{"id":211,"date":"2016-02-19T15:36:23","date_gmt":"2016-02-19T15:36:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/english\/?p=211"},"modified":"2018-08-05T22:52:54","modified_gmt":"2018-08-05T21:52:54","slug":"awash-with-colour-in-western-norway","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/english\/2016\/02\/19\/awash-with-colour-in-western-norway\/","title":{"rendered":"Awash with colour in Western Norway"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Frances Carey, Visiting Senior Research Fellow, English Department, and co-curator of Painting Norway. Nikolai Astrup 1880-1928<\/em>, <\/a>Dulwich Picture Gallery 5 February to 15 May 2016.<\/p>\n

An elephant\u2019s gestation is \u2018but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night\u2019 compared with that required for most museum exhibitions. The one just opened at Dulwich Picture Gallery was not even a twinkle in anyone\u2019s eye at the seminar I was invited to join four years ago in Bergen, to consider how to raise the international profile of Nikolai Astrup.<\/p>\n

Though cherished in Norway he is pretty well unknown elsewhere, a good example of how becoming a \u2018national treasure\u2019 can hinder wider recognition. Scarcely a work of his exists outside Norway and none whatsoever in any public collection abroad. Within Norway many of Astrup\u2019s paintings and prints have never come onto the market, remaining with the families of those who obtained them direct from the artist or through a close intermediary. But in 2005 the Savings Bank Foundation DNB acquired the most important private collection of Astrup\u2019s work, placing it on long-term loan to KODE Art Museums of Bergen. This had to be the starting point for our discussion, and it has provided the core of the exhibition.<\/p>\n

Why should a \u2018faraway artist of whom we know little\u2019 be of interest to the rest of the world? The eureka moment came in June 2012 when the \u2018seminar\u2019 was taken to J\u00f8lster in western Norway – four hours by road and ferry from Bergen – a lakeside region surrounded by mountains where Astrup lived for the greater part of his short life. The sun shone unstintingly \u2013 a rare feat since western Norway has one of the highest rates of rainfall \u2013 as we were taken into a \"Astrup,<\/a>landscape of surpassing beauty and grandeur. Immediately his work came to life, not as an exact topographical record but as a distillation of the childhood memories that were the mainspring of his creativity. His fear of \u2018profaning\u2019 these \u2018inner pictures\u2019 as he called them, with other sights, scenes and experiences, brought him back to J\u00f8lster in 1902 after a period of study in Kristiania (Oslo) and Paris, travelling via Germany. He returned to \u2018wash\u2019 himself \u2018in the raw colours of Western Norway in order to cleanse myself of everything that I may have ingested from the art of others in order to escape from all influences and to arrive at my own [style]..\u2019<\/p>\n

J\u00f8lster has changed little from Astrup\u2019s lifetime. The church at \u00c5lhus where Astrup\u2019s father was the Lutheran pastor and where Astrup is buried, remains as it was; a portion survives of the parsonage, his parental home, where he lived, bar brief periods away, from 1883-1911; the hotel at Skei, the main settlement further along the lake, is a modern building, but a substantial tourist hotel has been there since 1889; above all in every sense of the phrase, lies the steeply terraced plot of land on the south side of the lake with its cluster of turf-roofed wood cabins, where Astrup made his own family home from 1913 onwards. At Sandalstrand he, then his young widow Engel, created a kind of rural gesamtkunstwerk<\/em> combining practical self-sufficiency with \u2018artistic\u2019 landscaping, planting and pruning outdoors, and \u2018interior still-lifes\u2019 within, composed from traditional wooden furniture, Astrup\u2019s paintings, potted plants, ceramics and textiles woven and printed by Engel. In 1965 she sold Astruptunet as it is now known, to the local municipality which has opened it to the public in the summer months since 1986.<\/p>\n

\"Astrup,<\/a>The \u2018lived experience\u2019 of this visit was crucial to the momentum of formulating a proposal that Ian Dejardin, the Sackler Director of Dulwich Picture Gallery, took to his Board of Trustees early in 2013, and to the subsequent negotiations with lenders, venues, publisher, press and many other constituents besides. The \u2018A\u2019 team was quickly formed, headed by Ian Dejardin, MaryAnne Stevens (formerly Director of Academic Affairs at the Royal Academy) and myself as the principal curators, aided by two Norwegian colleagues, one in Bergen and the other in Oslo -Tove K\u00e5rstad Haugsb\u00f8 and Kari Greve – John Myerscough, a cultural consultant working on Astruptunet, Eric Pearson the designer, and Rebecca England the project manager at Dulwich. We were hugely helped by factors that are often hard won but in this case were forthcoming from the outset: a generous, engaged sponsor, access to private collections for work little seen even within Norway and never outside, and a considerable repository of archival material and expertise.<\/p>\n

