the spirit of Collett and now in 
 the vein of younger contemporaries. 
 
VIII 
 MUNCH 
 
 IN the foregoing consideration of later Norwegian paint- 
 ing one name has been purposely omitted because it can- 
 not be classified in any school or in any close group of 
 comrades, but stands out strong and solitary in the current 
 of events — the name of Edvard Munch. Edvard Munch, 
 Norway's greatest painter, is descended from an aristocratic 
 family of purely Norwegian blood, a family that originated 
 in a mountain province and which throughout the nineteenth 
 century has left its impress upon the intellectual life of the 
 land. One man of genius the house has produced before 
 Edvard Munch, namely his uncle, the historian Peter 
 Andreas Munch, the author of the History of the Norwegian 
 People. 
 
 Edvard Munch's father was a district physician at Loiten 
 in Hedemarken, and here the son was born in 1863. 
 Although Munch is thus well on his way toward sixty, he is 
 nevertheless the most prominent figure, indeed the central 
 figure, among younger Norwegian painters. His name 
 marks the great point of division in the art of his country, 
 the turning point from realism and illusionism in painting to 
 a wholly personal interpretation and to an artistic execution 
 that in power and beauty is without contemporary parallel in 
 the Scandinavian kingdoms. Munch's art took its departure 
 from the naturalism of the eighties, to begin with, and he 
 stood rather near Krohg and Heyerdahl. Yet even in the 
 early phases of his production there is a more spiritual ele- 
 ment than in the work of the naturalists. Greater lightness 
 of body in the coloring, greater charm and Inspiration in pic- 
 
 580 
 
MODERN NORWKC.IAN ART 
 
 581 
 
 torial treatment, and first and last a more soulful (juality are 
 the marks of his manner. 
 
 Even Munch's purely realistic portraits of a remote date, 
 such as the wonderful likeness of Hans Jaiger, show an 
 intuitive perception of personality and an unexatTipled ability 
 in concentrating 
 characteristics and 
 making them ex- 
 pressive of m o o d. 
 As the anarchistic 
 reformer of society 
 sits there, for the 
 moment flagging 
 and disappointed, 
 bitter and poor and 
 freezing in a cold 
 back room, with hat 
 and coat on and with 
 a glass before him, 
 the picture presents 
 not only Hans Jae- 
 ger himself in an hour of disillusion, but the whole sum of 
 pessimism and contempt for humanity that marked the 
 Bohemians of the eighties. As regards pure painting, 
 Munch's portrait of himself from the year 1895 is probably 
 not on a par with the Jaeger portrait; the coloring is thinner 
 in its blue uniformity. Yet what spiritual exaltation shines 
 out from the canvas 1 This proud and lonely man, standing 
 before our eyes as in a vision, illumined by the sheen of mys- 
 tical footlights and wrapped in blue shadows, is the magician 
 who has produced Edvard Munch's remarkable, painful and 
 yet irradiating art. 
 
 It was in 1883 that Munch showed his first picture, entitled 
 The Sick Child. This painting, now universally recognized 
 as one of the masterpieces in Norwegian art, so sensitive in 
 conception, so powerful In handling, so exuberant in pictorial 
 effect, and so sublimely simple In theme as it is, did not at the 
 time of its appearance gain general acceptation, even among 
 
 Morning, by Edvard Munch 
 
582 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 Portrait of Hans jEger, by Edvard Munch. In the National Gallery 
 
 artists. It came into being during the period of the indurated 
 worship of reality that stamped the eighties. The picture, 
 moreover, was a veritable gauntlet cast in the face of photo- 
 graphic realism; it was sheer feeling, enveloped in a veil of 
 lovely color. It gave little hint of the stuffs in the clothing, 
 little account of day and hour; it was on the whole not much 
 of a corner of actuality, to use the phrase of the time, but a 
 
MODKRN NORWrXilAN AR I' 58.-^ 
 
 Portrait of Himself, by Edvard Munch. In the National Gallery 
 
 vital creation of temperament. Out from a warmly tinted 
 twilight gleams the pale profile of a child, framed in golden 
 red hair. At one side appears more faintly the mother, 
 bowed in weeping against the invalid's chair. The lines of 
 the composition are Inimitably joined Into harmony in the 
 picture, where two beings that have been closely united are 
 
584 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 The Sick Child, by Edvard Munch. In the National Gallery 
 
 now tenderly drawn apart from each other. The wings of 
 death cast their shadow over this picture. 
 
 Another painting from Miinch's youth, during which he 
 himself often went through hard sieges of illness, also car- 
 ries us into the sick room; this work, entitled Spring, dated 
 1889, now has a place in the National Gallery. As an 
 example of plain and firm composition the piece is without 
 parallel; in thoroughgoing coloristic construction it is per- 
 fect; as a presentation from life and as a rendering of mood 
 it is impressive. The first warm day of spring has come. 
 The chair in which the sick young girl rests has been moved 
 to the open window, and there she is sitting languidly relaxed 
 among the pillows, sensing the stream of air that wafts over 
 
MODERN NORWEGIAN ART 
 
 585 
 
 ■ 
 
 
 r 
 
 
 
 1 ' 
 
 i 
 
 ^^^^^^B 1^^ ♦. ,7^^3I 
 
 ''*^^ .-iv \ 
 
586 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 The Girls on the Bridge, by Edvard Munch. In the National Gallery 
 
 her. A breeze freighted with the redolent odors of earth 
 fills at the moment the light curtain so that it swells into the 
 semblance of a sail. As if in gratitude for this boon the 
 glance of the convalescent turns toward the bent old mother, 
 who with her knitting has taken a seat near at hand and fol- 
 lows intently the expression on the features of the invalid. 
 No word is spoken, but the silence is charged with quivering 
 hopes, and the spring sun floods the ensemble of colors. It 
 is life upon luminous wings that hovers over this picture. 
 
 As a landscapist Munch is in the first instance the por- 
 trayer of the Northern summer night. No one has equaled 
 him in catching the mystical quality of limpid summer nights, 
 
MODERN NORWIX.IAN ARl' 5.S7 
 
 The Island, by Edvard Munch. Privately owned in Christiania 
 
 with crowns of mighty trees above slumbering white houses 
 and the pallid, veiled tones along the shallow beaches. Yet 
 against this soft background he frequently masses the re- 
 sounding splendor of pure colors from the dresses of young 
 girls or women into the very foreground of the picture. It is 
 characteristic of Munch's art that it often veers from the 
 suave and lyrical to the most intense energy of coloristic 
 expression, which occasionally does not stop short even of 
 brutality. He is typically Norwegian both in his lyricism and 
 in his violence, both in his morbid dreaminess and in his wide- 
 awake, alertly sentient perception of reality. 
 
 In the summer of 1888 Munch made his first stay at 
 Aasgaardstrand, a little fishing village on the Christiania 
 fjord, whose beautiful natural features have provided sub- 
 jects for more than one Norwegian painter. Here he received 
 the inspiration for several pictures marked by intense feeling, 
 
588 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 such as his lovely Starry Night, now owned by Fridtjof Nan- 
 sen, and The Girls on the Bridge, in the National Gallery. 
 In 1 892, as it happened, Edvard Munch was invited by the 
 Art Society of Berlin to exhibit there. Munch came, the 
 paintings were hung in the Arkitektenhaus, the exhibition 
 opened, and was immediately closed. The public were 
 enormously scandalized, the papers were filled with articles 
 for and against the Norwegian anarchistic artist, and the Art 
 Society, after a stormy session, split into two factions which 
 ever since have been irreconcilably opposed to each other. 
 Under the leadership of Liebermann 130 artists left the 
 Society and formed a new association with exhibitions of their 
 own, thereafter known as the Secessionists. Munch presently 
 opened a private exhibition, and his fame soon spread abroad. 
 The collection went the rounds of various German cities, 
 Dusseldorf, Cologne, Hamburg, and Munich, and subse- 
 
 *^^m^^^^ 
 
 Death Enters the Room, by Edvard Munch. In the National Gallery 
 
MODERN NORWEGIAN AR r 
 
 5S9 
 
 .Tl 
 
 The Kiss. Wood-cut by Edvard Munch 
 
 quently to Copenhagen and Stockholm. Everywhere it caused 
 offence, strongly tinctured nevertheless with admiration. In 
 Berlin Munch and Strindberg met. Later Obstfelder and 
 Vigeland joined them. It was a fruitful concurrence of talent, 
 which no doubt had inspiring results for each and all of these 
 intellectuals. Munch's paintings from this period have with- 
 out exception erotic themes, and bear titles such as Jealousy, 
 The Vampire — a woman kissing a man's neck and swath- 
 ing him in her hair. Woman's Love and its variant The 
 Madonna, as this masterly presentation of the moment of 
 conception has later been called. 
 
 Universal and international in scope as these speculative 
 works are, they have gained for Munch, throughout the 
 centres of culture and especially in Germany, a group of 
 adherents who fanatically embrace his ideas and worship his 
 art. His exhibits have gone to all of the larger cities, includ- 
 ing Vienna, Prague, and Paris. He has made proselytes 
 everywhere. Moreover, in later years — before the war — 
 economic success has attended artistic success. In the Linde 
 
590 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 History. Mural Painting in the University of Chrl 
 Munch 
 
 by Edvard 
 
 Collection at Liibeck, one of the most exclusive collections 
 of modern art in Germany, hang works by him, paintings, 
 etchings, wood-engravings in great number and side by side 
 with the paintings of Manet, Whistler, Degas, and Bocklin, 
 and in the same rooms with the largest representation of 
 Rodin outside of France. 
 
 Munch experienced a prolific period upon settling down 
 in the little town of Kragero on the shores of Skagerak; not 
 without reason this period might be counted the high-water 
 mark in his entire production. Here he executed vigorous 
 and juicy landscapes, and here he continued his series of 
 life-sized standing portraits of men. Here, finally, he con- 
 ceived the ideas for his University decorations and painted 
 his tentative studies for them. In these mural pictures orna- 
 menting the great auditorium at the University of Christiania 
 he symbolizes with unexampled coloristic power the arts 
 and natural sciences in the plainest and most unassuming 
 manner by means of simple scenes from Norwegian life and 
 nature. 
 
 Only the main outlines of Munch's production as a painter 
 have been drawn here. As a graphic artist, too, he has turned 
 out a mass of things. He has drawn portraits in black and 
 white of a large number of artists and literary men, men 
 like Malarme, Strindberg, Gunnar Heiberg, Helge Rode, 
 Sigbjorn Obstfelder, Tor Hedberg, Jens Thiis, and others. 
 Further, there are erotic themes and subjects from child life 
 and animal life in the glorious and abundant output of litho- 
 
modj-:rn N()Rvvi:(.iy\N art 591 
 
 {graphs, wo()cl-ciip;ra\'inf^s, and ctcliiii^s tliat ha\ c come liom 
 his hand. 
 
 Julvard Munch is undoubtedly the most pictorially jilted 
 of all ot the painters that have seen the Hght of day in Nor- 
 way, Moreover, in his art there has appeared more and 
 more an individual, self-evolved personality, a personality 
 that enfolds, besides the brilliantly endowed painter, also 
 something of the brooding thinker and much of the poet. 
 His art is a disclosure of temperament, which carries the 
 effect of a philosophy of life. 
 
IX 
 THE PRESENT GENERATION OF PAINTERS 
 
 THE youths who grew up in the pettifogging atmosphere 
 of the eighties were neither robust nor pugnacious. In 
 many respects they were a disillusioned generation of 
 young doubters and dreamers. Upon the worship of brutal 
 reality that distinguished the eighties there followed a reac- 
 tion toward dreaming and neo-romanticism that was wholly 
 consistent and necessary. This reaction, which for that mat- 
 ter was only the reflection of a general European movement 
 away from naturalism and the illusions of actuality, was 
 largely determined among us by influences emanating from 
 Denmark. Through the mediation of the Danes our young 
 artists were led to Italy and to the old masters of the gal- 
 leries. From these sources they derived their soft, warm, 
 velvet tone; there they whetted their sense of hne and of 
 composition. In view of the transitory character of the 
 tendency in our country, it could not fail to have a beneficial 
 effect upon our art life. It brought results in culture, in 
 knowledge, and in aptitude of which there was real need. 
 Our neo-naturalistic art was in process of being barbarized; 
 foreign culture was a positive necessity. Fortunately, how- 
 ever, for our subsequent development, this Danish-Italian 
 spirit, which In the long run inevitably must have remained 
 strange and exotic to us, did not acquire a lasting hold upon 
 our painters. When their eyes were opened to really modern 
 French art and Its abounding color values, the best among 
 them promptly turned to the right about and the others soon 
 followed. 
 
 In this movement, meanwhile, there are two personalities 
 592 
 
MODIlkN NOkWI'.dlAN AR'I' 
 
 593 
 
 Mali Clasen, by Halfdan Egedius. Privately owned 
 in Christiania 
 
 that take a place apart — Egedius and Sohlberg, the first 
 because he died too early to share in the general retreat to 
 impressionism, the other because his nature and his endow- 
 ments lean altogether in the opposite direction and because 
 on the whole he has never followed the stream. 
 
 Halfdan Egedius, who was born in 1877, was something 
 of the child prodigy. At a very early age, in his first work, 
 he gave evidence of promise; but just as promise was giving 
 way to assurance of the reality and power of his gifts, and 
 to a well-founded expectation of decisive results, death car- 
 ried him off before he had completed his twenty-second 
 year. Egedius sounded his prelude upon the finest chords in 
 Werenskiold's art, upon the illustrations to the Tales and 
 
594 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 upon the Telemarken idylls with their horses, and young 
 boys, and girls in oscillating belled skirts. In concert with 
 these themes he created through increasing independence and 
 character a series of pictures from Telemarken and Vaage, 
 in which the delicate notes of summer night vibrate and which 
 are often so simple and charming in their poetic content that 
 they recall the open-hearted refrains of popular ballads. 
 His Midsummer Landscape in the National Gallery, with 
 the morel-tree, the white horse, and the boy in a red jacket 
 is just such a harmonious and fervent piece of work. 
 
 That Egedius toward the close of his brief life as an artist 
 had gone far in developing his manner from the idyllic to the 
 monumental is evidenced, for example, by his portrait of 
 Mari Clasen. This young farmer's wife from Kviteseid in 
 Telemarken has a style and poise like de Tornabuoni of 
 Florence in Ghirlandajo's frescoes in the Santa Maria 
 
 Fiddle and Dance, by Halfdan Egedius. In the National Gallery 
 
MODERN NORWEGIAN ART 
 
 595 
 
 Landscape, by Halfdan Egedius. In the National Gallery 
 
 Novella ! And for his illustrations to Snorre the youthful 
 painter took up constructively the thread of Werenskiold's 
 and Munthe's conventional drawing and carried the prob- 
 lems of composition farther toward solution in fixed forms 
 than any other Norwegian artist before him. 
 
 Harald Sohlberg, who was born in Christiania in 1869, as 
 artist and as man is a peculiarly brusque and isolated figure in 
 our annals. He made his debut together with Egedius in 
 1894, and already at that time struck the chords upon which 
 he has played imperturbably ever since. His art Is an ex- 
 tremely Individual combination of conventional and natural- 
 istic qualities. His point of departure is fidelity to nature, a 
 primitive and persistent cultivation of detail after the manner 
 of the draughtsman. In thus striving to attain the utmost 
 In one direction, in draughtsmanship, he necessarily suffers 
 a curtailment, a species of indigence in the other direction 
 Sohlberg's art abandons sedulously and purposely the beaten 
 paths of modern ideas of coloring, he renounces the Illusive 
 properties of pigments, he renounces stroke and atmospheric 
 effect. In compensation he gains a glow as of enamels and 
 a depth of precious stones by means of his thin, smoothly- 
 
596 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 laid color, inimitably his own. There is a magical force of 
 light in the blue-green vault of the heavens in his Summer 
 Night, with its deserted gala table for two, its flowers and 
 open veranda door. Sohlberg's principal work, however, is 
 the picture of Rondane, or as he calls it himself, A Winter 
 Night in the Mountains. Beyond question it is one of the 
 most monumental canvases in the entire range of Norwegian 
 art, although it Is painted with an extremely minute execution 
 that in fact defies all modern notions of technique. One has 
 no longer the impression of painting, but rather of a new 
 combination of the arts — of melodious architecture or ol 
 frozen poetry. And still it is just the color effect that is con- 
 clusive; this tone overwhelms the visual nerves with almost 
 painful intensity. Strictly speaking, the picture has but one 
 tmt, blue. Yet with cold and untiring passion this one pig- 
 ment is worked up into the most dazzling blue, sharp as 
 ice-needles, verging on empty white, and on the other side 
 shaded down into deep green opaque notes that border on 
 absolute darkness. It is a coloring quite subversive of all our 
 preconceived ideas of oil painting — a coloring that has little 
 of the lusciousness and glow of oil painting, but has rather 
 the delicate, frangible hardness and brilliance of enamel. 
 
