Nødhavn Ved Norskekysten

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Nødhavn Ved Norskekysten[1]
Hans Gude, 1873
Oil on canvas
182 × 262 cm
Private Collection

Nødhavn Ved Norskekysten (English translation: Port of Refuge on the Norwegian Coast[1] or Norwegian Harbor of Refuge[2]) is a painting by Norwegian romanticist painter Hans Gude completed in 1873.[3]

Contents

[edit] Exhibition history

The painting was first shown at the World Exhibition in Vienna in 1873 where it won a gold medal.[1] It was later displayed at an international exhibition of art at the Academy of Art in Berlin in 1896 while Gude was a professor at the Academy, and yet later still it was shown in Dresden in 1904, the year after Gude's death.[1]

[edit] Scene and style

The painting shows a realistic rendering of a storm hitting a Norwegian harbor, with a brig stranded in the distant breakers.[1] The painting is divided into a foreground, where women and children watch the rescue effort; a middle ground, where various moored ships bob in the strong waves; and a background, where wavelike rocks enclose the refuge point and bring the eye down to the stranded brig.[1] The colors used are predominantly the blue-grey of the sea and the beige of the reflections on the sea which serve to unify the piece.[1] Various elements of the scene including the waterfront buildings, the groups of figures, and the departing rowboat, would be reused by Gude in later works.[1]

[edit] Ownership

In 1875 the painting was purchased by the Bremen Art Society, although Gude incorrectly identifies them as the Stadtgalerie Bremen in his notes about the sale.[1] In 1907 the painting was transferred to the Kunsthalle Bremen.[1] In 1920 the painting was auctioned off due in part to changing tastes in art and the painting's large size (4.78 m²/51.5 sq ft[3]) which made it difficult to store.[1] In 1932 the painting was auctioned off again in Oslo where it was purchased by its current owner.[1]

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Haverkamp, Frode. Hans Fredrik Gude: From National Romanticism to Realism in Landscape, trans. Joan Fuglesang (in Norwegian). 
  2. ^ "Hans Fredrik Gude". Cyclopedia of Painters and Paintings 2. (1887). Ed. John Denison Champlin, Charles Callahan Perkins. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. 183. Retrieved on 2008-03-09. 
  3. ^ a b Haverkamp, Frode; Gude, Hans Fredrik [January 1992]. Hans Gude (in Norwegian). Oslo: Aschehoug, 31. ISBN 8203170722. OCLC 29047091.