Betzy Akersloot-Berg

Betzy Berg, by Sientje van Houten

Betzy Rezora Akersloot-Berg (born December 16, 1850 in Aurskog, Aurskog-Høland , Norway , † December 18, 1922 in Vlieland , Netherlands ) was a Norwegian-Dutch landscape and marine painter .

Life

Betzy Berg was born in 1850 as one of five children into a wealthy, agricultural family in the village of Aurskog. Her mother was Bartha Nordbye, her father Casper Cristiansen Berg. He was a farmer, later a large landowner and businessman.

Betzy Berg spent most of her youth in Oslo and trained as a nurse, after which she decided to go to Finnmark in northern Norway as a missionary and to work under simple conditions with the Sami people . Around 1875 she returned to Oslo and attended the Royal Drawing Academy there. Otto Sinding was working in Oslo at the time , with whom she took lessons, and whom she followed to Munich as a student in the early 1880s when he settled there. She worked in Munich for three winters (1881–1883), but spent the summers in Norway. Like Sinding, she now devoted her motifs to coastal and sea landscapes, which had a naturalistic-realistic style. Around this time she got to know the work of the marine painter Hendrik Willem Mesdag and himself in Vienna , and accompanied him and Sientje van Houten , also a painter and Mesdag's wife, in the winter of 1886 and 1887 as his student and assistant to Scheveningen ( The Hague ) . Presumably she also worked on Panorama Mesdag in 1888 . The influence of Mesdag - atmospheric light, sober color tones - can be seen in her own work from this period.

In the winter months of 1890 and 1891 Berg moved to Paris to take the painting class of Puvis de Chavannes ; however, she had to break off her stay for financial reasons.

During their stay with Mesdag and Van Houten in Scheveningen, Berg met the widower Gooswinus Gerardus Akersloot, the former mayor of Hoevelaken . The two married in Papendrecht in 1893 , and after a few stops the couple settled on the West Frisian island of Vlieland in 1896 . They bought a former admiralty house, which they converted and named Tromp's Huys , and from whose studio Berg had a view of the Wadden Sea. Betzy Akersloot-Berg got involved in local society by running a Sunday school and offering sewing groups with Bible readings for girls. With Akersloot, who became honorary vice-consul of Norway and Sweden in 1899 , they belonged to the respected part of the island's population on the one hand, but Berg's unconventional manner also met with rejection on the other. She had her own religious beliefs and sat on the beach , dressed in oilskins, in a wooden box, either to paint or to collect wood from which she made her frames . The numerous paintings from this period were created both in the studio and in the open air.

Almost every spring she traveled to Norway - as before her marriage - to spend the summer there. The trips took her from Lofoten to Lindesnäs (in 1892 she had also participated in a whaling in the Arctic Ocean for study purposes ).

Her husband usually followed her in late summer and accompanied her back to Vlieland in autumn. In addition to Norway, she traveled to Sweden, Germany, England, Italy, Russia and France, where she stayed, for example, in the artists' colony Grez-sur-Loing . She is also said to have been present at the coronation of Tsar Nicholas II and Alexandra Feodorovna in 1896. To keep costs down, she did not always travel alone, but sometimes with a friend or as a companion. Before her marriage she had been able to make a living from her work financially, but was also supported by her father. While they were married, Akersloot continued to offer paintings for sale, although Akersloot was quite wealthy - but there is also evidence that Akersloot's fortunes later dwindled to the point that her painting sales represented an important part of household income.

She made her last trip to Italy and France in 1921. She died on December 18, 1922 in Tromp's Huys and was buried on Vlieland.