 Roros in Winter, bv Ha raid Sob 
 
 In tbe National Gallery 
 
MODERN NORWEGIAN ART 597 
 
 Winter in the Mountains Rondane, by Haiald Sohlberg. In the 
 National Gallery 
 
 Harald Sohlberg is an Isolated phenomenon in our art. 
 He is unlike everybody else and subscribes to the tenets of 
 no school. It would be difficult, however, to find a more 
 absolute contrast to him than are the two painters of his own 
 generation who have become to a marked degree representa- 
 tive of a studied colorism learned in the schools of Europe — 
 Thorvald Erichsen and Oluf Wold-Torne. They belong 
 like him to the new romantic group of the nineties which 
 studied in Denmark and worshipped Italia. The solid 
 foundations of their technique were laid in Copenhagen 
 under Zahrtmann, and there they began to acquire that 
 artistic culture which they later developed by frequent trips 
 to Italy and France. Both began with a reaction against the 
 strident impressionism of the eighties and at first painted in 
 subdued, cello-like tones, but later they received fresh im- 
 pulses from modern French art, and their admiration in 
 
598 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 particular for Cezanne stimulated and kept alive in them 
 that sense of color which is after all the essence of their talent. 
 Thorvald Erichsen, a native of Trondhjem, born in 1868, 
 has brought into Norwegian art an element of good taste and 
 elevation which has to some extent been lacking. His Land- 
 scape from Kviteseid, painted in 1900, with its firm and pow- 
 erful masses and cubes, is nothing less than epoch-making in 
 our modern painting, an abrupt transition from a hardly 
 more than mechanical imitation of nature to a consciously 
 creative art. The following year he progresses still farther 
 on the same path in the mellow interior with the harmonious 
 brown darkness that frames the gush of light and color 
 through the window, or in the amazing Forest Interior of 
 1 90 1, a symphony in blues and greens where the light flashes 
 from the flecks of sunshine like lesser planets in their element. 
 One may search long and studiously among works of modern 
 art to find a more sovereign example of true painting; and 
 in fact hardly discover it till he stands before one of 
 
 Landscape from Kviteseid, by Thorvald Erichsen. In the National 
 Gallery 
 
MODFRN NORWEGIAN ART 599 
 
 Interior, bv Thorvald Erichsen. 
 Gallery 
 
 In the National 
 
 Cezanne's most inspired landscapes. Exaggerations and 
 odious comparisons aside, the truth is that something of what 
 Cezanne has been for universal art Erichsen has attempted 
 to be for Norwegian art. He is an artist of the first water, 
 with a remarkably fine eye for color and an individual, 
 copious, unfettered mastery of brush-technique. Few or 
 none of our younger men have contributed more than he 
 toward raising the level of artistic culture among us. I am 
 thinking now not of ideas and sentiments, which other paint- 
 ers with particular gifts and with temperaments of a different 
 order may have expressed still more intensely; I am thinking 
 of the concentrated, methodical seeking for the right thing, 
 no less fruitful for others than for himself, with which he 
 has cultivated his individual means of expression. Notwith- 
 standing his unusual intelligence and education, Erichsen has 
 not published a line. He has wrought only through his 
 palette. Yet in his own field he has been a model husband- 
 man of the artistic resources that lie within his domain. His 
 goal has always been the emancipation of painting from the 
 "subject," that is, from imitative dependence upon actuality. 
 It has been his purpose to make composition, color, tone, and 
 stroke stand out more strongly than the subject, than the 
 
600 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 Flower Piece, by Oluf Wold-Torne. 
 Privately owned 
 
 scene which may 
 chance to be the 
 point of departure 
 and reference for a 
 given piece of work. 
 He has never over- 
 stepped his proper 
 bounds. He never 
 became a cubist; nor 
 surely has he ever 
 made a stroke of the 
 brush without keep- 
 ing his eye on the 
 object. His work, 
 nevertheless, repre- 
 sents a stage in the 
 development of art toward its final emancipation in cubism. 
 In the National Gallery, Erichsen's paintings occupy the 
 greater part of the long wall in the "Young Men's Room." 
 They adjoin, and with their bright, shimmering, mother-of- 
 pearl tone harmonize admirably with those of his friend and 
 closest comrade, the painter of still life and flower pieces, 
 Oluf Wold-Torne, who was born in 1867 and died untimely 
 in 1919. 
 
 The two men, Erichsen and Torne, belong together as 
 regards age and development; in their art, as well, they show 
 a marked relationship and have followed much the same 
 paths. Torne, too, during his youth served a Danish ap- 
 prenticeship at Zahrtmann's school in Copenhagen. Beyond 
 that, however, he has built upon the foundation laid by the 
 native leaders, Werenskiold and Munthe. Yet these cir- 
 cumstances are not sufl^cient to account for the distinctive 
 place he holds in Norwegian art, as one of the few who have 
 gained a following Important enough to be named a school. 
 No one was more eager for knowledge or more enthusiastic 
 In the worship of good art, past and present, than was Torne. 
 In his early years he went with the Danes to Italy and there 
 received ineradicable impressions from Florence, Siena, and 
 
MODERN NORWI'Xil.W AKl 601 
 
 Decorative Composition, by Oluf Wold-Torne. In the National Gallery 
 
 the ancients. Like several others among the painters of the 
 nineties he began as a sort of pre-Raphaelite. Later, under 
 French tuition and discipline, he learned to express himself 
 in more modern terminology; above all, he attained a clearer 
 and fuller mastery of color. Like Erichsen, he became an 
 impressionist of the older order, yet with emphatic reminis- 
 cences of Cezanne and Van Gogh. The charm of Renoir was 
 more foreign to his somewhat awkward hand; in his tender 
 heart, nevertheless, he may have given the highest place of 
 all to that painter of flowers and of the joy of life. 
 
 Torne made his debut in 1893; and in 1894 he exhibited 
 his first mature work, a somewhat pre-Raphaelite portrait 
 of his wife. On his return to Norway, however, he asso- 
 ciated himself wholly with the national movement and its 
 tendencies toward the lyrical cult of nature ; and so he painted, 
 among other things, the inspired picture of The Young Stal- 
 lion tossing his whinnied challenge out across the barren 
 uplands, a canvas which now is in the collection of Rasmus 
 Meyer at Bergen. During this period he had much in com- 
 mon with Egedius. Torne's special field, meanwhile, was the 
 painting of flowers and of interiors. The quietly withdrawn 
 life of the home, with wife and children, flowers and apples 
 
602 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 and all beloved household things finds its exponent in him; 
 within this limited sphere he gives expression to his dreams 
 of artistic felicities in a gamut of tender and powerful colors 
 and in shimmering, pearly gradations. Torne's was no facile 
 art that rapidly reached its goal; it has been well said of him 
 that he wrestled like a very Jacob with his subjects. His 
 form is heavy, his stroke lacks grace ; in countless layers the 
 pigments lie spread upon the canvas. Yet he never gives up 
 the battle; and in his best pictures the hues gleam with a 
 peculiar volume and compactness which in intimate richness 
 of shading are, after their own fashion, without parallel in 
 Norwegian art, celebrated as that art is for its treatment of 
 color, Torne's endowments were, however, like those of 
 Munthe and to a certain degree also those of Werenskiold, 
 twofold. He practised naturalistic painting with a pre- 
 dominant emphasis on values and, in addition, had a strong 
 leaning toward ornamental and decorative handling of sur- 
 face effects. He did not possess Munthe's lush imagination 
 and gift for fine fabling; but at the bottom of his heart there 
 lay a deep desire to utter his thoughts freely, to sing his feel- 
 ings in art forms which should be at once rhythmically dis- 
 ciplined and more unfettered by the realities of life than the 
 laborious painting in oils. Torne's decorative production 
 came to be voluminous, and his gifts proved to be more 
 unmistakable in this field than in the domain of pure painting. 
 He has turned out a multitude of designs and drawings for 
 book illustrations, tapestries, embroideries, and strictly deco- 
 rative aquarelles in which figures and ornamentation appear 
 in clustered groupings. Toward the last he was occupied 
 also with painting on glass and with mural decorations. 
 While painting in oils was difficult for him, decoration was 
 easy. He had only to give full play to his pristine fancy and 
 to rely on his sure sense of balance and his naturally fresh 
 feeling for color; the compositions poured forth of their own 
 accord, vigorous, firm and compact, rhythmical and storied, 
 the product of youthful imagination and confident command 
 of the resources of style. His decorative art deals with chil- 
 dren and angels and climbing flowers. The happy religious 
 
MODERN NOWEGIAN ART 
 
 603 
 
 Sjodal Lake, by Kristen Holbo. In the National Gallery 
 
 faith that was the motive power in his life and his art find 
 ready egress here. In this realm of trustfulness and inno- 
 cence his childlike mind came into calm reliance and peace. 
 As a teacher of decorative art and composition at the School 
 of Arts and Crafts in Christiania, Torne exerted a great and 
 telling influence on younger men of the guild; and so he is to 
 be reckoned among the small number of Norwegian artists 
 who succeeded in forming a school. There was in him much 
 of the stuff of which a William Morris is made. 
 
 His most distinguished pupil and follower is Frojdis 
 Haavardsholm, a young woman of generous creative talent 
 and a strong personality, who, in the decorative field, has 
 become the inheritor of his renown and at the present time 
 is the leader of the decorative artists in Norway. To the 
 same group as Torne and Erichsen belongs another pupil of 
 Zahrtmann, the landscape painter Kristen Holbo, of Vaage, 
 an unspoiled and imaginative country artist who, in the pres- 
 entation of forest and mountain scenes from his home 
 parish, has occasionally done excellent things. Further, Wil- 
 
604 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 Three Children's Heads, by Ludvig Karsten. Privately owned 
 
 helm Wetlesen, who under Italian influences for a time 
 tended strongly toward the pre-Raphaelites but who in recent 
 years has arrived at more native and restrained means of 
 utterance ; August Jacobsen, who at first took his motifs from 
 nature in Jaederen, on the west coast of Norway, and later 
 from winter scenery in the upland interior; and Otto Hennig, 
 who discovered points of contact with his romantic feeling 
 for nature in older Norwegian art, in Dahl and Fearnley. 
 Sigmund Sinding, Otto Sinding's son, has put his best efforts 
 into pictures of children, of interiors, and of quiet, melan- 
 choly landscapes; while Hans Odegaard in a gloomy series 
 of paintings relates personal narratives from the dark, dirty, 
 forlorn, seamy side of life in the capital. More recently, 
 through the influence of the younger generation, notably 
 Deberitz, his art has gained in composition and in richness of 
 coloring. Severin Grande belongs also to the group which 
 began similarly with phases of Bohemian life in barren 
 
MODERN NOKWl'CilAX ART 
 
 ms 
 
 Consumptive Woman, by Ludvig Karsten. In the 
 National Gallery 
 
 ateliers; but as time passed, he has taken on a more modern 
 yet less individual manner. The same judgment applies to 
 Otto Johansen, an impulsive character of marked receptivity, 
 who after sundry divagations has cast anchor in the extremes 
 of French expressionism. 
 
 Far above these men of middling gifts rises an artist of 
 great pictorial talent, Ludvig Karsten, born in 1876, who is 
 justly regarded as Munch's successor, as the outstanding 
 personality in modern Norwegian painting. Karsten's in- 
 debtedness to Munch has by no means spoiled his Individ- 
 
606 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 Knut Hamsun, by Henrik Lund. Privately owned 
 
 uality. His originality is strong and undeniable, and he has 
 more formal training than most of his contemporaries; the 
 time of study he spent in Munich resulted in a solid founda- 
 tion of technical ability which most of the younger artists 
 may well envy him. A picture such as that of the Three 
 Children's Heads, owned by Johan Anker, is painted with a 
 living sense of reality and a sweeping virtuosity which no 
 other Norwegian artist can equal. And when in the National 
 Gallery we stand before Karsten's big picture of the Con- 
 
MODF.RN NORWEGIAN ART 
 
 if 
 
 607 
 
 Portr 
 
 Author Hans Jaeger, by Henrik Lund. Privately 
 owned 
 
 sumptive Old Woman, who appears so simple and genuine in 
 her homespun dress, it is possible that reminiscences of cer- 
 tain works by Munch which have suggested the composition 
 may occur to us, but coloristically the picture holds its own in 
 defiance of Munch. Indeed it is possible that Karsten's color- 
 istic gift is more vigorous and robust than that of Munch ; but 
 Munch's mastery does not depend on color alone — it is a 
 part of his own commanding personality. 
 
 Side by side with Karsten stands Henrik Lund as the most 
 prolific and interesting talent of the neo-impressionistic camp. 
 The influence of Munch in his earlier years was fructified by 
 
608 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 The Author Gunnar Heiberg and Others in a Garden, by Henrik Lund. 
 Privately Owned in Bergen 
 
 his admiration for Krohg's art of the eighties and by the 
 impetus received from Manet. Henrik Lund is first and 
 foremost a portrait painter. The keynote of his art is his 
 shrewd psychological insight and his gift for salient charac- 
 terization. None can equal him in catching a fleeting expres- 
 sion and transferring it to canvas— a glance, a half smile, a 
 feature that reveals and yet conceals personality. He handles 
 the brush with dexterous and virile strength which makes him 
 one of the few real virtuosos of Norwegian painting. His 
 coloring, which formerly had a soft and gracious cast with a 
 prevalence of powdered grey, has in recent years developed 
 into bold and striking effects. 
 
 To the same circle of modern colorists belongs Arne Kavll., 
 who was born in 1878. He began as a painter of Jsederen 
 in a heavy dark coloring with austere and restrained draw- 
 ing — a typical neo-romanticist with decided leanings to the 
 
M()1)1:RN NOKWl'XilAN AR'I 
 
 600 
 
 In the Attic, by Bernhard Folkestad. In the National Gallery 
 
 gallery. Later he has turned to the right about and is now the 
 very opposite of his former self. He has developed into a 
 graceful and subtle impressionist of a decidedly modern type 
 with a palette that is the last word in brightness and airiness. 
 In addition to being a painter of taste, Kavli is also a talented 
 caricaturist with a caustic wit. 
 
 Torstein Torsteinson, born in 1876, began in the nineties 
 with a style learned in the school of the famous painter of 
 nuances, Whistler. Later, under the influence partly of 
 Munch and partly of modern French art, he has found the 
 form best suited to him in a light, flowing color, combined 
 with powerful draughtsmanship, and revealing in his best 
 pictures a considerable amount of character as well as a 
 trained artistic taste. 
 
