Two hundred years ago today, on 13 March 1825, the great Norwegian landscape painter Hans Gude was born in what was then Christiania, now Oslo, capital of Norway. This second article celebrating his life and work resumes in 1860. During the 1850s his paintings had aroused some interest in the UK, so in 1862 Gude travelled to Wales to try to develop his British market.

This painting of what he called ‘Eføybroen’, which might be an ‘Efoy’ Bridge, in North Wales was completed in 1863 from studies he had made of the motif in the previous autumn.

He also painted some grander landscapes of The Lledr Valley in Wales (1864), where he stayed during this campaign, which conform more to Ruskin’s precepts.

Gude continued to work by painting studies en plein air, which he took back to the studio and worked up into a finished painting. In contrast, local British painters at the time tended to complete their finished works in front of the motif, and seldom painted landscapes entirely in the studio. When Gude’s paintings were exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1863 and 1864, they achieved little recognition, and failed to sell.

At the end of 1863, Gude was offered the post of professor at the Baden School of Art in Karlsruhe, which he accepted, as there was still no academy of fine art in Norway. During his tenure there, many Norwegians were students; some of the best-known include Kitty Kielland, Eilif Peterssen, Christian Krogh, and Frits Thaulow.

While he was teaching in Karlsruhe, Gude continued to promote the practice of painting en plein air, and his figures steadily improved. Fjord Landscape with People (1875) shows a typical period scene, with figures, cattle, horses, sailing vessels, and another of his wide open views.

Gude also worked in watercolours, and during his later career visited Scotland on several occasions, where he painted this almost monochrome view of an Estuary at Brodick, Arran, Scotland (1877).

Gude’s watercolour Landscape with Tarbert Castle, Scotland (1877) shows one of the most famous ruined castles on the west coast of Scotland, on the shore of East Loch Tarbert, at the north end of the Kintyre peninsula.

Sandvik Fjord (1879) is a startlingly detailed depiction of a view from above Sandviken, now the northern suburbs of the Norwegian city of Bergen, looking to the west and the island of Askøy.

In 1880, Gude moved to teach at the Academy of Art in Berlin.

Oban Bay (1889) was painted following another visit to Scotland, and shows the small bay beside the town of Oban, on the west coast of northern Scotland. This bay opens out to the Sound of Kerrera, and is now a busy ferry port serving the Western Isles; at this time it seems to have been but a small fishing port. The prominent building in the distance just to the left of the centre of the painting is Saint Columba’s Cathedral, the seat of the Roman Catholic Bishop for the Western Isles. The distant mountains are those of the Morvern Peninsula, on the opposite shore of Loch Linnhe.

Kaien på Feste i nær Moss (The Jetty at Feste near Moss) (1898) shows another marine view in the far south-east of Norway, on the eastern side of the broad fjord leading north to Oslo.

Gude retired to Berlin in 1901, and died there in 1903, one of the founding fathers of Norwegian and Nordic landscape painting.

Like other detailed realists of the nineteenth century, Gude’s paintings lack the distinctive look of truly Pre-Raphaelite landscapes, but were far more practical to make, and more compatible with the business demands of the professional artist. They were rapidly being eclipsed in popularity by the Impressionist movement, and like all forms of representational painting were about to be displaced by the modernism of the twentieth century.

Reference

Wikipedia.

Tomorrow is the bicentenary of the birth of one of Norway’s greatest landscape artists, Hans Gude. In this and tomorrow’s article I celebrate his life and work with a selection of his paintings.

Gude was born on 13 March 1825 and was initially educated in Christiania (now Oslo, Norway), and in 1842 started his studies at the Academy of Art in Düsseldorf, Germany. He there joined a recently-formed landscape class taught by Professor Johann Wilhelm Schirmer. Gude rejected conventional teaching that landscape paintings should be composed according to classical or aesthetic principles, preferring instead to paint thoroughly realistically, and true to nature. He also met Karl Friedrich Lessing (1808-1880), one of the German Romantic artists who had in turn been influenced by Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840).

On completion of his studies, probably by about 1846, Gude returned to Norway.

Landscape Study from Vågå (1846) is a fine example of one of his early oil studies, and was probably completed in front of the motif, in Norway’s mountainous Oppland county north of the Jotunheimen Mountains. Although its background is loose and vague, foreground detail is meticulous for a work that appears to have been painted en plein air.

His depiction of lichens, mosses, fungi and plants is comparable to that of the best Pre-Raphaelites, although at this time the only manifesto advocating such an approach was the first volume of John Ruskin’s Modern Painters, published in 1843. I think it most unlikely that Gude would have read or been influenced by Ruskin at that time.

Vinterettermiddag (Winter Afternoon) (1847) is a studio painting that wouldn’t look out of place on a greetings card, and a marked contrast.

Tessefossen i Vågå i middagsbelysning (Tessefossen in Vågå at midday) (1848) is a relatively large studio painting that might seem more typical of an American landscape painter of the day.

Early in his career, Gude struggled to paint realistic figures, and in several works he enlisted the help of fellow countryman Adolph Tidemand (1814–1876) to paint those in for him. Tidemand had trained in Düsseldorf immediately before Gude, between 1837-41, and the two met in Hardanger in Norway in 1843.

Among the results of this collaboration are some of their most spectacular works, such as Brudeferden i Hardanger (Bridal journey in Hardanger) (1848). Gude’s highly detailed and realistic landscape is set in the far south-west of Norway, in the region to the east of Bergen, where one of the world’s largest and most spectacular fjords carves its way from glacier to the sea.

Not a particularly large canvas, it is as meticulously detailed as might have been expected from a Pre-Raphaelite, although its colours aren’t as brash. Gude became particularly interested in reflections on water later in his career.

Gude’s By the Mill Pond (1850) seems to have been another plein air study, but is so detailed that it would be hard to class it as a sketch. When looked at more carefully, though, many of its apparently precise passages turn out to consist of gestural marks, as in the lichens on the boulders in the foreground, and the small waterfall at the back. It’s also interesting in containing a figure, perhaps that of Betsy Anker whom Gude married in the summer of that year.

This later collaboration with Tidemand, Lystring på Krøderen (Fishing with a Harpoon) (1851), is a wonderful nocturne showing night fishing in sheltered waters, and another masterpiece of detailed realism.

In 1854, Gude was appointed professor in succession to his former teacher Schirmer, remarkable recognition for the Norwegian who wasn’t yet thirty years old. He tendered his resignation three years later, but didn’t actually leave Düsseldorf for a further five years.

In its composition and foreground detail, Norwegian Highlands (1857) conforms to Ruskin’s precepts, although it was painted in the studio from plein air studies and retains more traditional earth-based colours.

Reference

Wikipedia.