Lot 177: PROPERTY OF A BRITISH PRIVATE COLLECTOR ERIK THEODOR WERENSKIOLD NORWEGIAN, 1855-1936 FRA TÅTØY,

PROPERTY OF A BRITISH PRIVATE COLLECTOR ERIK THEODOR WERENSKIOLD NORWEGIAN, 1855-1936 FRA TÅTØY, KRAGERØ (FROM TÅTØY, KRAGERØ)

signed, inscribed and dated Erik Werenskiold. Kragerø. 1882 l.r.

oil on panel

EXHIBITED

Kristiania, Høstutstillingen, 1882, no. 58
Oslo, Kunstnernes Hus, Høstutstillingen de første 25 år, 1938, no. 327
Oslo, Kunstnernes Hus, Erik Werenskiold, 1936, no. 18
Oslo, Kunstforening, 1967
CATALOGUE NOTE

Painted on Tåtøy, close to Kragerø, shortly after his marriage to Sofie Thomesen (1849-1926). Werenskiold had met Sofie together with Harriet Backer and Kitty Kielland in Munich in 1877. Six years Werenskiold's senior and a painter in her own right, Sophie was the daughter of a shipbroker and merchant in Kragerö. Married there on 9th May 1882, the couple honeymooned nearby on Tåtøy. They returned again to the island later the same summer where they were visited by Theodore Kittelson, Frits Thaulow and Andreas Aubert among others. To judge from the green foliage, it is likely that Werenskiold painted the present work on this second visit to Tåtøy, very likely in July or August.

Certainly the composition and colouring of the present work has a sense of balance and harmony about it that may well owe a debt to new found marital happiness. The painting's pleasing sense of order and equilibrium, however, also reflects the impact of his recent time in Paris. Werenskiold had been to Paris for the first time in 1881, and from thereon he returned for extended visits virtually every year, and on occasion several times in the same year. The Impressionist exhibitions of 1881 and 1882 were especially influential in the development of his style, and in 1883 he enrolled in the studio of Jean-Léon Bonnat.

Werenskiold's appreciation of artistic developments in French painting, however, did not cause him to renounce his Norwegian roots. Rather he put the new found painterly freedom that he had gained on his travels to the service of his native country to record the essence of contemporary Norwegian life. In his early 'twenties he had explored the culture and traditions of Norway's far flung local communities in order to illustrate with Kitty Kielland the compendium of Norwegian fairytales collected by Peter Christen Asbjørnsen. In his subsequent oil paintings of the 1880s in particular, Werenskiold used the aesthetic principles and painterly techniques that he had observed and mastered while in both Munich and in Paris in his honest and heartfelt depictions of his native Norway. The result was a series of simple but characteristic situations placed in closely studied landscape surroundings. These included his large oil Peasant Burial of 1883-85, and the more intimate Shepherds painted at Tåtøy in 1883 (fig. 1), both in the Nasjonalgalleriet, Oslo as well as the present outstanding example.

Fig. 1: Erik Werenskiold, Shepherds, 1883, @ Oslo Nasjonalgalleriet (DIGI REF: 347D05101).

36 by 47.7cm., 14 1/4 by 18 3/4 in.