 Closely related to the foregoing painters, we have Bern- 
 hard Folkestad, born in 1879. He is a temperamental artist 
 with a gift for decorative effect who, in a bright and vivid 
 coloring, paints preferably still life, flowers, fruit, or scenes 
 from the chicken-yard, whose pied inhabitants he has ob- 
 served closely. Among his most important works is a monu- 
 
SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 Two Young Girls, by Soren Onsager. In the National Gallery 
 
 mental still life of vegetables In which a red and a green 
 cabbage are prominent. This painting, which was his debut, 
 was immediately bought by the National Gallery. As an 
 Interpreter of the nature of the Westland, Nicolai Astrup, 
 born In 1880 In Jolster, in western Norway, has found a spe- 
 cial field well suited to his imaginative nature lyricism. He 
 may well be said to have broken new ground for Norwegian 
 landscape painting. A. C. Svarstad, born in 1869, has also 
 found a special field, though a very different one, in the city 
 picture. In pale grey or slightly archaistically colored paint- 
 ings from the South and from the North he has combined 
 colorlstic subtlety with a certain amount of involuntary 
 naivlte. Svarstad has also painted psychologically interesting 
 portraits, especially of women. Among the painters of this 
 younger generation should also be mentioned Soren Onsager, 
 
MODERN NORWEGIAN ART 611 
 
 Gudrun, by Henrik Sorensen. Privately owned in Gothenburg 
 
 whose favorite subject is the nude human body. With ex- 
 quisite delicacy of feeling he paints especially very young 
 girls with a peculiar subdued, restrained coloring which 
 shows the impress of his Danish-French training under 
 Zahrtmann and Gaugin, 
 
 The youngest Norwegian artists belong to the so-called 
 expressionistic cult, and most of them have after their school- 
 ing at home continued their study in Paris, generally in the 
 famous atelier of Matisse. There some of them have 
 
612 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 Fishermen in the Mediterranean, by Axel Revold. Privately owned 
 
 acquired a well-grounded and broad artistic culture and a 
 sense of composition and drawing, neither of which are very 
 common here at home. This fact has undoubtedly attracted 
 less attention than it should, inasmuch as the public has chiefly 
 noted the unusual palette affected by the group, combined of 
 clear, strong pigments in decorative juxtaposition. In 19 14, 
 in the secessionist exhibition known as De fjorten at the Cen- 
 tennial Exposition at Christiania, these young painters made 
 an impressive showing. There is no doubt that the group 
 contains several unusual and original talents with a very 
 creditable production behind them. Among them are Henrik 
 Sorensen, Jean Heiberg, Per Deberitz, Rudolf Thygesen, 
 and Axel Revold. My personal belief is that it is in this 
 direction we must look in the future for the most valuable 
 contributions to Norwegian pictorial art. 
 
X 
 
 SCULPTURE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 
 
 THE history of Norwegian sculpture in the nineteenth 
 century is not a very eventful or briUiant saga. It is a 
 history in which there are no high seas and no dashing 
 breakers; it deals with a continuous, quiet struggle in which 
 defeats are many and victories few. It recounts how a small 
 number of isolated men fought to secure the rights of nativity, 
 even beneath the low skies of Norway, for an art that had its 
 origin in remote, sunny lands, and which more than any other 
 art requires sunshine, wealth, harmonious conditions — a 
 superabundance of the joy of life and of sensuous ease. Pov- 
 erty, winter weather, and pietism, however, are stubborn 
 opponents. Nor can it be denied, unfortunately, that among 
 the protagonists of the plastic arts in Norway there were not 
 many who were endowed with that richness of talent which 
 conquers all opposition and soon or late builds enduring 
 reputations. 
 
 Industry and conscientiousness, fidelity toward their ex- 
 alted summons, a desire for learning, a love for their great 
 exemplars, and a resigned courage in the arduous battle of 
 life — these are the virtues, nevertheless, which have dis- 
 tinguished the Norwegian sculptors, almost without excep- 
 tion. Some among them, moreover, possessed native gifts 
 which, had they not been repressed by force of circumstances, 
 would have brought about a more considerable and a more 
 fruitful production than that which now remains to us. Yet 
 there is to be found in this small group, in the personality of 
 Middelthun, an individual talent of the purest ray, refined 
 through culture into added serenity. The cultural climate of 
 
 613 
 
614 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 his own land, however, was too harsh for his delicate and 
 soulful nature, and his talent never reached its full measure 
 of vigor and luxuriance. 
 
 Another among them, Sinding, an active and fearless 
 spirit, has bravely attacked the most difficult problems and in 
 supple sympathy with contemporaneous French sculpture has 
 executed a series of works which have borne the master's 
 fame far beyond the confines of his native country. His 
 artistic individuality, nevertheless, is not of those that are 
 bound to their own soil; impatient over all the tribulations 
 which a Norwegian sculptor must contend with, he has chosen 
 Denmark as his second home. 
 
 The only one of the number who has given substance to an 
 art that with unfailing power reflects a deep and vehemently 
 marked personality still stands beneath an ascendent star. 
 And his achievements are already numerous enough and 
 weighty enough to give an impression of the profound 
 philosophy of life expressed through his art. This man is 
 Vigeland. For the rest we meet but few whose endowments 
 have attained such a height or developed so distinctive a qual- 
 ity that they deserve to be named unusual. Most of them 
 bear the scars of the overpowering conditions under which 
 they have labored. At an earlier or later period their artistic 
 strength has been crippled. 
 
 It was not merely that with the larger number the natural 
 craving for encouragement and for favoring fortune was 
 altogether too infrequently satisfied. Even that mutual 
 sympathy of artist for artist, which from time to time has 
 served to unite our painters and to hearten them in seasons 
 of trial, is not discoverable among the scattered and isolated 
 figures in the small company of our embattled sculptors. 
 The battle they have waged has been, in almost every single 
 case, not only a depressing battle on behalf of art, but too 
 often also a bitter struggle for breaci. Hardly one of them 
 has escaped the occasional lack of the bare necessaries of 
 existence. 
 
 On the other hand, it is just their calm courage and their 
 fidelity to a once accepted calling that lend significance to 
 
MODERN NORWEGIAN ART 615 
 
 their warfare and cast a gleam of greatness over even the 
 lowliest of that little band who ventured upon the field of 
 sculpture among a people which had so few of the rccjuisite 
 qualifications to understand and to feel the need of their art. 
 In the light of these facts alien and compatriot alike must 
 \iew their life and their work. 
 
 As a decorative adjunct to architecture and to the more 
 dignified of the handicrafts plastic art has an ancient footing 
 in Norway. The abundant examples of carving from 
 our Romanesque timber churches in various parts of the 
 land bear sufficient witness to the early development of 
 plastic gifts among the people. Furthermore, amid the 
 large quantity of foreign things adorning the medieval 
 Norwegian stone churches, one can find a considerable 
 number of sculptures, particularly an array of portrait-like 
 heads anci masks in the cathedral at Trondhjem, which 
 may be assumed to be the accomplishment of native 
 craftsmen. 
 
 On the submergence of our political independence, how- 
 ever, the national traditions were broken also in this sphere, 
 and art life, no less than culture in its other phases, sank 
 back during subsequent centuries into a wretched state. Yet 
 the old prepossession and the old talent for artistic wood- 
 carving continued to be transplanted among the rural popula- 
 tion in several localities, and notably during the seventeenth 
 and eighteenth centuries reached a respectable height. It 
 must be ascribed solely to the neglected condition in which 
 Norway found herself under Danish rule that the generous 
 and prevalent gift for wood-carving among the country folk 
 failed to assume nobler shapes in sculpture of an essentially 
 Norwegian character. 
 
 The only one of the rustic wood-carvers of Norway who 
 managed to lift himself to the status of a really trained artist, 
 an artist of no mean rank, was Magnus Berg, who later 
 became a painter and a carver. His technically finished work 
 in Ivory Is rated with the best performances of the baroque 
 age. Yet the nation was robbed of his vigorous resources, 
 too, since he placed them at the service of the king of Den- 
 
616 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 mark, spent the greater part of his days in Copenhagen, and 
 died there in 1739. 
 
 Of rustic birth, like Magnus Berg, was also Hans Michel- 
 sen, the first Norwegian sculptor in the period following 
 upon the separation from Denmark, and for a long time the 
 only one. Michelsen was born in 1789 in the neighborhood 
 of Trondhjem, where he lived first as a farmer and later as a 
 soldier until, at the age of twenty-six, following urgent advice, 
 he journeyed to Stockholm in order to employ his unusual 
 talent for wood-carving in efforts to become a sculptor. It is 
 certain that Michelsen's gifts aroused the highest public ex- 
 pectations. Perhaps these expectations took shape in the 
 anticipatory dream that he might at some future time grow 
 to be an artist whose reputation would throw a reflected 
 splendor over his culturally indigent native land, a glory like 
 that which Sergei had brought to Sweden and Thorvaldsen 
 to Denmark. Evidence of such a hope appears in the govern- 
 ment support which Michelsen received, even during his 
 apprenticeship in Stockholm, and which fell to his lot for a 
 series of years while he sought farther training in Thor- 
 valdsen's workshop in Rome. Yet when Michelsen returned 
 home, after a decade of study abroad, he was presently made 
 to feel keenly to what a degree it was the vanity of the nation 
 and not its love of art that had held up his hands through this 
 long period of preparation. As matters stood at the time, 
 economic exigencies and intellectual limitations combined to 
 render sculpture superfluous in our country. The prospect 
 of finding employment in the decoration of the palace at 
 Christiania, which was then being erected, had lured Michel- 
 sen to Norway from Rome. Even the very building opera- 
 tions, however, came to a standstill for seven years by reason 
 of the lack of funds; the mere thought of adorning the edi- 
 fice was necessarily still more remote. Some attempts were 
 made to find a place for the unemployed sculptor as a teacher 
 at the School of Design in Christiania, but even here there 
 was no need for his services. No recourse appeared open 
 to him. 
 
 Consequently, In 1828, he found his way back to Stock- 
 
MODI'.RN NORWI'.CryXN ART 617 
 
 liolii), w luTC lie Ii:ul s|>(,'ii( scNcral h;ipi)y }c;irs as an appren- 
 tice aiul where iti loniier clays, at all e\eiUs, he had enjoyed 
 (he patronage of men of suhstance. On his arrival, as 
 misfortune would have it, he learned that his old benefactor 
 Peder Anker, secretary of state, was dead and that he was 
 himself quite forgotten. In order to gain his daily bread he 
 was compelled to work as a marble-cutter in the ateliers of 
 Swedish sculptors. His spare hours he devoted to carrying 
 out his own designs. It was not until 1833 that he was able 
 to summon his energies for the outstanding achievement of 
 his life. In Rome he had seen Thorvaldsen's figures of the 
 apostles take form, and they must evidently have left a deep 
 impression upon him. Still they cannot have fully satisfied 
 his ideals, since he felt impelled to try his luck with the same 
 subjects. 
 
 The figures of the Apostles, executed for the cathedral at 
 Trondhjem, are characterized throughout by the contem- 
 porary tendency toward the antique and toward abstract 
 Idealism, and show no evidence whatever of an effort to adapt 
 the style of the statues to that of their architectural back- 
 ground. They are a series of normal figures, most properly 
 to be described as drapery figures,* in which the artist by 
 means of unnecessarily abundant folds in the antique garb 
 has managed to attain a certain pompous and dignified effect. 
 Yet not one of them carries the stamp of personal feeling or 
 expresses any positive individuality. 
 
 The apostles, nevertheless, found general approval in 
 Norway as well as in Stockholm, and they even opened for 
 their creator the doors of the Swedish Academy of Art. 
 Despite this success Michelsen was unable to gain a perma- 
 nent position in Stockholm. After several years of the most 
 miserable existence, he came to the conviction, in 1841, that 
 there was no other egress from his unhappy situation than to 
 give up all notions of sustaining himself by his art, and ac- 
 cordingly he returned to his native heath and resumed his 
 labor in the fields and his wood-carving. 
 
 Some years later the poet Johan Sebastian Welhaven set 
 on foot a subscription for the purpose of placing a commis- 
 
618 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 sion with the aging artist. Once more Hans MIchelsen took 
 up his chisel, and finished a bust of Holberg, which is to be 
 seen in the library of the University of Christiania. In 1850 
 he was entrusted with the execution of four Statues of Old 
 Norse Kings, designed for Oscarshal. These works, how- 
 ev^er, demonstrate all too plainly that only pitiful remnants 
 were left of the talent upon which Thorvaldsen had passed 
 so favorable a verdict thirty years before. Finally, in 1859, 
 provision was made to free the septuagenarian artist from 
 the most carking financial cares by proposing on his behalf 
 a small government pension. Before the grant could be 
 arranged, however, Hans MIchelsen died. 
 
 It was not until 1850, when King Oscar I ordered the 
 building and the adornment of his little summer palace, 
 Oscarshal, that the artists of Norway received their first 
 official commission. On this occasion we meet a new sculptor, 
 Christopher Borch, who was charged with the composition of 
 a brace of reliefs upon motives from Fridthjof's Saga and a 
 series of decorative heads intended to represent personalities 
 from medieval Norway. Borch was born In Drammen In 
 1 8 17. Equipped with experience In carpentry and wood- 
 carving he had for a time sought higher training at the 
 Academy of Art in Copenhagen, until eventually he decided 
 to become a sculptor and entered Bissen's atelier. 
 
 While MIchelsen reflected in his art the classicism of 
 Thorvaldsen, Borch represented that national romanticism 
 which in subsequent years colored intellectual life with fresh 
 idealism. The best feature in his art is just the pure-hearted 
 and simple enthusiasm with which he seized upon the patriotic 
 and religious ideals of the period. Only too often, neverthe- 
 less, his works lost their pristine energy and ardent feeling 
 as they took shape beneath his hand. He was most success- 
 ful in two statues with Biblical themes, The Daughter of 
 Jephthah, and David and Shulamite. Yet none of his pro- 
 ductions possesses personality and vigor of form. There is 
 a smooth and patent commonness about everything that he 
 has done. 
 
 Borch's circumstances and his artistic career, it might well 
 
MODKRN NORWFXilAN ART 619 
 
 he s:ii(l, fell in pleasant places as compared with the lives and 
 lortunes of two contemporary sculptors, Hans Hansen and 
 Hans Biklal. 1 laiisen, after some years of study in Copen- 
 hagen and a longer sojourn in Rome, passed his latter days 
 in Christiania, where, finding practically no means of liveli- 
 hood, he secluded himself in shyness and poverty, and died 
 at the early age of thirty-seven. Budal, like most of the 
 other Norwegian sculptors, was of rustic origin and to begin 
 with a wood-carver. From Jerichau's atelier in Copenhagen 
 he proceeded in 1861 to Rome, and there he remained ten 
 years, continuously struggling with the most abject want. 
 At the Scandinavian Exposition in Stockholm in 1866 he 
 exhibited a Christ Upon the Cross and two genre figures, 
 which in all their simplicity gave telling evidence of his 
 artistic abilities. His bust of Karl XV Is in the National 
 Gallery. The last years of his life he spent at home, poor 
 and forgotten. He died In 1879. 
 
 Nor did the two succeeding artists, Gloslmodt and Flad- 
 ager, both country boys and wood-carvers, ever manage to 
 reach the sunny side. Gloslmodt, a pupil of the Academy 
 of Art In Copenhagen, passed the better part of his time 
 in the Danish capital. Little by little he gave over his activ- 
 ities as a sculptor In favor of his Increasing capacity for 
 beautiful carving In ivory and box-wood. The busts of Tide- 
 mand and Gude In the National Gallery are by Gloslmodt. 
 A man of more adaptable talent was Fladager, who likewise 
 received his artistic schooling In Copenhagen, and later in 
 Rome. Among his works may be mentioned, in addition to 
 certain busts, the Baptismal Angel In Our Saviour's Church 
 In Christiania, and his David, strongly touched by the influ- 
 ence of Thorvaldsen and yet rather fine, which now Is In the 
 National Gallery. 
 
 In the person of MIddelthun we meet at last a sculptor of 
 the purest talent, a talent with which are associated both 
 intelligence and nobility of soul. Though many causes com- 
 bined to narrow the range of his art, It still comprises works 
 that belong with the most magnificent things produced In 
 Norway. Julius MIddelthun was born at Kongsberg in 
 
620 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 1820 as the son of a coin engraver. The younger man prac- 
 tised the trade of goldsmith until he was enabled to enter 
 Bissen's atelier in Copenhagen. His stay in the Danish city 
 continued through an entire decade. Under the guidance 
 of Bissen and the inspiration of the exalted idealism in the 
 art of Thorvaldsen he grew to be what he was in very deed: 
 an artist in whose endeavors the most honest observation 
 of reality is united with a distinguished and clarified percep- 
 tion of beauty. Above all else he cultivated and held in 
 honor a thoroughly elaborated form. 
 
