ArtistNorwegianb.1879–d.1933
Bernhard Folkestad
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Bernhard Dorotheus Folkestad was born on 13 June 1879 in London, where his father served the Norwegian Seamen's Mission along the Thames. Three years later the family settled in Strømsø, the working-class borough of Drammen, and it was there that the painter grew up. After finishing at Drammen Latin School in 1896 he went to Christiania to apprentice in decorative craft, then enrolled at SHKS (now the Oslo National Academy of the Arts).
In 1902 Folkestad made the journey to Copenhagen that shaped his practice. He spent time in Kristian Zahrtmann's free school, absorbing that circle's direct observation of colour and light, and then from 1903 to 1904 studied under Laurits Tuxen at the Krøyer painting school. Both teachers were naturalists who valued close scrutiny of ordinary subjects over academic convention, and the influence shows clearly in Folkestad's early canvases: dense arrangements of vegetables, fruit, and domestic objects rendered with earthy warmth.
He debuted at the Autumn Exhibition in Christiania in 1905 with a work immediately acquired for what is now Nasjonalmuseet. The museum's holdings include Mørkeloftet (1905) and two 1906 canvases, Høns i høstsol and Grønnsaker, all of which demonstrate his ability to make an unlit interior or a pile of produce carry the full weight of a painting. Through the following decade he expanded into figure work, painting women in furnished rooms with the same attention to tone and texture he had brought to still life.
In 1916 the family moved to Oslo, and around the same time Folkestad acquired a cottage on Brøtsøy, an island in Tjøme, where he eventually built a dedicated studio. The archipelago light and open coastal landscape began to appear alongside the indoor subjects that remained his core. From 1921 onward, writing gradually claimed more of his time: he contributed essays and drawings to Norwegian newspapers and published several books, among them Svingdøren (1926), Sol og morild (1929), and Gullfisken, which appeared in the year of his death, 9 March 1933.
On the auction market, all 29 known auction appearances have taken place at Grev Wedels Plass Auksjoner (GWPA) in Oslo, the specialist house for older Norwegian art. The top result on record is 500,000 NOK for Woman with a Fan, painted in 1917, followed by 180,000 NOK for Ballerina and 100,000 NOK for Kvinne i interiør (1918). The pattern of prices confirms that his figure paintings, particularly women in interior settings, are what the market responds to most strongly.