Askevold is different

Askevold is different

Anders Monsen Askevold (born December 25, 1834 in Askvoll ; † October 22, 1900 in Düsseldorf ) was a Norwegian landscape and animal painter from the Düsseldorf School of Painting .

Life

As the second of ten children of the sexton and teacher Mons Andersson Askevold (1806-1889) and his wife Johanne Johansdatter, née Grav (1809-1901), he began to draw autodidactically. From 1847 to 1854 he was a student of Hans Leganger Reusch (1800-1854) in Bergen and meanwhile a student at the drawing school there under Franz Wilhelm Schiertz . He then went to the capital Christiania and took part in the lessons of Knud Bergslien at the Royal Drawing School . He financed his stay by taking portraits. In the fall of 1855 Askevold traveled to Düsseldorf, where he became a private student of his compatriot Hans Fredrik Gude, and in the following year he switched to his landscaping class at the art academy. In Düsseldorf he frequented the circle of the numerous Scandinavian artists who were studying in Düsseldorf and who had already settled there, including Adolph Tidemand and Ulrika Sofia Amalia von Schwerin .

In 1858 he returned to Norway and in 1860 went on a study trip made possible by a scholarship. It took him via Düsseldorf to Paris , where his artistic orientation was based on the leading animal painters Constant Troyon and Rosa Bonheur . Back in Bergen he married Katarina Maria Didrike Gran (1834–1917) in 1862 and moved with her to Paris. The marriage produced five daughters and three sons, the latter being Anders (1869–1941), who became an architect, and Ingolf Birger (1875–1951), later professor of education in Kassel. In Bergen, Askevold also taught some private students in his studio, among them in 1873/74 Ole Juul and 1875/76 Karl Uchermann (1855–1940), both of whom came from Lofoten. In 1877/78 he was in Munich and studied with Friedrich Voltz . In 1878 the family finally moved to Düsseldorf (Wielandstrasse 12, 1881 Sternstrasse 20, 1885 Adlerstrasse 12, 1886 Grafenberger Strasse 50, 1892 Neanderstr. 15, from Grafenberger Chaussee 113 and 122. In addition, since 1887 atelier Pempelforter Strasse 88).

In 1896 the painter suffered a stroke, the consequences of which made further artistic work impossible for him; he died in 1900 at the age of almost 66. Cathinka Askevold died in 1917 and was buried next to her husband in the Düsseldorf North Cemetery. The grave is preserved.

From 1883 to 1900 Askevold was a member of the Düsseldorf artists' association Malkasten .

plant

Cowsby

Landscape with a Lake , 1853

Summer landscape with cows , 1860

With Gude, Johan Fredrik Eckersberg and Morten Müller , he was one of the most popular late Romantic artists in Norway . It was his concern to combine animal , genre and landscape painting. He thus followed up on the joint efforts of Gude and Adolph Tidemand to unite the previous painting styles of landscape and genre.

During his student days in Düsseldorf it was customary to dramatize reality through painting. Besides Gude, he was influenced by August Cappelen , Erik Bodom and Lars Hertervig . Although he stayed in Paris, there is no evidence of any influence of French painting on him. He found his own way between realism and idealism. Until 1880, Askevold mainly painted the life on the mountain pastures, as he had experienced it himself in his childhood in Sunnfjord. He was concerned with the representation of the simple life of the population in close association with the cattle, which he shows in the transfigured morning or evening light. Since his pictures were based on his own experience, he achieved a high level of credibility. They were apparently realistic, but at the same time idealized and thus also corresponded to the then increased need of Norwegians for national self-expression (→ Norwegian national romanticism ).

Cows play a big part in these pictures. However, Askevold's concern was to show the landscape, cattle and people in their harmonious interaction and not to let any of these elements dominate. The cows are shown neither in a boring state of rest nor in exalted dramatic movement, but rather in small narrative events such as watering or crossing the fjord in the course of the Alb uplift or downforce. Askevold did not intend to point out social or political problems. Critics later accused him of this. They liked to dismiss Askevold as a “cow painter” and said that he calculated his pictures according to the number of cows depicted.