 Upon the Copenhagen period there followed for Mid- 
 delthun an extremely significant sojourn of eight years in 
 Rome, during which he acquired a deep and intense under- 
 standing of the spirit and the eloquent forms of antiquity. 
 Yet from this time, as from the time he studied in 
 Copenhagen, we have very few examples of his power. An 
 insatiable receptivity and an exaggerated humility in the 
 presence of great models appear to have overmastered him 
 and to have restricted his productiveness. After his return 
 to Norway Middelthun became somewhat more prolific; still 
 he never became really fluent in expression. His sedulously 
 reflective sense of form prevented him from ever being 
 wholly satisfied with his results. It seemed as if a profound 
 respect for his art had conspired with a natural timorous- 
 ness to deter him from laying his boaster aside and facing 
 courageously a finished piece of work. 
 
 Middelthun's art leaves the collective impression that he 
 was first and foremost a splendid portraitist. His synthetical 
 imagination was much less developed than his psychological 
 instinct and his penetrating sense of form — which are the 
 qualities best fitted for the demands of portraiture. Never- 
 theless, it was not in the first Instance his feeling for the 
 outwardly characteristic that made him a prominent artist 
 In this field. Almost all of his portraits are the fruit of a 
 certain Intuitive grasp of the personality of the subject. To 
 cause the soul to gleam through the features of a face was 
 his steadfast purpose. 
 
 Thoroughly permeated with such an admiring intent is 
 
MOI)l',RN NORWFXiIy\N ART 
 
 621 
 
 Bust of the Poet Welhaven, by Julius 
 
 Middelthun. In the Students' Union, 
 
 Christiania 
 
 Middelthun's soulful bronze bust of Halfdan Kjerulf in 
 the pretty little square In Christiania that bears the com- 
 poser's name. Before producing this work Middelthun 
 executed, about i860, the two marble busts of Wergeland 
 and Welhaven that now have a place in the assembly room 
 of the Students' Union in Christiania. In the bust of Werge- 
 land Middelthun has tried to seize the ecstatic enthusiasm, 
 the high-spirited confidence of Wergeland's nature. He has 
 succeeded only in part. Quite lacking in the bust are that 
 power and that force one expects to find in the author of The 
 Creation, Man, and the Messiah. In the bust of Welhaven, 
 on the other hand, Middelthun has penetrated to the very 
 
622 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 heart of personality. It is evident that the artist has felt an 
 intimate spiritual kinship with certain phases of Welhaven's 
 creative, poetic genius. His representation reveals a soul 
 freed from earthly dross. Yet on those features there still 
 remain palpitating traces of the conflicts that have raged 
 within. The attitude is firm, severe; the eye steady, com- 
 pelling; the brow smooth, commanding. That calm clarity 
 of reason which Welhaven strove throughout life to attain is 
 now visible in his countenance. Only about the full and 
 broadly modelled lips there still remain the quivering evi- 
 dences of a vehement spirit, the signs of an Irascible love of 
 battle, the tokens of a venomous wit. Yet out of the depths 
 of his being shines the light of his eyes, manly and quiet, 
 proud and gentle, as of one who discerns beyond the pro- 
 foundest sadness the precious meanings of life. 
 
 The last large task that Middelthun had to fulfill was the 
 execution of a monument to Professor Anton Martin 
 Schweigaard on the University grounds. It was unveiled in 
 1883. In reality Middelthun's talent was perhaps of too 
 intimate a character to adapt itself readily to monumental 
 sculpture. For him the bust was a much more suitable vehicle 
 of portraiture than the monumental statue. Nevertheless, 
 even if the Schweigaard statue is not quite happy, it is still 
 free from the common, bombastic monumental effect; it is 
 restrained and beautifully conceived. More than that, the 
 real value of the statue is in the head itself, in the open, trust- 
 worthy countenance with its clean-cut features, its warm, 
 clear glance, and its wise half-smile. Among Middelthun's 
 other works mention should be made of the brilliant bust of 
 Wessel* in the National Gallery and the excellent marble 
 bust of the Eidsvold man,t Jacob Aall, in the same place. 
 Middelthun died at Christiania In 1886, sixty-six years of 
 age. Neither during his life nor after his death has his talent 
 been estimated at its intrinsic value. 
 
 *Johan Herman Wessel, a satirical poet, born in Norway but resident in 
 Copenhagen, who died in 1785. His best known work is the witty comedy, 
 Love Sans Stockings. 
 
 fA member of the contituent assembly in Eidsvold at the time when Norway 
 severed her political connection with Denmark in 1814. 
 
M()1)1":RN NORWrXilAN ART r,23 
 
 ( )f ail artistic nature wliolly clilfci-ciU Trom that of Micldcl- 
 ihuii was IJrynjuir lk'rjj,slicn, his junior hy ten years. In 
 Hergslien's nati\e endowments tlie g()\erning characteristic 
 was a jaunty and fcsti\c breadth of mind. His capacity for 
 work was Huent and vigorous, his form full and supple, and 
 at times hold. It is not to be denied, however, that the mul- 
 tifarious and casual production to order, which his active and 
 easy nature led him into, came in the course of time to exert 
 a destructive influence upon his artistic discrimination, and 
 sank his later performances down to a level of smooth in- 
 sipidity where the distance between the good and the bad is 
 extremely short. None the less, in the palmy days of his 
 talent Bergslien gave to Christiania the best, the most festive, 
 the most effective monumental statue we possess. 
 
 Brynjulf Bergslien was born in Voss in 1830, and belongs 
 to a country family with highly developed artistic leanings. 
 Bergslien became a pupil of Bissen in Copenhagen, and in 
 that capacity he was entrusted with the task of rendering 
 Thorvaldsen's Jason and his Hope in marble for the Thor- 
 valdsen Museum. Bergslien remained in Copenhagen eight 
 years, and, like all of the older Norwegian sculptors, he 
 owed much to the tuition of Danish masters. After a subse- 
 quent stay in Rome he returned to Norway, where he lived 
 thenceforth. It was in the design for an equestrian monu- 
 ment to Carl Johan in 1868 that Bergslien's talent first 
 reached complete maturity; on this occasion he carried off the 
 prize in a competition with a Norwegian, a Swedish, and a 
 French sculptor. The French marshal, chosen king, is pre- 
 sented in the act of acknowledging the plaudits of his people, 
 bearing himself royally upon a mettlesome, caracoling 
 charger. The silhouette of the monument serves effectually 
 its adorning purpose in its elevated position on the terrace of 
 the spacious palace yard; the horse particularly is ener- 
 getically modelled, and with feeling for decorative effect. 
 
 Two years after this successful work Bergslien was com- 
 missioned to execute the statue of Henrik Wergeland for the 
 Students' Park in Christiania. In this case, however, his tal- 
 ents failed him to an almost astounding degree. Here, where 
 
624 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 the problem was not only that of attaining an external deco- 
 rative quality but of giving a characteristic representation of 
 the personality of a man of genius, Bergslien disclosed the 
 limitations of his art. It is very difficult to find in this 
 theatrical figure the least trace of Wergeland's proud and 
 ardently poetic soul. 
 
 It was unfortunate, therefore, that it did not fall to 
 Bergslien's lot to create the statue which more than any other 
 was suited to his gifts and for which he had made an excellent 
 model, now in the National Gallery — the monument to the 
 founder of the city of Christiania, Christian IV. There is 
 authority and magnificent poise about this royal father of his 
 country who points out with his riding whip the future loca- 
 tion of the capital city, and there is humor in the characteriza- 
 tion of his corpulent figure. Still Bergslien's design, which 
 had breadth and freshness of form, was rejected as too 
 realistic, in favor of one far less significant. Bergslien has 
 produced, in addition, a number of decorative pieces, and in 
 the course of years a quantity of busts to order, of which 
 those of the singing master Behrens and of Sven Foyn proba- 
 bly are the best. 
 
 Bergslien's successful competitor in the design for the 
 statue of Christian IV was Carl Jacobsen, who, like the 
 earlier Norwegian sculptors, received his artistic training in 
 Denmark. Jacobsen turned out to be an upright artist, who 
 always gave industriously and conscientiously what there 
 was in him to give. As a portrait sculptor he became very 
 popular, but It is especially the two public monuments he 
 produced which must be taken as the measure of his powers. 
 The bust of Wessel, erected in heroic proportions in front 
 of the building of the Norwegian Society in Christiania, is 
 the least considerable of them, and is inferior to MIddelthun's 
 statue of Wessel. More notable Is his statue of Christian IV 
 on the market-place in Christiania; It was unveiled in 1880. 
 This Is a carefully executed, but not particularly original, 
 historical costume-figure; a comparison will hardly demon- 
 strate its superiority to Bergslien's model. 
 
 In all of the artists who have been mentioned above there 
 
MODERN NORWFXilAN ART 625 
 
 nre traces, in a greater or lesser number of their worlds, of the 
 lingering echoes of Danish classicism, an influence to be 
 expected since they had all spent their apprentice years in 
 Danish ateliers. Not until the se\ cnties tlid a new company 
 of artists appear who had received their first schooling on 
 their native soil, and whose understanding of their function 
 had little or nothing in common with the classical or romantic 
 idealism of the older generation. The realistic and natural- 
 istic view of art which for a long time had been manifesting 
 itself in Europe, and more especially in L'rance, now began 
 to win a foothold in Norway as well. After a fiery struggle 
 in the eighties between the champions of the older and the 
 newer conceptions, the men of the younger generation, with 
 their realistic vision, become the true representatives of our 
 national art life. Though the cleavage between the old and 
 the new is less noticeable in sculpture than in painting, a 
 change is clearly discernible; and from this time forth it is 
 no longer in the direction of the plastic traditions of Den- 
 mark, but in the direction of modern German and, still more, 
 modern French sculpture that the coming artists turn their 
 eyes. 
 
 Stephan Sinding, Mathlas Skeibrok, and Soren Lexow- 
 Hansen all began as pupils of Middelthun; later, however, 
 each of them followed a path of his own, and none of them 
 came to adhere very closely to the tendencies of their first 
 master. 
 
 Stephan Sinding, who was born at Roros in 1846, belongs 
 to an artistically gifted family. After a period of study 
 under Wolf In Berlin, and after having shown a statue at the 
 Universal Exposition In Paris In 1878, Sinding attacked in 
 Rome the great group which made him famous : A Barbarian 
 Woman Carrying Her Son Off the Battlefield, now In the 
 Glyptothek at Copenhagen and In the National Gallery at 
 Chrlstlanla. It Is a gruesome, sanguinary mood from the 
 time of the migration of the peoples that the artist has sought 
 to express In this violently agitated group, the old Hunnlsh 
 woman and the son whom she Is dragging away from the field 
 of battle. While the detailed treatment of form does not 
 
626 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 Barbarian Woman Carrying Her Son off the Battle- 
 field, by Stephan Sinding. In the National Gallery 
 
 measure up to the level of the energetic linear construction 
 of the composition, the Barbarian Group is nevertheless an 
 extremely effective piece of work on the part of a man of 
 notable plastic talent. The Barbarian Woman is really 
 
M(M)1<:RN NORWEGIAN ART 627 
 
 Sindlntr's masterpiece. Never siiuc lias liis pi-odiiction at- 
 tainetl sueli a heifrht. 
 
 As eaid)' as (he lii'st years ol the ei}j,hlirs Siiiiliiijj; eslah- 
 lislietl liiinself in Copenhaj^en, where he loiiiui an ardent 
 admirer and a generous Mcrcenas, wlio t;a\e him se\eral 
 hirge commissions. His works arc therefore in the main to 
 he looked for in the Glyptothek at Copenhagen, a collection 
 assemhled and sustained by the Danish brewer, Carl Jacob- 
 sen. After having composed a rather extensive decorative 
 frieze for the Glyptothek, Sinding summoned his forces about 
 a series of groups which, like the Barbarian Woman, draw 
 their themes from the greatest and most elemental emotions. 
 The mother burying her son, the man embracing a woman, 
 the mother nursing her child, the widow grieving at her hus- 
 band's death — these are the subjects of The Barbarian 
 Group, Two Human Beings, The Captive Mother, and A 
 Woman Beside Her Husband's Body, An artist who sets 
 himself tasks so exacting as these wants neither courage nor 
 high confidence in his own powers. Motives the most deserv- 
 ing of artistic consecration — love and death — Sinding has 
 made the object of his supreme endeavors. One cannot 
 escape the impression, however, that he has approached his 
 problems with somewhat conspicuous temerity. There Is no 
 suggestion that he has had any fear for the results. Not- 
 withstanding all that is effective and striking In the subjects, 
 or In the composition of these groups, they are not among 
 the works of art that seize our deepest feelings. Perhaps It 
 is because the purpose Is too manifest, and also because the 
 treatment of the form Is as a rule too fugitive, either alto- 
 gether too bulging or altogether too smooth, seldom pene- 
 trating and sharp. 
 
 Best In linear power, yet noticeably affected. Is The Cap- 
 tive Mother, a young and shapely woman, who with hands 
 bound at her back Is kneeling on the ground and offering her 
 breasts to the hungry lips of her child. The theme Is old and 
 well known from the art of Rubens. Two Human Beings 
 presents a nude man and a nude woman meeting In embraces 
 and kisses. At the time when Two Human Beings appeared 
 
628 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 there was to be found in Norwegian painting but one picture 
 with an erotic subject, and that one picture was Tidemand's 
 Courtship. At that time there was to be found in Norwegian 
 sculpture but one nude female figure, and that one was 
 Borch's Shulamite. These two facts are patent evidence 
 that Sinding's Two Human Beings represented a daring 
 achievement; and it will always be to Sinding's greatest 
 artistic credit that he had the impulse and the will to give an 
 exposition of love which hid behind no pretext, which sought 
 justification in no mythological or paradisaical title. 
 
 Two Human Beings, on its first appearance, was received 
 with varying emotions. Even those who originally felt ad- 
 miration for the daring idea embodied in the group must now, 
 on seeing it after the lapse of years cast in bronze in the 
 National Gallery, recognize its obvious weaknesses. It is 
 an embrace which is intended to be seen and marvelled at as 
 the plastic solution of a new and difficult problem, a solution 
 that seems to be the result of painstaking deliberation, a solu- 
 tion In which the first fine rapture of the artist appears to have 
 cooled considerably during the process of execution. Besides, 
 the group is less vigorous on its formal side than the earlier 
 groups. From the point of view of composition the stooping 
 attitude has a labored and rather clumsy effect, the propor- 
 tions of the figures are doubtful, and the treatment of sur- 
 faces has neither sharpness nor marked character. 
 
 The decrease in energy of form Is unfortunately still more 
 noticeable In later works by Sindlng. The portrait statues of 
 Bjornson and Ibsen which have been placed before the 
 National Theatre bear only too unmistakable witness of the 
 falling off In his art, and they should in kindness be mentioned 
 with the utmost brevity. It is difficult to understand how the 
 creator of The Barbarian Woman could possibly produce 
 anything so empty and so lacking in taste as these caricatures 
 of the two poets, In which even the portrait likeness has been 
 missed completely. More recent works by Sindlng belong 
 rather to Denmark and Germany than to Norway. 
 
 Mathias Skelbrok was born in Lister in 185 1. After 
 spending some time in Jerichau's atelier In Copenhagen, he 
 
MODRRN NORWFXJTAN ART 620 
 
 came to Paris in 1S76 upon a ^oN'cniiiicnt allowance, and 
 rcniaincil (here lour years. At the Universal Exposition of 
 187.S he exhibited his first larger piece, Ragnar Lodhrok in 
 the Serpents' Den, which is now to be seen in the National 
 Gallery. There are intlieations that when the artist began 
 this work he had some sort of concept of a Northern Prome- 
 theus, the embodiment of strength and power writhing under 
 restraining bonds. The necessary anatomical studies, how- 
 ever, proved to be so arduous for the youthful and conscien- 
 tious sculptor that they robbed him of much of the vitality 
 which should have gone into the execution itself. The result 
 came to be a very muscular figure of a man, who writhes in 
 pain and yet whose anguish cannot touch us deeply because 
 our emotional reaction is constantly disturbed by fresh dis- 
 coveries of protruding muscles. 
 
