Lot 25: I tanker (In thoughts)

Ludvig Karsten (Norwegian, 1876-1926) I tanker (In thoughts) signed and dated 'Karsten/-17' (upper left) oil on canvas 50 3/8 x 29¾ in. (128 x 75.5 cm.) Painted in Copenhagen in 1917

Oslo, Kunstnerforbundet, Ludvig Karsten, 1917.
Stockholm, Liljevachs Konsthall, Ludvig Karsten, 1922, no. 100.
Oslo, Kunsterforbundet/Kunstforeningen, Ludvig Karsten, 1922, no. 129.

Christian Tetzen-Lund, Denmark.
Anonymous sale, Sotheby's, London, 14 March 1989, lot 73.
Acquired at the above sale by the present owner.

VAT rate of 5% is payable on hammer price and at 17.5% on the buyer's premium.
'The powerful use of colour demonstrates to the full [Ludvig] Karsten's position in the French Post-Impressionism and Fauvism of his day. There is also an expressive and nervous power in the execution which illustrates Karsten's idea that all good art was a 'nervous affair': reality must be captured without spending too much effort on brain work. Otherwise, freshness would vanish and sensual reality would be lost behind dry, intellectual reflection...his pictures...had to appear on the canvas as if swept along by a Dionysian intoxication. As a result, the pictures usually seem like true battlefields of brushstrokes and colour'. (N. Messel in 'Ludvig Karsten', Scandinavian Modernism: Painting in Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden 1910-1920, exh. cat., New York, 1989, p. 146).