ArtistNorwegian
Ole Mæhle
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Ole Mæhle was born on 25 December 1904 in Namsos, and his life in art would span the better part of the twentieth century until his death in Lillehammer on 22 April 1990. His early formation was rigorous and internationally oriented: he studied under Axel Revold in 1924-25, then traveled to Paris to work with Per Krohg from 1927 to 1928, drawing on a tradition that connected Norwegian modernism with French post-impressionist practice. He also trained at Statens Kunstakademi in Oslo. His public debut came in 1926 at the exhibition 'De 7 unge' at Kunstnerforbundet, signaling from an early stage his belonging to a generation of Norwegian painters determined to move beyond academic convention.
In 1932 Mæhle settled in Lillehammer, joining an artists' community that had been forming there since the turn of the century. The town and its surroundings gave him enduring subjects: landscapes, street scenes, and domestic interiors rendered in oil, watercolor, and gouache. A distinctive quality of his Lillehammer work from the 1930s onward is its light - sun-filled canvases in which color shifts with weather and season. He acknowledged the influence of Thorvald Erichsen, whose visits to Lillehammer in the mid-1930s sharpened his sensitivity to tonal change. Mæhle described his own position plainly: a naturalist, or as he put it himself, a belated impressionist.
Travel deepened his palette further. In the mid-1950s he journeyed to Greece and Crete, and the intensity of Mediterranean light left clear marks on the work he brought back. The paintings from this journey were shown at Kunstnerforbundet in 1959, presenting a warmer, more saturated register than his Norwegian landscapes. In parallel with his painting career, Mæhle served as art critic for the Oslo newspaper Dagbladet from 1948 to 1969, a role that placed him at the center of postwar Norwegian art discourse for two decades. During the 1970s his formal language shifted toward greater abstraction, while retaining the core interest in light and atmosphere.
His work is held in several public collections, including the National Museum in Oslo (with works such as 'Fiskevær i måneskinn', 1930, 'Svart elv', 1951, and 'Vintersolhverv', 1951-52), Trøndelag Kunstgalleri, the National Museum of Finland in Helsinki, and the State Museum of Art in Copenhagen, as well as in Lillehammer's own civic collection. A permanent exhibition of 28 of his paintings, donated by his granddaughter Therese Mæhle, was opened at the Club Noruego Costa Blanca in Spain in 2019.
At auction, Mæhle's work appears through Norwegian houses. On the Auctionist platform, all 12 recorded lots have passed through Grev Wedels Plass Auksjoner in Oslo. The strongest result in that group is 'Kvinne ved vindu 1962-63', which achieved 18,500 NOK, followed by 'Pinse' at 12,500 NOK and 'Vårkveld i hagen 1940' at 12,000 NOK. The price range reflects a market that values his light-filled interiors and spring landscapes, with works from his mature Lillehammer period drawing the most consistent interest.