 During these earlier years of his career Skeibrok executed 
 a series of half-size statuettes, principally upon historical 
 themes, such as Tjostolf Aalesen, Snorre, and The Outlaw. 
 More profoundly treated than these historical subjects are 
 Skeibrok's plain and simple representations of episodes from 
 daily life, the two genre statuettes : Mother is Watching, and 
 Weary. The last-named work is by and large the foremost 
 fruit of Skeibrok's talent, intensely conceived and carefully 
 finished. It is a very unassuming representation of a young 
 country girl overpowered by weariness. Relaxed in sleep the 
 youthful, half-dressed woman is resting with her arm over 
 the back of a chair and her head inclined heavily upon her 
 shoulder. The figure is to be found in several Norwegian 
 collections, among them the National Gallery, and also in 
 private galleries. 
 
 Until a short time before his death In 1896 Skeibrok was 
 occupied for a series of years with the largest artistic prob- 
 lem of his career, the decoration of the great pediment of 
 the University main building. The composition shows 
 Athene endowing with soul the man to whom Prometheus 
 has given body. An allegory of this kind was certainly not 
 suited to Skeibrok's temperament, nor did such spacious and 
 decorative work accord well with his talents. 
 
630 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 Skeibrok's production as a 
 portraitist was very compre- 
 hensive. He executed busts 
 of a large number of our 
 most prominent celebrities, 
 such as Edvard Grieg and 
 Bjornson, Johan Sverdrup 
 and Soren Jaabaek, Ernst 
 Sars and Doctor Danielsen, 
 Laura Gundersen and 
 Johanne Reimers, and many 
 others. Skeibrok's busts are 
 serious pieces of work, but 
 usually dry and hard as to 
 form. The best among them 
 is without question the 
 heroic, powerfully formed 
 portrait head of Eilert 
 Sundt, which adorns a public 
 square in Christiania. One 
 side of Skeibrok's winning 
 personality, which brought 
 him many friends, but which 
 was totally dissociated from 
 his activities as a sculptor, 
 was his vigorous humor and 
 his original gifts as a racon- 
 teur. 
 
 The most finely equipped 
 of the three artists who re- 
 ceived their first training in 
 Middelthun's atelier was per- 
 haps Soren Lexow-Hansen, 
 who was born at Eker in 
 1845. Unfortunately, how- 
 ever, he appears to have 
 inherited from his master not only a deep reverence for art 
 but also a certain shrinking attitude toward production and 
 
 Vala Rising from the Sea, by Soren 
 
 Lexow-Hansen. In the National 
 
 Gallery 
 
MODKRN NORWF-r.IAN ART 631 
 
 a lack of sclf-confulcncc. After Lcxow-I lansen by his Vala 
 had gi\cii tnidcncc ol considerable powers, he created noth- 
 ing whatexer, so far as juiblic knowledge may deterniine. 
 The graxity and might of Ivldic poetry rest upon the aged 
 seercss Vala as she steps forth li-oin the fogs of the North 
 Sea, attenuated and forbidding, and bears witness to what 
 she knows, that the world which consumes itself in strife and 
 petty obstinacy shall perish, gods and men alike. Lexow- 
 Hansen died in 19 19. 
 
 To what a degree Norwegian sculpture in general, during 
 the years when Norwegian painting was at its zenith, wanted 
 strength to carry out a monumental task and lacked com- 
 pletely the ability, particularly so far as the younger sculptors 
 were concerned, to shape so much as a human figure, we have 
 distressing proof In the competitions for two public memo- 
 rials. One of these — for the statue of Holberg In Bergen — 
 resulted, and with absolute justice. In the awarding of the 
 commission to a foreign artist. The other — for the monu- 
 ment to Tordensklold In Chrlstiania — was a positive 
 scandal to Norwegian sculpture, manifesting Itself In a 
 group of ludicrous models totally destitute of talent, while 
 the painter Axel Ender, whose model was superior to all 
 the others, even technically, carried off the prize and the 
 commission. His notably effective and decorative statue 
 was erected In 1901. 
 
 On the whole, with a few exceptions, there Is not much to 
 be said for the younger Norwegian sculptors. Of those who 
 arose In the artistically stirring period of the eighties, when 
 the naturalists were fighting out their battle with the epigoni 
 of romanticism and with a stiff-necked public, Fjelde went to 
 America, where he worked and died. Utne went to Berlin, 
 where he became a decorator and remained for several years, 
 until he returned home to take part in the adornment of the 
 National Theatre, while the most gifted of them, Halfdan 
 Hertzberg, a practising physician, who threw himself en- 
 thusiastically Into the struggle for naturalism and exhibited a 
 few things indicating both personality and talent, died before 
 his powers were much more than half developed. 
 
632 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 Among those who have lived at home there is Anders Svor, 
 who has followed his art honestly and seriously under difficult 
 conditions and who, particularly in the statue of a nude young 
 girl, has produced a piece of work deserving of mention for 
 its sincerity; and finally, there is Jo Visdal, who perhaps more 
 than any of the others has made himself representative of this 
 generation of naturalists through his portrait busts. A nota- 
 ble example is his thoughtfully studied and characteristic bust 
 of old Head Master Knudsen, by which Visdal gained 
 deserved recognition. 
 
 Between the art of Gustav Vigeland and contemporary 
 sculpture in Norway there is a great gulf. More than that, 
 the entire production of Norwegian sculpture, viewed in per- 
 spective, has subordinate value as compared with his genius. 
 Gustav Vigeland was born near Mandal in 1869. Never in 
 Norwegian art have imagination and a sense of form been 
 united to such a degree as in his work. Yet that which more 
 than all else gives to his artistic achievements their imperisha- 
 ble quality is the strong individuality and the wealth of ideas 
 expressed in them. Very seldom have art and life been more 
 intimately joined. As confessions of the joy and the anguish 
 of living his sculpture has overflowed all the bounds of artistic 
 objectivity. 
 
 In reality Vigeland cannot be said to be the disciple of any 
 particular master. He has had no regular and systematic 
 artistic schooling. He has made brief visits to Bergslien's 
 and Skeibrok's ateliers and spent a year in Bissen's workshop 
 in Copenhagen, yet not in the capacity of an actual pupil. On 
 the whole, Middelthun alone among Northern sculptors 
 appears to have had a positive influence upon his develop- 
 ment. The distance betwen the two, however, and their dis- 
 similarities as to temperament and talent are sufficiently 
 obvious. Vigeland has learned more through travel than by 
 any other means. He has traveled much, seen much, and 
 ruminated more than most artists. Vigeland came to 
 maturity during the naturalistic and impressionistic periods in 
 Norwegian painting. Nevertheless he undoubtedly feels 
 himself to be in opposition to the older generation. Only 
 
MODKRN NORVVl'XilAN AKV 633 
 
 with Munch docs he show a certain relationsliip. On the 
 whole, Vigchmd staiuls and will always stand apart. 
 
 Vif^eland's art is lirst and ahove all an unfolding of im- 
 agination. The art of the eighties and of the itninediately 
 succeeding period was in the main concerned with realities. 
 Its aim was objectivity; it sought after environment and local 
 color. Vigcland's aim is the uncompromisingly personal, 
 regardless of enviroment; still he seeks in the personal always 
 the universal, that Avhich is, and changes not. None the less, 
 Vigeland owes something to the naturalists, something of dis- 
 tinct value. He is himself a naturalist as to form, and his 
 ability in composition stands on the shoulders of impression- 
 ism and from this point of vantage discovers new plastic pos- 
 sibilities. A relief composed on such lines as his Hell — the 
 chief work from Vigeland's youth — would have been incon- 
 ceivable before the days of impressionism. With its power- 
 ful perspective effects, its foreshortening and cross-cutting 
 and the picturesque play of shining projections and deep 
 shadows, this relief is almost infinitely removed from the 
 classic relief style and is predicated upon the Impressionistic 
 movement. 
 
 Although a long series of youthful works precede this 
 gigantic relief, which comprises some two hundred figures, it 
 would seem as if most of those early pieces, among them the 
 life-size group Accursed, in the National Gallery, the reliefs 
 entitled The Judgment Day, The Horse of Death, The 
 Drunkards, and various minor groups, were only prepara- 
 tory studies by means of which the creator of Hell made 
 experiments and improved his manual dexterity. In this 
 work he rids himself of the speculation of his youth, of his 
 Westland pietism, and of the bitter moods engendered by 
 years of struggle. After he has finished it, his production 
 becomes more serene, more contemplative, more unassuming 
 in the choice of subjects, more heartfelt in character, more 
 noble as to form. The Hell was first executed in 1894 and 
 was entirely remodeled after a journey to Italy in 1 897. The 
 relief, in bronze, is to be found in the National Gallery. 
 
 That hell which Vigeland depicts in this work is not so 
 
634 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 much the place of torment after death as it is a modern pes- 
 simist's emotional and affecting poem about life itself and 
 sins against life. This hell has to do with the fetters of sense, 
 with the froth of the passions, with self-surrender and suicide. 
 In a giddy maelstrom the victims of all forces inimical to life 
 circle around the very principle of evil — Satan enthroned, 
 firm as the rock upon which he sits. It is a raging surf of 
 billowing humanity that tosses at his feet, bodies intertwined 
 with each other, clinging to each other with unslaked desire, 
 with hate, with satiety. They foam up about his limbs in a 
 combing wave of clasped arms, of bowed necks, of beseeching 
 glances. Over the bridge of good intentions tumble ever 
 renewed throngs down into an engulfing sea of vices. And 
 behind the prince of darkness, in the dry, sultry air that fills 
 this domain of egotism, hover unceasingly the yearning multi- 
 tudes driven on by unsatisfied desires, until the rabble is lost 
 beyond the hill of the suicides, where dead men and men 
 still living dangle in their nooses upon the gallows. Above 
 these rolling waves of doomed humanity that lap his feet, sits 
 the Evil One upon his rocky throne, insensible to it all, petri- 
 fied in the horror of complete realization of self. For him 
 there is no submission, no redemption. He is himself 
 supreme, the most evil among the evil, unchangeable, eternal. 
 He rests his jaws in his hands and sinks back upon himself, 
 sharing with none the joy of his sufferings. 
 
 Into Vigeland's conception of beauty naturalism has 
 poured the beneficent drop of gall. As in the case of Dona- 
 tello and of Rembrandt, what men call the hideous appears in 
 the function of a subordinate element of his art. No one has 
 more passionately sought after what is characteristic, shunned 
 what is bland, despised smoothness, distrusted softness. His 
 figure style betrays hatred of all rococo forms in past and 
 present art. 
 
 Vigeland's earlier figures possess the most extreme slender- 
 ness and an accentuated boniness of structure which fre- 
 (}uently even verges on attenuation. He takes delight in the 
 wealth of surfaces upon a cranium; he is attracted to hollow 
 temples, to angular jaws. His plastic ideal, at any rate in 
 
MOni-:RN NORWI'X.IAX y\Rr 635 
 
 this period of his youth, was ihc man wilh narrow iiips, sliarp 
 shoulders, ami prominent smews, and the woman with a mas- 
 eiiline leanness of outline. I lis figures arc always nude. 
 Costumes and attributi\e dexiees arc practically unknown in 
 his art. Moreoxer, since action is to his mind the most sig- 
 nilicant thing — action expressixe of deed, of thought, of soul 
 — the bony framework Is for him the most important feature 
 of the human body. 
 
 Love has a large place in Vigeland's productions. The 
 mystery of sex, the struggle between sex and thought are the 
 profoundest motives in his imaginative art. Upon these 
 themes he has created a long series of plastic poems, groups 
 of men and women to which he has given no other title than 
 Man and Woman. 
 
 At first all of these groups were less than half size, and 
 designed to be cast In bronze; more recently several of them 
 have been elaborated to full life size In the same material. 
 Some of these groups are to be found In Thiel's Gallery in 
 Stockholm ; one alone, A Man Holding a Woman Upon His 
 Knees, Is in our National Gallery. 
 
 These compositions deal with life in its mutual relations. 
 Some are Instinct with the joy of submission, and others with 
 the discord that sunders lovers : on the one hand, the kiss, 
 the embrace, the child as the tie that binds ; on the other hand, 
 the doubt, the jealousy, the moodiness that divide and isolate. 
 They deal with the ecstasies of love and with the rebellion of 
 reason against the senses, with tender emotions and agonizing 
 inward conflicts, with the renunciation of life itself in bound- 
 less longing for spiritual peace. 
 
 For beyond the veil of shifting sensuous moods this art 
 discerns the illimitable, the eternal. The loves of these men 
 and women vibrate above a metaphysical sounding-board of 
 doubts and premonitions that attune even gaiety itself to a 
 minor key. All that is joyous, all that is sorrowful in their 
 human lot takes on a higher potency at the thought of death, 
 and so their fear of the unknown lends to each momentary 
 feeling a deep passionateness. 
 
 Vigeland's imaginative art is not the whole of his art. In 
 
636 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 Bust of Professor Sophus Bugge, by Gustav 
 Vigeland. In the National Gallery 
 
 the course of the years he has produced a large number of 
 busts, which together constitute a veritable portrait gallery 
 of prominent Norwegians. A majority of the men who have 
 distinguished themselves above the ordinary run by their 
 talent in art, science, or politics he has modelled from life. 
 To enumerate them all, from Ibsen and Bjornson to Nansen 
 and Johannes Steen, would require too much space. 
 
 With the touch of genius he seizes the predominant char- 
 acter in a face, and with poetic force builds up about it a soul, 
 
MODERN N()RWr:(;iAN ART 637 
 
 Bust of the Painter Emmanuel Vigeland, by 
 Gustav Vigeland. In the National Gallery 
 
 a personality. His portrait art, although completely nat- 
 uralistic as to form, is principally marked by intuitive psycho- 
 logical power. The tempo of the nerves, the hotness or slug- 
 gishness of the blood, the firmness or softness of the will — 
 all that which others merely suspect or glimpse vaguely in a 
 face, and which is the core of personality, the brilliant por- 
 traitist calls forth from the conformation of a head or the 
 lines of a facial mask and draws it to his heart in sympathy 
 or thrusts it aside with aversion. 
 
 In Vigeland's case the work has almost without exception 
 been based upon sympathy with the subject. In hardly a 
 single instance has he executed a portrait bust to order. He 
 has himself chosen his sitters. Witness the head of Bjornson, 
 in the National Gallery, seized in a moment of extreme vigor, 
 self-confidently poised upon a neck as strong as a bull's, 
 sparkling with intellect and will. Witness further the head 
 of Sophus Bugge, the thinker, with its remarkably inward 
 
638 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 and absent expression; his glance is introspective, but like a 
 forge raised above the workshop of his thought, the hair 
 lifts itself in the semblance of an aspiring flame above his 
 lofty brow. Or, look at Ibsen's marmoreal head, like a jut- 
 ting cliff, the very image of concentration upon an inmost 
 self; and Garborg's brooding physiognomy with its haggard 
 features and affecting, sorrowful eyes. Further, note the 
 vivacious face of Gunnar Heiberg, with wit and sensibility 
 playing about the mouth and eyes, and with self-confidence 
 written upon the forehead. And finally, observe the excel- 
 lent bust of the sculptor's young brother, Emmanuel Vige- 
 land, clean and noble of outline as a Greek ivy-crowned head, 
 and with youthfulness and warmth in his lips. The greater 
 number of these busts are now In the National Gallery, in 
 very deed a series of portraits which, in a twofold sense, our 
 people may be proud of. 
 
 During the years that have passed since the opening of the 
 new century Vigeland has been chiefly occupied with monu- 
 mental problems: the monument to Abel, erected in 1908; 
 the statue of Wergeland, set up at Christianssand in 1908; 
 the statues of Nordraak and of Camilla Collett, both dating 
 from 191 1. Throughout the last seven or eight years the 
 artist has been working upon the masterpiece of his life, The 
 Fountain. 
 
