Eclectic and mysterious paintings first in academic style, then Naturalist, a few years as the ‘foreign Nabi’ before painting unusual landscapes.
naturalism
By 1880, an artist’s colony was forming in this village on the southern edge of the Forest of Fontainebleau, and attracted painters from all over the world.
Trained in Germany because there was no academy in Norway, he soon developed themes of poverty, social injustice, and Norway’s independence. A major influence on Edvard Munch.
Series showing the sailing of smaller vessels, and ship, then a further series of a model getting dressed and leaving the studio, and one last painting.
Portraits of his young wife, struggling for survival in the Norwegian winter, bathing a newborn baby, the discovery of America, nationhood and open narrative.
Themes of exhausted mothers with sick children, the tired out seamstress and her descent into prostitution, the failure of law enforcement, and documenting those living in Skagen.
In his later career he returned to rural themes, although his last major work showed Les Halles, the main market in Paris at the time.
A precocious artist whose Naturalist paintings showed the harsh realities of rural poverty and hard labour. A friend of Zola, he also painted leading figures in science.
Constable and Turner both paint the burning of London’s Parliament, a scene of a prairie fire in the US, a burning castle in Denmark, San Francisco on fire in 1906, and more.
Gullible young women trafficked into prostitution, or were whole families squeezed out because of cold weather, crop failure including potato blight, loss of common land, and war.
The Eclectic Light Company 