KunstenaarNorwegiangeb.1848–ov.1918
Adelsteen Normann
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Eilert Adelsteen Normann was born on 1 May 1848 in Bodin, a coastal settlement in Nordland county on a peninsula between Vestfjorden and Saltfjorden. His father, Johan Normann, was a merchant, hunting skipper, and part-time farmer; his mother, Catharina Weitgan, came from a craftsman's family. At twelve he was sent south to school in Trondheim, more than 400 miles from home, and later transferred to Tanks Videregående Skole in Bergen. In 1869 he enrolled at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, where he studied under the Estonian landscape painter Eugen Dücker. He remained in Düsseldorf until 1872, and the training there, its emphasis on careful composition, atmospheric depth, and the prestige of nature painting, shaped everything that followed.
From 1883, Normann was based in Berlin, which he used as a working base for the rest of his life. Each summer he returned to Norway, traveling to western fjord country, the northernmost reaches of Nordland, and the Lofoten archipelago. He would sketch and photograph on location and then complete the canvases in his studio, a practice common among the Düsseldorf painters. The result was work that balanced on-site observation with deliberate studio construction. His subjects were almost always the same: steep mountain walls falling to dark water, small wooden buildings, fishing boats and, increasingly, the large steamers that were bringing tourists into the fjords by the 1880s. That presence of modern transport was not incidental, Normann was painting Norway at precisely the moment it was becoming a destination, and the paintings fed the appetite they helped to create. Hotel owners bought his work to hang in their lobbies, and it is reasonable to say his canvases shaped the visual idea of Norway for a generation of Central European travelers.
His international standing in the 1880s and 1890s was considerable. He exhibited in Oslo, Berlin, London, Vienna, Düsseldorf, Munich, and Paris. At the Salon de Paris he showed from 1882, earned a Mention Honorable in 1884, and received a bronze medal in 1889. He also figures in the biography of Edvard Munch: it was Normann who invited Munch to Berlin in 1892, a visit that proved pivotal for Munch's development and ultimately for the creation of "The Scream". Normann died in Kristiania on 26 December 1918, one of the many casualties of that year's influenza pandemic.
On the Norwegian auction market, Normann's work appears regularly and commands serious prices for the right subject. Grev Wedels Plass Auksjoner has handled 80 of his 86 recorded lots in this database, with Nyborgs Auksjoner accounting for most of the remainder. The top recorded sale here is 380,000 NOK for "Fjordlandskap med fjordabåt", a result that also represents the artist's all-time auction record. "Fiskeværet Reine i Lofoten i midnattsol" achieved 240,000 NOK, and "Fra Lærdal" reached 190,000 NOK. These figures reflect a market that values his Lofoten and western fjord subjects above all, with midnight sun and recognizable locations commanding premiums.