 The monument to the mathematician Nils Henrik Abel 
 has taken shape as an apotheosis of the inspired, creative 
 mind in its half unconscious soaring. Borne aloft by dimly 
 perceived forces, hardly realized by himself, the young hero 
 of thought flies through space, his countenance resplendent 
 with understanding, his vision piercing the fog, and his nude 
 body rising in triumphant assurance that the goal is near. 
 Formal objections might be made against the aesthetic 
 effectiveness of the group in its present setting, delineated 
 freely as it is upon the open sky and lacking as the silhouette 
 is in the proper repose, and one might have to admit that the 
 colossal design gives evidence both of the difiiculty of the 
 problem and the youthfulness of the artist. Nevertheless, 
 no one with any appreciation of quality in art can remain 
 
MODl'KN NORWI'.C.IAN Akl 639 
 
 insensible to the brilliant thou^lil ami llu' dai-iii^ composition 
 which distinguish the nionunicnt. in \ Iceland's production 
 the 7\bel ^roup staiuis as a milestone between his early period 
 with its storm and stress and the pci-iod ol thorough maturity, 
 in certain respects it denotes a completion; in other resj)ects, 
 a fresh be<2;innin<^. 
 
 While Vigeland's passionate art was before touched by a 
 dry, hectic heat, as of a consuming fire, rather than charac- 
 terized by the superabundance of a mature mind, there has 
 come over his work in later years increased plenitude and 
 repose. The feverishness and the mirky vision of youth have 
 given way to harmony and love of beauty in the grown man. 
 What was painful in his art has been overcome by what is 
 pleasing. In agreement with this changed view of life, his 
 figure style has undergone a transformation. His earlier 
 style was marked by a palpable aversion from amplitude of 
 form. Already in the first years of the new century, however, 
 a foreshadowing departure is to be noted in his figure style. 
 In 1905 I pointed out. In a written discussion of the matter, 
 that later works and studies Indicated that the typical manner 
 of his youth was taking on new features, that It was develop- 
 ing Into something stronger and fuller, that his style through- 
 out was becoming more vigorously rounded than before. 
 
 This maturing process began with The Fountain. In the 
 Abel group the artist's one-sided tendency toward naturalistic 
 methods of fashioning his subjects reaches Its extreme limit. 
 The Impressionistic, picturesque treatment of surface and the 
 Inchoate, restless forms yield in recent works to a more 
 beautiful, ripe, and classical style. 
 
 As yet. It Is true, The Fountain, upon which VIgeland has 
 been working with untiring Titanic creative energy these 
 many years, Is a good way from completion, and In so far lies 
 outside the scope of this review. So much, none the less, can 
 assuredly be said on the basis of such studies and finished 
 portions as he has permitted outsiders to see, that the work 
 will be Vigeland's masterpiece and a unique achievement In 
 the history of modern sculpture. It will be a mighty synthesis 
 of his art and his philosophy of life, a bronze hymn of life, 
 
640 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 Detail for Fountain, by Gustav Vigeland 
 
 infinitely rich and changing as life itself, so expressed in art 
 that thought may grasp it. Here are men, women, and 
 children — nude, appearing singly and in groups, resting, 
 struggling, yearning, loving, sorrowing; now passionately 
 moved, storm-driven and tossed about by emotions, now 
 
MODERN NORWEGIAN ART 641 
 
 Detail for Fountain, by Gustav Vigeland 
 
 sunk in musing and in dreams. Man and woman meet each 
 other beneath the crowns of these fabled trees, the throng of 
 the unborn floats like a cloud, like a presage through the 
 leaves, and against the trunk leans heavily one who is weary 
 
642 
 
 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 Detail for Fountain, by Gustav Vigeland 
 
 of days. This Is life itself, from the time it wells forth till 
 it sinks away. In another tree death bides his hour, crouched 
 among the boughs. 
 
 Yet what is the idea of this work without its wealth of 
 forms! What are descriptive words in comparison to the 
 varying rhythms of line, the beautiful, living, bodily contours. 
 It is in this work, still inaccessible to the public, that, so far 
 as I may judge from what I have seen, the great transforma- 
 tion in Vigeland's style has taken place, the transformation 
 that has been mentioned above and which also has manifested 
 itself in a few other original works, contemporaneous with 
 
MODERN NORWEGIAN ART 643 
 
 Torso of a Woman, by Gustav Vigeland. In the National Gallery 
 
 The Fountain, that of late years have come from his work- 
 shop. The most significant of these pieces are the group in 
 marble, Mother and Child, recently acquired by the Art 
 Museum in Copenhagen, and the splendid Torso of a 
 Woman, also in marble, which is reproduced here from the 
 
644 SCANDINAVIAN ART 
 
 original in the Norwegian National Gallery. Both of these 
 works are based upon older studies on a smaller scale. In this 
 torso of a woman with a pure and proud countenance, almost 
 as severe as that of a goddess, and with a body captivatingly 
 young and beautiful as that of any daughter of earth, and in 
 this youthful mother kneeling with her little boy in her arms 
 — a piece wherein the contrast between the woman's soft, 
 mature body and the boy's thin, angular, undeveloped form 
 
 Young Man, by Ingebrigt VIk. In the 
 National Gallery 
 
 resolves itself into the most melodious play of lines — in both 
 of these Vigeland's art has reached the height of its growth. 
 The younger Norwegian sculptors, with a very few excep- 
 tions, cannot be said to have cast fresh glory upon their art 
 and their country. A series of public competitions for various 
 larger commissions, and notably the hopeless effort to pro- 
 
M0I)I:RN NORWFXilAN ART 645 
 
 vide a satisfactory design for an Kidsvold monument, have 
 given distressing evidence of the lack of capacity to deal with 
 monumental problems. As a consoling exception one man 
 ci7ierges above the common level, Ingebrigt Vik. 
 
 Born in Hardanger in 1867, he is no longer to be reckoned 
 among the very young ; nevertheless, it is only in recent years, 
 after a persistent struggle, that his art has broken a way to 
 real success. For a considerable time external circumstances 
 compelled him to employ his powers in pure handicraft as a 
 modeller of decorations or in those purheus of art, wood- 
 carving and ivory-carving. However, after several winters 
 at the Academy of Art in Copenhagen, after some years of 
 study in Paris — under the guidance of Injalbert in 1902 and 
 under his own initiative from 1907 to 1910, and after a jour- 
 ney to Italy in 1906, he unfolded his talents freely and 
 maturely in a series of nude statues in marble and bronze. 
 For the most part it is the undeveloped forms of very young 
 girls, the gently rounded shapes of children, and the slender, 
 lithe figures of youths which have especially attracted him. 
 In works such as the two marble statues of a sitting and a 
 standing nude young girl, now in the National Gallery, and 
 still more in the lovely bronze statue of a Narcissus-like 
 youth, signed 19 13 and also to be found in the National Gal- 
 lery, he reveals a sense for calm, classical beauty that is 
 unique in Norwegian art ; he reveals as well a tender solicitude 
 for the most refined graduations in form which marks Vik as 
 one of the most prominent men In later Norwegian art. 
 
INDEX TO ARTISTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Aagaard, C. F., 1 833-1 895 313 
 
 Aarsleff, Carl, 1852-1918 414 
 
 Abildgaard, N. A., 1743-1809 22, 1 13, 241-243, 393 
 
 Achen, Georg, 1860-1912 346 
 
 Acke, J. A. G., 1 859- 1 70 
 
 Adelcrantz, Karl Fredrilc, 17 16-1796 84, 85, 86, 110 
 
 Ahlgren, Olof, 1 876- 221 
 
 Als, Peder, 1726-1776 241 
 
 Ancher, Fru Anna, 1859- 328-330 
 
 Ancher, Michael, 1849- 326, 327-330, 515 
 
 Anderberg, Axel, i860- 225, 226 
 
 Andersen, Valdemar, 1875- 389 
 
 Ankarcrona, Gustav, 1869- 201-202 
 
 Arbo, N. P., 1831-1892 473-475 
 
 Arborelius, Olof, 1842-1915 141 
 
 Arenius, Olof, 1701-1766 85 
 
 Arosenius, Ivar, 1878-1909 205-206 
 
 Askevold, Anders, 1855-1900 472 
 
 Astrup, Nicolai, 1880- 610 
 
 Aumont, Louis, 1805-1879 263 
 
 Baade, Knud, 1808-1879 448 
 
 Bache, Otto, 1 839- 315-316 
 
 Backer, Harriet, 1845- 485, 488, 527, 550-554 
 
 Baerentzen, Emilius, 1 799-1 868 263 
 
 Baerentzen, Thomas, 1869- 415 
 
 Balke, Peder, 1804-1887 470 
 
 Bauer, John, 1882-1918 18, 204 
 
 Baumann, Povl, 1878- 431 
 
 Beck, David, 1621-1656 66 
 
 Behm, Vilhelm, 1859- 172-173 
 
 Benckert, Elis, 1881-1913 234 
 
 Bendz, Vilhelm, 1 804-1 832 256, 257, 258, 260 
 
 Bentsen, Ivar, 1876- 431 
 
 Berg, Axel, 1856- 430 
 
 Berg, Magnus, 1666-1739 27, 438-439, 615-616 
 
 647 
 
648 INDEX TO ARTISTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Berg, Yngve, 1887- 206 
 
 Bergh, Edvard, 1828-1880 16, 135-136, 173 
 
 Bergh, Richard, 1858-1919 I73-I75 
 
 Bergslien, Brjmjulf, 1 830-1 898 33, 623-624, 632 
 
 Bergslien, Knut, 1 827-1908 473 
 
 Bergstrom, Alfred, 1869- 173 
 
 Bergstrom, Sigge, 1880- 204 
 
 Bindesboll, M. G., 1800- 1856 424-426, 429 
 
 Bindesboll, Thorvald, 1846-1908 24, 370 
 
 Birger, Hugo, 1854-1887 166 
 
 Bissen, H. V., 1798-1868 408-412, 413, 618, 620, 623 
 
 Bissen, Rud., 1846-1911 318 
 
 Bissen, Vilhelm, 1836-1913 412, 413 
 
 Bjerg, Johs., 1886- 418 
 
 Bjerre, Niels, 1864- 353 
 
 Bjorck, Oscar, i860- 1 70-1 72 
 
 Blache, Christian, 1838- 1920 318 
 
 Bloch, Carl, 1834-1890 286-288, 316 
 
 Blom, Fredrik, 1781-1853 116 
 
 Blommer, Nils Johan, 1816-1853 16, 125 
 
 Boberg, Anna, 1864- 19, 202 
 
 Boberg, Ferdinand, i860- 19, 186, 228-230 
 
 Bodom, Erik, 1 829-1 879 472 
 
 Boklund, Johan Kristofer, 1817-1880 132 
 
 Bonnesen, Carl, 1868- 415 
 
 Borch, Christopher, 1817-1896 618-619, 628 
 
 Borch, Leuning, 1853-19 10 430 
 
 Borch, Martin, 1852- 430 
 
 Borjeson, John, 1836-1910 207-208 
 
 Bouchardon, Jacques-Philippe, 1711-1753 77 
 
 Bourdon, Sebastien, 1616-1671 66 
 
 Boyesen, Rostrup, 1882- 39i 
 
 Brandstrup, Ludvig, 1861- 414, 415 
 
 Brasen, Hans Ole, 1849- 335 
 
 Bratland, Jacob, 1859-1906 485, 571, 575 
 
 Breda, Karl Fredrik von, 1759-1818 15, 104-105 
 
 Brendekilde, Hans Andersen, 1857- 353 
 
 Brendstrup, Thorald, 1812-1883 282 
 
 Brummer, Carl, 1864- 430 
 
 Budal, Hans, 1830-1879 619 
 
]N]V'.X TO ARTISTS r,40 
 
 \'Ar,h 
 
 |{iinilii,;i;ii(l, Amlcis, I S64 - 415 
 
 JiuiU/.iMi, I Iciiiiirli, lS().^I<S()2 2H2 
 
 Hystniin, joli.iii Niklas, I7,S.^I,S4S iif)ii';, 122 
 
 C-Aluwyvv, J;u(.li, 1S02-1884 4S2 
 
 C;ip|u-lcii, Aiijiiist, 1827-1852 2<j, .^2, 4SS. 4^>^'-4^"^- 47" 
 
 Carlhcrg, johan KhiThanl, i()8.M77.^ 8s, 80 
 
 Carlscn, Schlichriiifj;, 1852 ^.•iT 
 
 Carstfiis. Jakob Asiiuis, 1754-17'^'^ 21, 24S, V).^, 394- 3W 
 
 Cedcrstrom, Gustaf, 1845- 149-150 
 
 Christensen, Christen, 1806-1845 406 
 
 Christensen, Godfred, 1845- 317 
 
 Christiansen, Poul, 1855- 3^7^ 3<^<^ 
 
 Christiansen, R., 1863- 353 
 
 Clason, Isac Gustav, 1856- 19, 227 
 
 Clausen, Ludvig, 185 1 -1904 430 
 
 Clement, Gad, 1867- 382-383 
 
 Clemmensen, A. L., 1852- 430 
 
 Collett, Fredrik, 1839-1913 30, 465, 482-483, 532, 542 
 
 Conradsen, Harald, 181 7-1905 406 
 
 Dahl, Johan Christian Clausson, 1 788-1 857 
 
 21, 28, 439, 439-448, 450, 452, 454, 455, 464, 472, 479, 481, 604 
 
 Dahl, Mikael, 1666-1743 84 
 
 Dahl, Siegwald, 1827-1902 472 
 
 Dahlbergh, Erik, 1625-1703 64, 66, 67 
 
 Dahlerup, Vilhelm, 1 836-1907 428 
 
 Dalgas, Carlo, 1820-1850 310 
 
 Dall, Hans, 1862-1920 357 
 
 Dalsgaard, Christen, 1 824-1907 22, 295-298, 299, 409 
 
 Deberitz, Per, 1880- 32, 604, 612 
 
 Desmarees, Georg, 1 697-1 776 84 
 
 Desprez, Jean-Louis, 1737-1804 no, 114 
 
 Diriks, Karl Edvard, 1855- 30, 542, 555-557 
 
 Dorph, Anton, 1831-1914 301 
 
 Dorph, Bertha, 1875- 382 
 
 Dorph, N. v., 1862- 351-352 
 
 Dreyer, Dankvart, 1816-1852 311, 312 
 
 D'Uncker, Karl, 1828-1866 128 
 
 Eckersberg, ChristofEer Vilhelm, 1 783-1 853. . . .21, 22, 24, 241, 245 
 
 246, 247-269, 280, 281, 282, 283, 294, 314, 389, 406, 450, 453 
 Eckersberg, Johan Fredrik, 1822-1870 470-471, 473, 542 
 
