Paintings from Denmark and Norway

H.A. Brendekilde was born the son of a clog-maker in 1857 in the village of Brendekilde on the island of Fünen. Early on he displayed artistic talent but brought up as he was in straightened circumstances he became an apprentice stonemason in Odense, which after all was an artistic trade. However, it was here that he was discovered by the widowed Mrs Blumensaadt, who encouraged him and helped him financially to study at the Copenhagen Academy of Fine Art, where between 1877 and 1881 he trained as a modeller. Nevertheless, he decided to make his living as a painter.

After leaving the academy H.A. Brendekilde’s first paintings were landscapes in a post-romantic style. But together with his friend from the academy L.A. Ring he gradually started to lean towards social realistic genre paintings with a clear social message. When H.A. Brendekilde died in Jyllinge in 1942 he was an extremely well-known painter.

Besides the above-mentioned “Sommerdag i haven. To kvinder i samtale ved havelågen”, H.A. Brendekilde’s painting “Åløb gennem landskabet” (Landscape with Brook) (lot 601) will be offered for sale at online auction 602. Both paintings belonged to Mrs Blumensaadt.

Georg Anton Rasmussen was born in Stavanger in 1842, but studied with the German painter Oswald Achenbach (1827-1905) in Düsseldorf. Consequently, several of G.A. Rasmussen’s German subjects originate in the Düsseldorf area, but there are also themes from Berlin to where he moved in 1899. His landscapes were extremely popular, as G.A. Rasmussen’s eye for colour was more powerful and personal than was normally the case in the Germany of the age. From here also came the demand for the scenes of the Norwegian countryside and the Fiord landscapes of which he was gradually to become a master, and for which he is still well-known today.

Despite the fact that G.A. Rasmussen was to become a figure in Norwegian-German culture, he never forgot his roots. He painted many Norwegian subjects from memory, but many were also painted during holidays in his country of birth. He was one of the several well-known artists to stay at the Hotel Stalheim, north of Oslo. Here, G.A. Rasmussen was able to take advantage of the tourism of the age and the guests taking the waters, since he painted local subjects which were immediately saleable to the visitors of the hotel.    
G.A. Rasmussen died in Berlin in 1914.