ArtistNorwegianb.1846–d.1922
Stephan Sinding
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A bronze figure of a mother, hands bound behind her back, nursing her infant child. That image - "Fanget Mor" (Mother in Captivity) - won Stephan Sinding the Grand Prix at the 1889 Exposition Universelle in Paris, and it says more about his art than any label can. The bound hands make the act of feeding both tender and impossible; the sculpture refuses to be just one thing.
Sinding was born in Trondheim in 1846 into a family of unusual creative range. His brother Christian became one of Norway's most performed composers, and his brother Otto a respected painter. Stephan started studying law in Christiania before abandoning it for sculpture, training first at the Royal School of Drawing in Christiania and then privately under the Berlin sculptor Albert Wolff. Paris followed in 1874-1875, where he absorbed the influence of the French Realists, particularly Paul Dubois, and encountered the early work of Auguste Rodin.
Norway proved an unreceptive home for his increasingly modern sensibility. He moved to Copenhagen in 1883 and found his footing almost immediately. His breakthrough work - a barbarian woman carrying her slain son from the battlefield - was acquired by brewer Carl Jacobsen, whose growing collection eventually became the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek. Sinding obtained Danish citizenship in 1890 and became a titular professor, teaching private students in the city for two decades. His most publicly visible work from this period, "Valkyrjen," stands in bronze in Copenhagen's Churchill Park to this day.
His style sits uneasily between categories. Technically grounded in Realist anatomy and surface treatment, his subjects gravitate toward myth, fate, and human endurance - the concerns of Symbolism more than naturalism. Scholars have grouped him with Danish sculptor Niels Hansen Jacobsen as part of a Scandinavian current that ran parallel to, but distinct from, the mainstream of French Symbolism. He settled in Paris in 1910, spending the last twelve years of his life there, and is buried at Pere Lachaise cemetery. His autobiography, "En Billedhuggers Liv," was published in 1921, the year before his death.
At auction, Sinding appears primarily through Norwegian houses. Grev Wedels Plass Auksjoner accounts for the majority of his market activity on Auctionist, with top results for "Fanget Mor" reaching 62,500 NOK. "Two Human Beings" and "Valkyrien" have also brought strong prices, confirming steady collector interest in his signature bronze subjects.