650 INDEX TO ARTISTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Eddelien, Heinrich, 1803-1852 256, 267 
 
 Edstrom, David, 1873- 215, 216 
 
 Egedius, Halfdan, 1877-1899 31, 532, 540, 593-595, 601 
 
 Ehrenstrahl, David Klocker von, 1629-1698 
 
 15, 21, 69, 70, 71-72, 83, 84, 162 
 
 Ehrensvard, Karl August, 1745-1800 102, 103, 113 
 
 Eiebakke, August, 1867- 575-576 
 
 Eigtved, Nikolai, 1 701-1754 421, 422 
 
 Ekenaes, Jan, 1847-1920 485 
 
 Ekstrom, Per, 1844- 157-158 
 
 Eldh, Carl J., 1873- 214-215 
 
 Elgstrom, Ossian, 1883- 18, 203 
 
 Ender, Axel, 1 853-1920 631 
 
 Engelsted, Malthe, 1852- 343 
 
 Engstrom, Albert, 1869- 18, 205-206 
 
 Engstrom, Leander, 1886- 18, 205 
 
 Erdmann, Axel, 1873- 203 
 
 Erichsen, Edv., 1876- 415 
 
 Erichsen, Thorvald, 1868- 31, 597-600, 601, 603 
 
 Erichsen, Vigilius, 1 722-1 782 241 
 
 Ericson, Sigfrid, 1879- 235 
 
 Eriksson, Christian, 1858- 19, 175, 211-213, 232 
 
 Eugen, Prince, 1865- 
 
 17. I9» 155) 156, 157, 170, 171, 179-182, 184, 186, 226, 230, 234 
 
 Evens, Otto, 1 826-1 895 413 
 
 Exner, Julius, 1825-1910 22, 297, 298-300 
 
 Fagerlin, Ferdinand, 1825-1907 16, 128-129 
 
 Fahlcrantz, Karl Johan, 1774-1861 120, 121, 445 
 
 Fearnley, Thomas, 1802-1841 29, 32, 445-448, 452, 454, 604 
 
 Fenger, Ludvig, 1833-1905 429 
 
 Find, Ludvig, 1869- 383-384 
 
 Fisker, Kay, 1 893- 43 1 
 
 Fjaestad, Gustav, 1868- 17, 202 
 
 Fjelde, Jakob, 1859-1896 631 
 
 Fladager, Ole, 1832-187 1 619 
 
 Flintoe, Johan, 1 786-1 870 449-450 
 
 Fogelberg, Bengt Erland, 1786-1854 118, 119 
 
 Folkestad, Bernhard, 1879- 31, 609-610 
 
 Forsberg, Nils, 1842- 148-149 
 
 Foss, Harald, 1843- 312 
 
INDEX TO ARTISTS 651 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Frc'uiul, IIciiiKiii Ernst, 1786-184(1 25, 26.5, 290, 403-406 
 
 Erich, I. C, 18 10- 1858 311, 448-449 
 
 Friis, Hans, 1839- 1892 3^3 
 
 Erisch, I. D., 1 835-1 867 311 
 
 Eritz, A., 1828-1906 313 
 
 Eritzsch, Claudius Ditlev, 1 763-1 841 246 
 
 Erolich, Lorens, 1 820-1908 283-286, 371 
 
 Erydensberg, Carl, 1872- 357 
 
 Gauguin, Jean, 1881- 418 
 
 Gebauer, Christian David, 1 777-1831 246 
 
 Gerle, Aron, i860- 196 
 
 Gertner, Johan Vilhelm, 1818-1871 282 
 
 Giersing, Harald, 1881- 24, 391 
 
 Gjorvvell, Karl Kristofer, 1 766-1837 116 
 
 Gloersen, Jacob, 1852-1912 485, 542, 557-559 
 
 Glosimodt, Olaf, 1821-1897 619 
 
 Gorbitz, Johan, 1 782-1 853 451-452 
 
 Gothe, Erik Gustav, 1 779-1838 1 19-120 
 
 Gottschalck, Albert, 1866-1906 357 
 
 Grande, Severin, 1869- 604 
 
 Gronvold, Bernt, 1859- 485 
 
 Gronvold, Marcus, 1845- 485 
 
 Griinewald, Isaac, 1889- 18, 205 
 
 Grut, Torben, 1871- 235 
 
 Gude, Hans, 1825-1903 
 
 27, 29, 454-466, 479, 480, 482, 483, 484, 619 
 
 Gurlitt, Louis, 1812-1897 283 
 
 Haavardsholm, Erojdis, 1896- 603 
 
 Hagborg, August, 1852-1921 157, 166 
 
 Hall, Peter Adolf , 1739-1793 15, 94, 95 
 
 Hallstrom, Gunnar, 1875- 202-203 
 
 Hammer, H. I., 1815-1882 293 
 
 Hammershoi, Svend, 1873- 385-386 
 
 Hammershoi, Vilh., 1864-1916 23, 346-349 
 
 Hansen, Axel, 1853- 414 
 
 Hansen, Chr., 1803-1883 427 
 
 Hansen, Chr, Er., 1 756-1845 423 
 
 Hansen, Constantin, 1 804-1 880 
 
 21, 256, 263, 264-266, 290, 363, 371, 406 
 
 Hansen, Elise Constantin, 1858- 373 
 
652 INDEX TO ARTISTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Hansen, Hans, 1 727-1 803 246 
 
 Hansen, Hans, 1821-1858 619 
 
 Hansen, Hans Nik., 1853- 335 
 
 Hansen, Heinrich, 1821-1890 312 
 
 Hansen, Henning, 1880- 431 
 
 Hansen, Niels, 1880- 391 
 
 Hansen, Peter, 1868- 23, 388, 389 
 
 Hansen, Theophilus, 1813-1891 427 
 
 Hansen-Jacobsen, Niels, 1861- 25, 415-416 
 
 Harleman, Karl, 1700-1753 48, 76, 80, 162 
 
 Harsdorff, Caspar Frederik, 1735-1799 422-423, 424 
 
 Hartmann, Oluf, 1879-1910 382 
 
 Haslund, Otto, 1842-1917 342, 343 
 
 Hasselberg, Per, 1850-1894 166, 208-210 
 
 Hasselriis, Louis, 1844-1912 413 
 
 Haupt, Georg, 1741-1784 83, 96, loi 
 
 Hausser, Elias David, 1685- 1745 421 
 
 Hedberg, Erik, 1868- 201 
 
 Heiberg, Jean, 1884- 32, 612 
 
 Hellqvist, Carl Gustaf, 1851-1890 150 
 
 Helsted, Axel, 1847-1907 343, 344 
 
 Hennig, Otto, 1871- 604 
 
 Hennigs, Gosta von, 1866- 198 
 
 Henning, Gerhard, 1880- 221 
 
 Henningsen, Erik, 1855- 344 
 
 Henningsen, Frants, 1850-1908 344 
 
 Herholdt, Johan Daniel, 1818-1902 427-428 
 
 Hertervig, Lars, 1 830-1902 27, 468-470 
 
 Hertzberg, Halfdan, 1857-1890 631 
 
 Hertzog, F. G., 1821-1892 411, 413 
 
 Hesselbom, Otto, 1848-1913 17, 202 
 
 Hetsch, Gustav Frederik, 1 788-1 864 423-424, 426 
 
 Heyerdahl, Hans, 1857-1913 . .30, 485, 486, 491-496, 527, 551, 580 
 
 Hilker, G. Christian, 1 807-1875 265,406 
 
 Hill, Carl, 1849-1911 157 
 
 Hillestrom, Per, the Elder, 1732-18 16 lOi, 102 
 
 Hjortzberg, Olle, 1872- 202, 230, 235 
 
 Hockert, Johan Fredrik, 1826-1866 16-17, 136-13^ 
 
 Holbech, Niels Peter, 1 804-1 889 263 
 
 Holbo, Kristen, 1869- 603 
 
INDI'.X TO AR'I'ISTS r,53 
 
 I'AC.K 
 
 ii.iiiM, nil., 1X04-1846 282 
 
 1 lolm, I laiis j., iH.VS-i<Ji6 2S, 420 
 
 Holm, Haraia, 1866 - 387 
 
 Holmboc, Tliorolf, 1866 31, 4f)S, S77-S7'; 
 
 Holmgren, Herman, 1 842-1 V14 224 
 
 Holsoe, Carl, 1863- 345, 346 
 
 Holtcn, Sofie, 1858- 33S 
 
 Holten, Fru Susette, 1863- 373 
 
 Horberg, Per, 1746-18 16 K)i 
 
 Hornemann, Christian, 1765- 1844 246 
 
 Hiillgren, Oscar, 1869- 202 
 
 Hun^us, Andreas Herman, 18 14-1866 263 
 
 Hygom, Louis, 1879- 431 
 
 listed, Peter, 1861- 346 
 
 Ingemann, Bernhard, 1869- 430 
 
 Ingwersen, Jens, 1871- 430 
 
 Irminger, V., 1850- 343-344 
 
 Isaachsen, Olaf, 1 835-1 893 473, 475-476 
 
 Jacobsen, August, 1868- 604 
 
 Jacobsen, Carl Ludvig, 1835- 624 
 
 Jacobsson, Ernst, 1 839-1905 224 
 
 Jansen, Luplau, 1869- 357 
 
 Jansson, Eugen, 1862-1915 17, 175, 182-184 
 
 Jardin, Nicolas Henri, 1720- 1799 422 
 
 Jarl, Viggo, 1879- 415 
 
 Jensen, Alb., 1847-19 13 428 
 
 Jensen, C. A., 1792-1870 255, 256, 259, 453 
 
 Jensen, J. L., 1 800-1 856 282 
 
 Jensen, Karl, 185 1- 346 
 
 Jerichau, Harald, 1851-1878 291 
 
 Jerichau, Jens Adolph, 1816-1883 406-408, 409, 619, 629 
 
 Jerichau-Baumann, Fru Elizabeth, 1819-1881 280 
 
 Jernberg, August, 1826-1896 16, 129-130 
 
 Jerndahl, Aron, 1858- 214 
 
 JerndorjEf, August, 1846-1906 340, 341-342 
 
 Jespersen, Henrik, 1853- 357 
 
 Jessen, Tj^cho, 1870-1921 384 
 
 Johansen, Otto, 1886- 605 
 
 Johansen, Viggo, 1851- 25, 330, 33^-333 
 
 Johansson, Aron, i860- 225 
 
654 INDEY TO ARTISTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Johnsson, Ivar, 1885- 221 
 
 Jonsson, Einar, 1874- 25 
 
 Jorde, Lars, 1865- 579 
 
 Jorgensen, Aksel, 1883- 24, 391 
 
 Jorgensen, Emil, 1858- 430 
 
 Jorgensen, Eugen, 1858-1910 430 
 
 Jorgensen, Sven, 1861- 485, 571, 572-574 
 
 Jorgensen, Thorvald, 1867- 430 
 
 Josephson, Ernst, 1851-1906 17, 151-157, 158, 166, 210 
 
 Josephsson, Erik, 1864- 224 
 
 Juel, Jens, 1 745-1802 22, 243-245 
 
 Jiirgensen, Fritz, 1818-1863 312 
 
 Kabell, Ludvig, 1853- 342 
 
 Kallstenius, Gottfrid, 1861- 172, 173 
 
 Kampmann, Hack, 1856-1920 430 
 
 Karsten, Ludvig, 1876- 32, 605, 607 
 
 Kavli, Arne, 1878- 31, 608-609 
 
 Kielland, Kitt3s 1843-1914 465, 485, 527, 55i, 554-555 
 
 Kittelsen, Theodor, 1857-1913 485, 546-550 
 
 Kjgerschou, Frederik, 1805-1891 282 
 
 Kjeldrup, A. E., 1826-1869 283 
 
 Klein, Vilhelm, 1835-1913 428 
 
 Klint, P. V. Jensen, 1853- 431 
 
 Knudsen, Hans, 1865- 356 
 
 Kobke, Christen, 1810-1848 
 
 21, 22, 24, 25, 255, 256, 258-260, 264, 406, 453 
 
 Koch, F., 1857-1905 430 
 
 Koch, v., 1 852-1902 430 
 
 Kolle, Anton, 1827-1872 311 
 
 Kolsto, Fredrik, i860- 485, 559 
 
 Krafft, David von, 1655-1724 83, 85 
 
 Krafft, Per, the Elder, 1 724-1 793 98 
 
 Krafft, Per, the Younger, 1 777-1863 105 
 
 Krafft, Frederik, 1823-1854 311 
 
 Kragh, Johannes, 1870- 372 
 
 Kratzenstein-Stub, Christian Gottlieb, 1 783-1 81 6 246 
 
 Kreuger, Nils, 1858- 17, 173, 175, I77-I79> 215 
 
 Krohg, Christian, 1852- 30, 507-508, 
 
 512-523, 527, 534, 535, 542, 547, 555, 55^, 560, 570, 580, 608 
 Krohg, Oda, i860- 576-577 
 
INDKX TO ARTISTS 0.S5 
 
 PACK 
 
 Kn.li-, IVr, 1889- 32 
 
 Kronhcifi;. Julius, iS'^o-i()2i 78, 146-148, 216 
 
 Kriiyer, Pi-tcr Scvciin, 1 851-1909 
 
 22, 23, 314, 315, 321-327, 414. 515, 543 
 
 Kiiohlcr, Albert, 1803-1886 256, 266-267 
 
 Kvhn, Knud, 1880- 391 
 
 Kylin, Vilhelm, 1 819-1903 25, 307-309 
 
 La Cour, Janus, 1 837-1909 313-314 
 
 Lafrensen, Nils, the Younger, 1 737-1 807 15, 92-94 
 
 Lallcrstedt, Erik, 1864- 228 
 
 Larcheveque, Pierre Hubert, 1721-1778 80, 106-107 
 
 Larsen, Emanuel, 1823- 1859 311 
 
 Larsen, Johannes, 1867- 23, 386, 387 
 
 Larsen, Jorgen, 1851-1910 414 
 
 Larsen, Knud, 1865- 357 
 
 Larsen Stevns, Niels, 1864- 373 
 
 Larson, Marcus, 1825- 1864 130-132 
 
 Larsson, Carl, 1853-1919 17, 55, 158-165, 166, 167, 222, 226 
 
 Larsson, Gottfrid, 1875- 221 
 
 Laureus, Alexander, 1 783-1 823 120-121 
 
 Lehmann, Edvard, 1815-1892 282 
 
 Levy, Frederik, 1851- 430 
 
 Lexow-Hansen, Soren, 1845-1919 625, 630-631 
 
 Liljefors, Bruno, i860- 17, 185-188 
 
 Lilljekvist, Fredrik, 1863- 227 
 
 Lindberg, Adolf, 1839-1916 221 
 
 Lindberg, Erik, 1873- 200, 201 
 
 Lindgren, Gustaf, 1863- 227 
 
 Lindman, Axel, 1848- 172 
 
 Lindstrom, Rikard, 1882- 203 
 
 Lochen, Kalle, 1 865-1 893 571, 574 
 
 Locher, Carl, 1851-1915 318 
 
 Lorentzen, Christian August, 1 749-1 828 245-246, 261 
 
 Lund, Henrik, 1879- 32, 607-608 
 
 Lund, L L., 1777-1867 255 
 
 Lund, Jens, 1873- 418 
 
 Lundberg, Gustav, 1695-1786 15, 87-89, 99 
 
 Lundberg, Teodor, 1852- 208 
 
 Lundb5'e, Johan Thomas, 1818-1848 
 
 25, 302-304, 308, 309, 310, 333 
 
656 INDEX TO ARTISTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Lundgren, Egron, 1815-1875 16, 135 
 
 Madsen, Viggo, 1885- 39 1 
 
 Magdahl-Nielsen, 1862- 430 
 
 Mailing, Peder, 1781-1865 423 
 
 Malmsten, Carl, 1888- 234 
 
 Malmstrom, August, 1829-1901 16, 138-140 
 
 Mansson, Filip, 1864- 232 
 
 Marstrand, Vilhelm, 18 10-1873 
 
 21, 22, 256, 269, 270-279, 280, 286, 289, 315, 316 
 
 Martin, Elias, 1739-1818 15, 101-103 
 
 Martin, Johan Fredrik, 1755-1816 103 
 
 Masreliez, Louis Adrien, 1748-1810 79, 114-115 
 
 Melbye, Anton, 1818-1875 280-281 
 
 Melbye, Vilhelm, 1824-1882 281 
 
 Meldahl, Ferdinand, 1827-1908 428 
 
 Meyer, Ernst, 1797-1861 267-268 
 
 Meytens, Martin, the Elder, 1648-1736 84 
 
 Meytens, Martin van, the Younger, 1 675-1 770 84 
 
 Michelsen, Hans, 1789-1859 616-618 
 
 Middelthun, Julius, 1820-1886. .33, 613, 619-622, 624, 625, 630, 632 
 
 Milles, Carl, 1875- 19, 215-220, 230, 234 
 
 Mohl, Kristian, 1876- 385-386 
 
 Molin, Johan Peter, 1814-1873 133, 135 
 
 Moller, Carl, 1857- 224 
 
 Moller, I. P., 1783-1854 255 
 
 Mols, Niels P., 1859- 353 
 
 Monies, David, 1812-1894 282 
 
 Morner, Hjalmar, 1 794-1837 122 
 
 Mortensen, Carl, 1861- 415 
 
 Miiller, Adam, 1811-1844 256, 267 
 
 Miiller, Morten, 1828-1911 471-472 
 
 Munch, Edvard, 1863- 13, 27, 30, 31-32, 34, 451, 
 
 514-515, 529, 572, 574, 576, 580-591, 605, 606, 607, 609, 633 
 
 Munch, Jacob, 1 776-1 839 450-451, 452 
 
 Munthe, Gerhard, 1849- 
 
 ...27, 30, 480, 485, 507, 532, 534-541, 551, 572, 595, 600, 602 
 
 Munthe, Ludvig, 1841-1896 29, 478-480, 534, 542, 557 
 
 Munthe-Siberg, Anna, 1854- H2 
 
 Naur, Albert, 1889- 39 1 
 
 Nerman, Einar, 1888- 204 
 
INDI'lX TO ARTISTS 657 
 
 i'y\(;i-; 
 