In the general artistic upheaval around 1880, the style of painting and the subject matter of his pictures also changed. He gave up the cow theme and turned more to fjord painting. He especially painted scenes in Voss, on the Sognefjord and Hardangerfjord . His style of painting became more pastose and less detailed, his colors paler and cooler. Its fjord landscapes are populated by locals, you can see settlements on the shore, and sometimes a steamer can be seen. These pictures look like vedutas of real places, but they are obviously composed.

The pictures created in later years often resemble each other. The reason is to be sought in the group of buyers, who since the 1880s have mainly consisted of tourists who experienced the country from the cruise ship and saw travel memories in the paintings. Like many Norwegian painters, he later lived mainly in Düsseldorf, from where the pictures were easier to market than in Norway. He had already started repeating pictures at reduced prices even earlier.

In addition to the studio pictures in larger and medium formats, Askevold also painted smaller open-air studies, which have become increasingly popular since the Romantic era and have also found buyers. The art historians influenced by Impressionism still appreciate these more than his studio pictures. A number of these studies are in the National Museum in Oslo .

Work examples

• Summer day at the lake with cows , 1876, 112 × 218 cm, National Museum Oslo
• Embarkation of cows , 1869, 62 × 97 cm, Bergen Art Museum
• Cows in the forest , 1870, 44m3 × 62 cm, Bergen Art Museum
• several paintings are owned by the Blomqvist art trade in Oslo
• several pictures are in the collection of the Barony Rosendal

literature

• J. Lange: Nutids Art . København 1873, pp. 404, 405.
• Friedrich von Boetticher (art historian) : painter works of the 19th century. Contribution to art history. I-1. Dresden 1891.
• Askevold, Anders Monsen . In: General Artist Lexicon . The visual artists of all times and peoples (AKL). Volume 5, Saur, Munich a. a. 1992, ISBN 3-598-22745-0 , p. 421.
• Carl Wille Schnitler : Askevold, Anders Monsen . In: Ulrich Thieme , Felix Becker (Hrsg.): General Lexicon of Fine Artists from Antiquity to the Present . Founded by Ulrich Thieme and Felix Becker. tape 2 : Antonio da Monza-Bassan . Wilhelm Engelmann, Leipzig 1908, p. 182 ( Textarchiv - Internet Archive ).
• Hans Wolfgang Singer (Ed.): General artist lexicon. Life and works of the most famous visual artists. Prepared by Hermann Alexander Müller. Literary establishment Rütten & Loening, Frankfurt / Main 1921, Volumes I and V (supplements).
• M. Flokenes: Kunstmålar Anders Monsen Askevold 1834-1934. Sandane 1934.
• Emanuel Bénézit (Ed.): Dictionnaire Critique et Documentaire des Peintres, Sculpteurs, Dessinateurs et Graveurs de tous les temps et de tous les pays. Volume 1, 1976.
• Norsk Kunstner Leksikon. Fine arts center - Arkitekter - Kunsthåndverkere. Rdigert aqv Nasjonalgalleriet. Volume 1, Oslo 1982.
• Magne Malmanger: Anders Askevold. Fra fjord to fonn. Rosendal, 1993.
• Knut Ormhaug, in: Hans Paffrath (Ed.): Lexicon of the Düsseldorfer Malerschule 1819–1918. Volume 1: Abbema – Gurlitt. Published by the Kunstmuseum Düsseldorf in the Ehrenhof and by the Paffrath Gallery. Bruckmann, Munich 1997, ISBN 3-7654-3009-9 , pp. 73-75 (fig.).
• Siegfried Weiss : The painter Anders Monsen Askevold (1834–1900). In: Heimat-Jahrbuch Wittlaer, Volume 27 (2006), pp. 144–149 (fig.).

Web links

Commons : Anders Askevold  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Anders Askevold , website in the portal nkl.snl.no ( Norsk Kunstnerleksikon )

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Membership directory / inventory list (status 07/2005) on malkasten.org , accessed on September 17, 2013.
2. ↑ Bettina Baumgärtel (ed.): The Düsseldorf School of Painting and its international impact 1819–1918. Michael Imhof Verlag, Petersberg, 2011, ISBN 978-3-86568-702-9 , pp. 364, 426.