Work and aftermath

As a painter of marine pieces and coastal landscapes, Betzy Berg was rather the exception as a woman, and her work was well received. She regularly sent to the state autumn exhibitions in Oslo (1882–1898) and took part in several group exhibitions in the Netherlands, for example in Amsterdam (1896, 1901, 1904, 1905). Her work was shown at the Salon de Paris (1889, 1900–1902, 1904) and the Paris World Exhibition, as well as in Copenhagen, Munich, Antwerp, Prague and Stockholm (1897),

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  Coastal landscape in Norway

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  Atelier in Vlieland

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  North Sea Beach

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  coast

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  graveyard

Her main motif was the coastal landscape and the sea, whether at home or on her travels, especially the rocky coast of Norway. Occasionally she painted city and village views, and occasionally people, and there are some paintings of Italian landscapes and ancient ruins. When the Dutch Queen Wilhelmina and her Prince Consort visited Vlieland and were received in their house, she recorded this, as well as the overflight of German zeppelins towards England during the First World War in October 1916.

Hendrik Willem Mesdag's influences can be found in her work until 1880, but after 1890 she found her own style, which she maintained throughout her life, unaffected by modernity.

In 1960 (according to other sources: 1955) the Tromp's Huys on Vlieland was opened as a museum, in which around two hundred paintings and other possessions by Betzy Berg are on display - the greater part of her total oeuvre of around 300 paintings. Aurskog, her birthplace, dedicated an exhibition to the artist in 1996.

«Betzy Akersloot-Berg (1850–1922) was a badass marine painter, øydronning and globetrotter som gikk sin egen vei. In some cases there is a need to have, which is where the next store is owned and fascinated. Hun var en kunstner med suksess i sin samtid, men en obskuritet i norsk art history. »

"Betzy Akersloot-Berg (1850-1922) was a Badass -Marinemalerin, Island Queen and globetrotter who went their own way. Her path always led her to the sea, which was her only great longing and fascination. She was a successful artist of her time, but an unknown in Norwegian art history. "

- Amalie Marie Selvik : Se Kunst i Nord-Norge

Works in public collections (selection)

• Kystlandskap; National Gallery Oslo , Inv.-No. NG.M.04368
• Fra Lofoten; National Gallery Oslo , Inv.-No. NG.M.04291

Web links

Commons : Betzy Akersloot-Berg  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i j k l m n} Marloes Huiskamp: Berg, Betzy Rezora . In: Digitaal Vrouwenlexicon van Nederland . January 13, 2014 ( resources.huygens.knaw.nl ).
2. ↑ Betzy Rezora Berg. In: rkd.nl. RKD - Nederlands Instituut voor Kunstgeschiedenis, accessed on March 1, 2020 (Dutch). 
3. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g} Carl Wille Schnitler : Berg (Akersloot-Berg), Betzy Rezora . In: Ulrich Thieme , Felix Becker (Hrsg.): General Lexicon of Fine Artists from Antiquity to the Present . Founded by Ulrich Thieme and Felix Becker. tape 3 : Bassano – Bickham . Wilhelm Engelmann, Leipzig 1909, p. 385 ( Textarchiv - Internet Archive ).
4. ↑ ^{a b c} Museum Tromp's Huys. In: trompshuys.nl. Retrieved March 1, 2020 (Dutch). 
5. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} Tone Skedsmo: Betzy Akersloot-Berg . In: Norsk kunstnerleksikon . February 20, 2017 ( snl.no [accessed March 1, 2020]).
6. ↑ ^{a b c} Elsje de Ruijter: Eerstewereldoorlog.nu. In: Eerste Wereldoorlog Nederland. Retrieved March 1, 2020 . 
7. ↑ Amalie Marie Selvik: Fascinasjon for havet (Betzy Akersloot-Berg “Like Betzy”) . In: Se Kunst Magasin . No. 2 , June 2019, p. 11 ( sekunst.no [PDF]).
8. ↑ Betzy Akersloot-Berg, Kystlandskap - Nasjonalmuseet - Samlingen. Retrieved March 1, 2020 (Norwegian). 
9. ↑ Betzy Akersloot-Berg, Fra Lofoten - Nasjonalmuseet - Samlingen. Retrieved March 1, 2020 (Norwegian).