 Nnmi.inn, Carl. iS,.!,mH()I 2H1 
 
 Nielsen, Anialclus, iHjS 2<j, 47'j, 480-48.5 
 
 Nielsen, Anne Marie Carl, i H()] 415 
 
 Nielsen, Ejnar, 1872 - 2.^ :]Hn-i,H2 
 
 Nielsen, Kai, 1882- 25, 417-418 
 
 Niss, Thorvald, 1 842-1905 317-.518, ji'j 
 
 Norilcnbcrfi, Bcngt, 1 822-1902 128 
 
 Nordstrom, Karl, 1855- I7. 158, 175, 176-177, 21s 
 
 Norlind, Ernst, 1877- 20,5 
 
 Norregaard, Asta, 1853- 485 
 
 Norrman, Herman, 1864- 1906 184 
 
 Norstedt, Reinhold, 1843-1911 141-142 
 
 Notice, Berndt, 1440-15 17 54, 55 
 
 Nyrop, Martin, 1849-192 1 25, 26, 431-434 
 
 Nystrom, Axel, the Elder, 1793-1868 121, 132 
 
 Odegaard, Hans, 1876- 604 
 
 Olrik, H., 1830-1890 288 
 
 Onsager, Soren, 1878- 31, 610 
 
 Ostberg, Ragnar, 1866- 19, 168, 232-234 
 
 Osterman, Bernhard, 1870- 198-201 
 
 Osterman, Emil, 1870- 198-201 
 
 Ottesen, O. D., 1816-1892 312 
 
 Palm, Gustaf Vilhelm, 1810-1890 124, 158 
 
 Palmstedt, Erik, 1 741-1803 85 
 
 Pasch, Lorens, the Younger, 1733- 1805 99 
 
 Pauelsen, Erik, 1 749-1 790 245 
 
 Pauli, Georg, 1855- 166, 167-169, 196, 226, 234 
 
 Pauli, Hanna, 1864- 169-170 
 
 Paulsen, Julius, i860- 25, 349-351 
 
 Pedersen, Viggo, 1854- 364, 371-372 
 
 Pedersen, Vilhelm, 1 820-1 859 311 
 
 Pedersen-Dan, 1859- 415 
 
 Pederson, Ole, 1856-1898 357 
 
 Percy, Arthur C : son, 1886- 205 
 
 Peters, Carl, 1822-1899 411, 413 
 
 Petersen, Anna, 1 845-1910 335 
 
 Petersen, Carl, 1874- 431 
 
 Petersen, Ove, 1 830-1 892 428 
 
 Petersen, Rud., 1871- 357 
 
 Petersen, Thorolf, 1858- 357 
 
658 INDEX TO ARTISTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Petersen, Vilhelm, 1830-1913 429 
 
 Peterson, Ludvig, 1853- 228 
 
 Peterssen, Eilif, 1852- 30, 465, 485, 486-491, 493, 535, 551 
 
 Pettersson, Axel, 1868- 221 
 
 Petzholdt, Frederik, 1 805-1 838 256, 266 
 
 Philipsen, Theodor, 1840-1920 25, 333-334 
 
 Pilo, Karl Gustav, 1711-1793 21, 96-98, 241 
 
 Precht, Burchardt, 1651-1738 48, 68, 73-74 
 
 Qvarnstrom, Carl Gustaf, 18 10-1867 133 
 
 Rafael-Radberg, Eric, 1881- 221 
 
 Raf n, Aage, 1 890- 43 1 
 
 Rasmussen, Carl, 1 841-1893 318 
 
 Rehn, Jean Erik, 1 7 1 7-1 793 96 
 
 Repholtz, Albert, 1863- 357 
 
 Revold, Axel, 1887- 612 
 
 Ring, Lauritz, 1854- 24, 25, 353-356 
 
 Roed, Holger, 1846-1874 291-292 
 
 Roed, Jorgen, 1808-1888 256, 260-263, 269, 331, 342, 383 
 
 Rohde, Johan, 1856- 374 
 
 Rohde, N. F., 1816-1886 282 
 
 Rorbye, Martinus, 1803- 1848 256, 260-262 
 
 Rosen, Anton, 1859- 430 
 
 Rosen, Georg von, 1843- 143-146, 201 
 
 Rosenberg, Edvard, 1858- 201 
 
 Rosenstand, Vilhelm, 1838-1915 316 
 
 Roslin, Alexander, 17 18-1793 15, 89-92, 100 
 
 Rude, Olaf, 1886- '. . . 391 
 
 Rump, Gotfred, 1816-1880 309-310 
 
 Rusti, Olav, 1850- 485 
 
 Rydberg, Gustav, 1835- 141 
 
 Saabye, August, 1823-1916 411, 413 
 
 Sager-Nelson, Olof, 1868-1896 195-196 
 
 Salmson, Hugo, 1 843-1 894 i57> 166 
 
 Salto, Axel, 1889- 39i 
 
 Sandberg, Johan Gustav, 1 782-1854 47 
 
 Sandberg, Gustaf, 1876- 221, 232 
 
 Sandels, Gosta, 1887-1919 18, 205 
 
 Scharff, William, 1886- 24, 391 
 
 Scheel, Signe, 1 860- 57 1 . 574 
 
 Scheffel, Johan Henrik, 1 690-1 781 85 
 
 I 
 
INDEX TO Airi'ISTS 659 
 
 i'A(;ii: 
 
 Schiudto, Erik, 1(849-1909 430 
 
 SchlcMsncr, Cliristian, 18 10-1882 282 
 
 SchlirlukruU, Johan, 1866- 3S7 
 
 Schmidt, Alfr., 1858- .HS 
 
 Scholander, Fredrik Villiclm, 181 6-1 881 i j2-i jj 
 
 Schoiibcrg, Torsten, 1882- 204 
 
 Scliou, Karl, 1870- 388 
 
 Schou, L. A., 1838-1867 288-291 
 
 Schou, P. A., 1844-1914 346 
 
 Schouboe, Henrik, 1876- 384 
 
 Schroder, Georg Engelhard, 1 684-1 750 85 
 
 Schultz, Julius, 185 1- 414 
 
 Schultzberg, Anshelm, 1862- 18, 172 
 
 Schwartz, Frands, 1850-1917 321 
 
 Seligmann, Georg, 1866- 357 
 
 Sergei, Johan Tobias, 1740-1814 
 
 16, 34, 95, 103, 106-113, 116, 163, 616 
 
 Siegumfeldt, Herman, 1833-1912 300-301 
 
 Simonsen, Niels, 1807-1885 282 
 
 Sinding, Elisabeth, 1846- 485 
 
 Sinding, Otto, 1842-1909 465, 480, 485, 604 
 
 Sinding, Sigmund, 1875- 604 
 
 Sinding, Stephan, 1846-1922 33, 614, 625-628 
 
 Sjoberg, Axel, 1866- 196 
 
 Skanberg, Carl, 1850-1883 153, 158 
 
 Skeibrok, Mathias, 1851-1896 ". . .625, 628-630, 632 
 
 Skovgaard, Joakim, 1856- 24, 25, 361-371, 372, 373, 527 
 
 Skovgaard, Niels, 1858- 24, 361-371, 372, 373, 416 
 
 Skovgaard, Peter Christian, 1817-1875 
 
 25, 304-307, 309, 310, 313, 361, 363, 372, 373, 416 
 
 Skredsvig, Christian, 1854- 493, 509, 527, 542-546, 551 
 
 Slott-Moller, Agnes, 1862- 374-377 
 
 Slott-Moller, Harald, 1864- 374-377 
 
 Smidth, Hans, 1839-1917 , 301 
 
 Smith, Vilhelm, 1867- 201 
 
 Sodermark, Olof Johan, 1790-1848 122-123, 125 
 
 Sohlberg, Harald, 1869- 31, 593, 595-597 
 
 Somme, Jacob Kielland, 1862- 485 
 
 Sondrup, Just. Nielsen, 1873- 415 
 
 Sonne, Jorgen, 1801-1890 269, 293-295, 351, 426 
 
660 INDEX TO ARTISTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Soot, Eyolf, 1859- 564-566 
 
 Sorensen, C. F., 1818-1879 281 
 
 Sorensen, Henrik, 1882- 32, 612 
 
 Sorensen, Jorgen, 1 861-1894 571-572 
 
 Sparre, Louis, 1863- 198 
 
 Stein, Theobald, 1829-1901 41 1, 413 
 
 Stenberg, Emerik, 1873- 201 
 
 Stenersen, Gudmund, 1863- 571, 575 
 
 Stenhammar, Ernst, 1859- 228 
 
 Stoltenberg, Mathias, 1799-1871 27, 452-453 
 
 Stofck, H. B., 1839- 25, 428, 429 
 
 Strandman, Otto, 1871- 221 
 
 Strom, Halfdan, 1863- 566-570 
 
 Stiller, Friedrich August, 1800-1865 133 
 
 Sundt-Hansen, Carl, 1841-1907 473, 475, 476-479, 524 
 
 Svarstad, A. C, 1869- 610 
 
 Svedlund, Pelle, 1865- 201 
 
 Svor, Anders, 1864- 632 
 
 Swane, Sigurd, 1879- 24, 391 
 
 Syberg, Fritz, 1862- 23, 25, 388-389, 390, 391 
 
 Tagtstrom, David, 1894- 205 
 
 Tannics, Marie, 1854- 57i) 574 
 
 Taraval, Guilliaume Thomas Raphael, the Elder, 1 701-1750. . . 
 
 80, 82, 162, 163 
 
 Tegner, Hans, 1853- 345 
 
 Tegner, Rudolph, 1873- 415 
 
 Tempelman, Olof, 1 746-1 816 114 
 
 Tengbom, Ivar, 1878- 235-236 
 
 Tessin, Nikodemus, the Elder, 1615-1681 67, 68, 73, 80, 81 
 
 Tessin, Nikodemus, the Younger, 1654- 1728 
 
 48, 73-77, 80, 81, 96, 121, 162 
 
 Tetens, Vilhelm, 1871 or 1872- 384 
 
 Thaulow, Fritz, 1847- 1906 
 
 30, 451, 465, 507-512, 527, 534, 535, 542, 556, 560, 570, 57i> 572 
 
 Thegerstrom, Robert, 1857-1919 166, 172, 175 
 
 Therkildsen, M., 1850- 334 
 
 Thiele, Anton, 1838-1902 335 
 
 Thies, Axel, i860- 345 
 
 Thomsen, Carl, 1847-1912 343^ 344 
 
 Thorenfeld, Anton, 1839-1907 3^3 
 
INDFA' TO y\RTISTS 661 
 
 i'A(;i'; 
 rh()r\;il(lscii, l>citcl, 1770-1844 16, 21, 
 
 27, .u> K'O, 122, 245, 24O, 247, 24.S, 24-;, 2f)7, .v;^4".^ 4"^'. 
 
 40S, 411, 413, 425, 426, 4S'>, 4SI, (>i(K (>\7, ^)iS, ()!<;, 620, 623 
 
 Tliiira, ivaurids, 1 706-1 7S<) 421 
 
 'rii\ji;osen, Riulolf, 1880 32, 612 
 
 Thjlstiup, (jcorg, 1884- 41 8 
 
 Tidemand, Adolf, 1814-1876 27, 2<j, 454- 
 
 462, 472, 47.^. 475, 476, 477, 47<^ 4'^H, S24, S2<j, S7.S. 619, 628 
 
 Torneman, Axel, 1880- 18, 204-205, 234 
 
 Torsteinson, Torstein, 1876 6(Xj 
 
 Troili, Uno, 1815-1875 125-127 
 
 Trulson, Anders, 1 874-1 gi i 203 
 
 Tuxen, Laurits, 1853- 314, 315, 319-321 
 
 Tvede, Gotfred, 1863- 430 
 
 Uchermann, Karl, 1855- 485, 527 
 
 Ulfsten, Nicolai, 1854-1885 527, 555 
 
 Utne, Lars, 1 862- 63 1 
 
 Utzon-Franck, Einar, 1888- 418 
 
 Vallee, Jean de la, 1620-1696 67, 68 
 
 Vallee, Simon de la, d. 1642 68 
 
 Vedel, Herman, 1875- 384 
 
 Vermehren, Frederik, 1823-igio 22, 297, 300, 382, 409 
 
 Vigeland, Emmanuel, 1875- 637, 638 
 
 Vigeland, Gustav, 1869- 27, 33, 589, 614, 632-644 
 
 Vik, Ingebrigt, 1867- 644-645 
 
 Visdal, Jo, 1861- 632 
 
 Wagner, Fru Olga, 1873- 416-417 
 
 Wagner, Siegfried, 1874- 416, 417 
 
 Wahlberg, Alfred, 1834-1906 16, 140-141, 166 
 
 Wahlbom, Karl, 1810-1858 125 
 
 Wahlman, Lars, 1870- 234-235 
 
 Wallander, Alf, 1862-1914 196, 221, 222 
 
 Wallander, Gerda, i860- 196-197 
 
 Wallin, David, 1876- 201 
 
 Wandel, Sigurd, 1875- 384-385 
 
 Warming, Christof^er, 1865- 430 
 
 Wegmann, Bertha, 1848- 335 
 
 Weie, Edvard, 1879- 24, 391 
 
 Wenck, Henri, 185 1- 430 
 
 Wennerberg, Gunnar, 1863-1914 222 
 
662 INDEX TO ARTISTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Wentzel, Nils Gustav, 1859- 561-564, 566, 573 
 
 Werenskiold, Dagfin, 1892- 30 
 
 Werenskiold, Erik, 1855- 29, 30, 479, 485, 507-508, 519, 
 
 523-534, 535, 542, 546, 548, 551, 557, 575, .593, 595, 600, 602 
 
 Wergeland, Oscar Arnold, 1844-1910 485 
 
 Wertmiiller, Adolf Ulrik, 1751-1812 15, 100, lOi 
 
 Westin, Fredrik, 1 782-1862 121 
 
 Westman, Carl, 1866- 19, 230-232 
 
 Wetlesen, Wilhelm, 1871- 604 
 
 Wexelsen, Christian, 1830-1883 472 
 
 Wickenberg, Per Gabriel, 1812-1846 123-124 
 
 Wilhelmson, Carl, 1866- 17, 197-198 
 
 Wilhjelm, Jobs., 1868- 356 
 
 Willumsen, Jens Ferdinand, 1863-. .23, 24, 25, 26, 377-380, 382, 416 
 
 Winge, Marten Eskil, 1 825-1 896 138 
 
 Wold-Torne, Oluf, 1867-1919 31, 597, 600-603 
 
 Zacho, Christian, 1843-1913 317, 318 
 
 Zahrtmann, Kristian, 1843-1917 
 
 23, 31, 335-341, 349, 364, 386, 575, 597, 600, 603, 611 
 
 Zetterwall, Helgo, 1831-1907 223 
 
 Zorn, Anders Leonard, 1860-1920 17, 176, 188-195 
 
%\^ri~. 
 
GETTY RESEARCH INSTITUTE 
 
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