KunstenaarNorwegian
Anders Askevold
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Cattle wade through shallow water at the edge of a fjord, the afternoon light breaking across their hides in warm ochre and burnt umber while the still surface reflects the mountains behind them. It is a scene Anders Askevold painted dozens of times across four decades, yet each version carries its own weather, its own quality of silence. Born on 25 December 1834 in Askvoll, a small parish in Sunnfjord on Norway's western coast, Askevold was the second of ten children. His father, Mons Andersson Askevold, served as both a teacher and member of parliament, a background that placed the family squarely within the rural intelligentsia of mid-nineteenth-century Norway.
Askevold's training began early, at thirteen, in Bergen under landscape painter Hans Leganger Reusch. When Reusch died in 1854, the young painter turned south. In 1855, he arrived in Düsseldorf and entered the studio of Hans Gude, the dominant force in Norwegian landscape painting and a central figure of the Düsseldorf school. Three years under Gude's rigorous instruction gave Askevold a command of atmospheric perspective and compositional structure that would anchor his work for life. He continued his studies in Paris from 1861 to 1866, absorbing the loosening brushwork of the French school, then passed time in Munich before returning to Bergen in 1866.
What distinguishes Askevold from his Düsseldorf contemporaries is the persistent presence of animals. Where Adelsteen Normann, another Düsseldorf-trained Norwegian, populated his fjord views with boats and figures, Askevold placed livestock at the centre of the composition. His cattle are not staffage; they are structural elements, their weight and warmth grounding the vast Nordic topography in the lived reality of agrarian western Norway. Cows drink at the water's edge, horses rest on mountain pastures, and the relationship between animal, land, and light becomes the true subject. This synthesis of animal painting and landscape, drawn from direct observation during summers spent in Norway while wintering in Düsseldorf, gave his work a distinctive character that set it apart from the broader Romantic Nationalist current.
Askevold also accepted commissions outside the secular tradition. In 1859, at just twenty-five, he painted the altarpiece for Askvoll Church, depicting Jesus at prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane with sleeping disciples. He donated the work to the congregation for the church's consecration, a gesture that reveals something of his attachment to his birthplace even as his career carried him across Europe.
His paintings are held by the Nasjonalmuseet in Oslo and the Bergen Billedgalleri (now part of KODE Art Museums), among other institutions. His position within the Düsseldorf school places him alongside Gude, Normann, and the broader movement of Norwegian Romantic Nationalism that shaped the visual identity of the country during its final decades under Swedish rule.
On Auctionist, 127 Askevold works have appeared at auction, with the overwhelming majority, 122 lots, passing through Grev Wedels Plass Auksjoner in Oslo, his natural market. The top result, Sommerdag ved tjernet from 1876, reached 170,000 NOK, followed by Hjem fra seteren (1869) at 120,000 NOK and Cows by a Wading Place (1887), also at 120,000 NOK. Fjordlandskap med dampbåt (1890) brought 115,000 NOK, and Middagshvile på fjellet (1859) achieved 105,000 NOK. The subjects that perform strongest are the characteristic fjord-and-cattle compositions, paintings in good condition from the 1870s and 1880s, the period when Askevold's technique reached its fullest maturity.