Astrup is a wonderful writer whose every note and letter is revealing of his intense inner life, a daily struggle with himself as much as with often very adverse external circumstances.\u00a0Marvellous descriptive passages evoke the sensations \u2013 visual, musical, psychological and physiological \u2013 that the landscape produced in him. The repetition of motifs \u2013 a marked feature of his work \u2013 is never about uniformity but about capturing different moods conveyed through changing weather, light, colour\u00a0and medium. Printmaking, especially in woodcut, was\u00a0every bit as important as painting, indeed the two were completely integral to each other.<\/p>\n

Astrup\u2019s landscape is a landscape of the mind made manifest through the artist\u2019s skill as a painter and colourist.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It is always difficult to bring the outside world in, but that is what we wanted to achieve at Dulwich. Astrup’s subjects range from the domestic environs of home and garden, the changing aspects of the lake in early spring, and an undulating line of mountain peaks transformed into a naked reclining \u2018Ice Queen\u2019 seen through the branches of a \u2018troll tree\u2019, to a yellow carpet of marsh marigolds among the \u2018smiles of a summer night\u2019 in June. The crowning glory of the seasonal year, as well as the exhibition, is Midsummer\u2019s celebration. Astrup\u2019s depictions almost literally smoulder with bonfires, dramatic effects of light and shadow, and the suggestion of sexual desire amid the revelry from which he was barred in his youth by his stern God-fearing father.<\/p>\n

\"Astrup,<\/a><\/p>\n

Frances Carey is Senior Visiting Research Fellow in King\u2019s English Department and teaches on the MA in 18th<\/sup>-century studies. She is a consultant curator and advisor to arts and heritage organisations, and formerly Senior Consultant for Public Engagement at the British Museum, where she also held the positions of Head of National Programmes and Deputy Keeper of Prints and Drawings.<\/em><\/p>\n

Painting Norway. Nikolai Astrup 1880-1928<\/em>, <\/a>Dulwich Picture Gallery 5 February to 15 May 2016 then at Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, H\u00f8vikodden, Norway 10 June to 11 September 2016, and Kunsthalle Emden, Germany, 1 October 2016 to 22 January 2017. Supported by The Savings Bank Foundation DNB. Accompanying catalogue by Frances Carey, Ian A.C. Dejardin and MaryAnne Stevens with contributions by Kari Greve, Tove K\u00e5rstad Haugsb\u00f8 and John Myerscough, Scala Arts and Heritage Publishers Ltd in association with Dulwich Picture Gallery, London 2016<\/p>\n

Image Credits:<\/em><\/p>\n

Featured:\u00a0Nikolai Astrup, Midsummer Eve Bonfire, After c.1917, Oil on canvas, 60 x 66 cm The Savings Bank Foundation DNB\/The Astrup Collection\/KODE Art Museums of Bergen<\/em><\/p>\n

Figure 1:\u00a0Nikolai Astrup,\u00a0A Clear Night in June, 1905-\u00a01907, Oil on canvas,148 x 152 cm, The\u00a0Savings Bank Foundation DNB\/The Astrup Collection\/KODE Art Museums of Bergen.\u00a0Photo \u00a9 Dag Fosse\/KODE<\/em><\/p>\n

Figure 2: Nikolai Astrup, Marsh Marigold Night, c.1915, Colour woodcut on paper, 40.7 x 47 cm, The Savings Bank Foundation DNB\/The Astrup Collection\/KODE Art Museums of Bergen. Photo \u00a9 Dag Fosse\/KODE<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Frances Carey, Visiting Senior Research Fellow, English Department, and co-curator of Painting Norway. Nikolai Astrup 1880-1928, Dulwich Picture Gallery 5 February to 15 May 2016. An elephant\u2019s gestation is \u2018but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night\u2019 compared with that required for most museum exhibitions. The one just […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":72,"featured_media":214,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,4],"tags":[74,75,79,80,77,78,76],"class_list":["post-211","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-20th-21st-centuries","category-visual-and-material-culture","tag-astrup","tag-dulwich-picture-gallery","tag-landscape","tag-nature","tag-norway","tag-painting","tag-visiting-research-fellow"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/72"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=211"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1492,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211\/revisions\/1492"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/214"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}