Adelsteen Normann

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Adelsteen Normann, photo by Carl Tietz

Eilert Adelsteen Normann (born May 1, 1848 on the island of Vågøya near Bodø , † December 26, 1918 in Christiania, now Oslo ) was a Norwegian landscape painter from the Düsseldorf School .

Life

Adelsteen Normann's father Johan Normann (1804–1862) was a wealthy boatman and farm owner, who owed his fortune to the boom in northern fishing. His second son Adelsteen was sent to a school in Trondheim in 1860 . After the early death of the father, the widow Sofia Maria geb. Dreyer (1815–1894) took over the business because the children were still minors. Adelsteen attended secondary school in Bergen from 1863-1867 . In 1869 he was to begin training as a businessman in Copenhagen . However, his impressions in Copenhagen museums gave rise to his decision to become a painter.

In 1869, at the age of 23, Normann came to the Düsseldorf Art Academy to study landscape painting. He became a student of Oswald Achenbach and, after he had resigned from his position in 1872, of his successor Eugen Dücker . In 1870 Normann married Catharine Hubertine Weitgan (1845–1911) from the Rhineland. In 1871 he visited her homeland. As early as 1872 he was able to show his first paintings at exhibitions in Düsseldorf and Copenhagen. In 1873 he finished his studies and took up residence in Düsseldorf. The family fortune allowed him to buy a house with a garden at Sternstrasse 40. In Düsseldorf, Normann was a member of the artists' association Malkasten .

The artistic success came unusually quickly. In 1873 he was represented at the world exhibition in Vienna . 1874 in London and Berlin , 1876 in Philadelphia . At the Royal Academy exhibition in 1874 he received the "Albert Edward Medal" and in 1877 a silver medal. In 1878 he exhibited at the World Exhibition in Paris . In 1884, a work by Normann was awarded a medal of honor at an exhibition in the Paris Salon, and five years later he won a bronze medal for another painting. Further exhibition locations were Gothenburg (1881), Boston (1883), Budapest (1884), Antwerp (1885), Versailles (1885), Madrid (1892) and Munich (1904). Among the buyers of his pictures were the Swedish National Museum Stockholm (1877), King Oscar II (1883, 1887), Kaiser Wilhelm II (1887) and Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Este (1904).

Normann is considered to be the discoverer of the painter Gunnar Berg , who was the son of a merchant and court owner in Svolvaer , to whom Normann had family and social ties. On his advice, Berg began studying at the Düsseldorf Academy in 1883. In addition, he received private lessons from Normann.

In 1886 Normann and his family visited their parents' farm on Vågøya, which the mother gave to her third surviving son Jonathan Dreyer Normann (1855-1916) that year.

In 1887 Normann followed the growing attraction of the imperial capital Berlin and, like his compatriot Hans Fredrik Gude in 1880, moved to Berlin . He lived in studio apartments in the West in the then independent neighboring community of Deutsch-Wilmersdorf: Ansbacher Strasse 44/45 (1899), Nassauische Strasse 54/55 (1908) and Regensburger Strasse 10 (1917). Through Walter Leistikow , Max Liebermann and Franz Skarbina he got to know the local cultural scene and became a member of the Berlin Artists' Association. Gunnar Berg moved to Berlin in the same year as Normann, where he and his daughter Emma accompanied him until his untimely death in 1893.

In 1890/91 Normann had a villa built by the architect Karl Norum in Balestrand by the Sognefjord , in which he then spent the summers. The building here was the prototype of a dragon-style villa and is still known today as Villa Normann . In this way there was also the possibility of contact with the emperor, who visited Balestrand regularly. He bought a “Nordlandsbåt”, which he equipped with an outboard motor, so that his subjects could be more easily reached from the water.

During his visit to Norway in 1892, Normann saw an exhibition with pictures by the little-known artist Edvard Munch , whose talent he recognized. Through his mediation, Munch was able to show more than 55 works at an exhibition of the Berlin Artists' Association in Berlin. The exhibition caused a scandal because Munch's works offended the court and the majority of visitors. After a few days the exhibition was closed. Normann had foreseen the scandal. That is why he had long discussions with his colleague Max Uth and the art historian Hermann Beenken . In this way, however, Normann helped Munch to its outstanding fame, which continues to this day.

Kaiser Wilhelm II did not add his commitment to Munch to Normann. On his last voyage to the north in 1914, he ordered a monumental picture of the Lyngenfjord from Normann, which he no longer received because of the war, whereupon a shipowner from Normann bought the work.

Normann seems to have had little interest in traveling to foreign countries. However, he must have been to France at least once, as a painting of a Provence motif reveals.

Normann set up a painting school in Berlin, with lessons taking place in Balestrand in the summer. He mainly taught young women, but none of them became well known. One of them was Luise Rostalski (1883–1954), from whom he had a son in 1909, who was named Adelsteen jr. (1909-1990) received. Normann wanted a divorce from his wife, but she resisted. After she died in 1911, he married Luise, 35 years his junior.

In 1910 he had a house built in Deutsch-Wilmersdorf by a Norwegian building contractor. But the latter fled to America with his money, and Normann went bankrupt, from which he freed himself by increasing the production of pictures.

In 1917 Normann moved back to Norway for health reasons, where he died of the Spanish flu after a long illness . His urn was transferred to the south-west cemetery in Stahnsdorf , where there is a Norwegian-style chapel.

Normann had five children from his first marriage, Emma (1871–1954), Otto (* 1872), Walter (* 1874), Olga (* 1875–1961) and Ella (* 1877–1908). Emma Normann , who grew up in Düsseldorf and Berlin, married the publicist Willy Pastor , who became known for his publications on prehistory and early history, in which he argued that culture had come to Europe from the north. She also painted, despite her low talent, imitated Hans Dahl and illustrated her husband's books. She painted the altarpiece for the church in Balestrand . Otto married Gunnhild, a daughter of the painter Georg Anton Rasmussen , Walter married Lorna, a daughter of the painter Hans Andreas Dahl .

Ole Juul (1852-1927) from Henningsvær was a maternal cousin of Normann. Normann encouraged him to pursue a career as a painter and in 1876 sent him to Düsseldorf, where he studied with Eugen Dücker.

plant

Fishing village in Northern Norway
Midnight in Norway

Normann tried on numerous topics. The main focus of his work, however, are landscapes from Sogn og Fjordane and Nordland . In particular, he was known for his fjord landscapes with midnight sun. Most often he painted scenes of the tourist areas at the Sognefjord, Nærøyfjord and Romsdalfjord, which established his fame. For his landscapes he used rowing and sailing boats as standard, also steamships as staffage, alongside individual figures, and tourists clearly marked on early works from the 1870s. The working world of the local population, which was very important to the painters who were under the influence of Norwegian national romanticism, was hardly taken into account in Normann's pictures intended for sale.

He also painted scenes from his northern Norwegian homeland and the Lofoten archipelago . His pictures are not provided with details of the places shown and are usually not dated, which makes it difficult to assign them. It is assumed that many of his larger pictures were first composed in the studio.

Normann used his own photographs as templates for his pictures. In contrast to that of his colleagues Hans Dahl or Themistokles von Eckenbrecher , his painting style changed considerably in the course of his life and, under the influence of Impressionism, became more and more fleeting and sketchy. From the subdued colors of his early creative period he switched to violent combinations of bright colors. He has been using the spatula technique since the 1890s. "It was no longer the work of the fine, smooth brush tip; the broad spatula took its place," as a report from 1893 says. Normann now stereotypically painted many similar fjord landscapes with blue skies that sold well to German tourists.

His relationship to the Berlin Secession , which he seems to be approaching in some works, requires further investigation.

Post fame

In 1943 Hitler had a fjord painting by Normann from 1876 purchased for the Führer Museum in Linz . For a long time, however, most museums considered it not worth collecting. It was not until 1994 that the Adelsteen Normann Foundation was established in Bodø, which is dedicated to the painter's work and into which large parts of his estate have flowed. The National Gallery in Oslo first acquired a painting by Normann in 1996. Since 2001, Hålogatun, Bodø, Reinslettveien 3, has shown a permanent exhibition of Norman's works.

Works (selection)

  • Sognefjord (National Museum in Stockholm)
  • Stamsund in Lofoten
  • Harbor in Lofoten
  • Midnight in Lofoten
  • Romdalsfjord
  • Foldenfjord
  • Saltenfjord

literature

  • Address book of the Lord Mayor of Düsseldorf for 1886
  • Richard Muther: History of painting in the 19th century. Munich 1893–1894 (3 vol.)
  • Norsk Kunstnerleksikon . Oslo 1986, Vol. 3, pp. 106-8
  • Axel E. Johansen: Adelsteen Normann. painting fra midnattsolens land. 1988
  • Arne Melkild: Art Narliv. Leikanger 1993
  • Adelsteen Normann: Gentlemen "fra Vågøya og keiserens venn. Tromsø 1998
  • Lofoten's paintings. Johan Nielssen - Otto Sinding - Adelsteen Normann - Gunnar Berg. Tromsø 2004. ISBN 82-91834-20-2
  • Bjørn Tore Pedersen: Adelsteen Normann, Norges fjord painter. Oslo 2009

Web links

Commons : Adelsteen Normann  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Private genealogical page