KunstenaarNorwegiangeb.1852–ov.1928
Eilif Peterssen
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Hjalmar Eilif Emanuel Peterssen was born on 4 September 1852 in Christiania, now Oslo, into a middle-class family. He began drawing studies at the Norwegian National Academy of Craft and Art Industry in the late 1860s, trained briefly under Knud Bergslien and Morten Müller, and in 1871 travelled to Copenhagen to study at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. From there he moved through Karlsruhe - where he worked under Ludwig des Coudres and Wilhelm Riefstahl - before arriving in Munich in the autumn of 1873. There he entered the Academy of Fine Arts, studying under Wilhelm von Diez and Franz von Lenbach. The Munich years gave him his first major public success: the large history painting "Christian II Signing the Death Warrant of Torben Oxe" (1876), a work purchased by the Verbindung für historische Kunst in Stuttgart, which established him as a serious presence in the Norwegian art world at home and abroad.
Training behind him, Peterssen spent the late 1870s and 1880s restlessly moving through Italy, France, and Scandinavia, absorbing the shift toward plein air painting. He traveled to Italy in 1879 and visited Sora in 1880 together with the Danish painter Peder Severin Krøyer, with whom he also worked at Skagen. A sharp realism emerged in the large canvas "Piazza Montanara" (1883), painted in Rome. By the time he was in Venice in 1885 with Frits Thaulow, his approach had moved decisively toward Impressionism. The following summer, 1886, he joined a group of painters - Christian Skredsvig, Gerhard Munthe, Erik Werenskiold, Kitty Kielland, and Harriet Backer - at Fleskum farm in Bærum outside Kristiania. What emerged from that colony was a body of nocturnal and atmospheric Norwegian landscape painting that would define a generation. Peterssen's contribution, "Summer Night" (1886), now in Nasjonalmuseet, is considered the most significant single work to come out of the Fleskum summer. Its companion, "Nocturne" (1887), followed the same quiet, moon-lit logic. At the Paris World Exhibition of 1889, his painting "Salmon Fishermen at Nesøya" won a gold medal.
Beyond landscape, Peterssen built a parallel career as a portrait painter of exceptional range. His sitters included Henrik Ibsen, Edvard Grieg, and a number of distinguished Norwegians of the period. He also painted his family members with unusual directness - the portrait of Nicoline Peterssen (1882), which achieved 300,000 NOK at auction in 2001, shows this quality plainly. In 1905, in the year of Norwegian independence, he was commissioned to design the national coat of arms bearing the Norwegian lion, a design that remains in use in the royal coat of arms and royal flag to this day. His later years included travels through the Norwegian mountain landscape at Valdres and, in 1920-21, a final journey abroad to Cagnes-sur-Mer and Saint-Paul-de-Vence. He died on 29 December 1928 at Lysaker in Bærum.
Peterssen's works are concentrated almost entirely at Grev Wedels Plass Auksjoner (GWPA) in Oslo, which accounts for 52 of the 53 lots in Auctionist's database - a reflection of his standing as a 19th-century Norwegian master within the Norwegian auction market. Hammer prices at GWPA have ranged from 2,800 to 980,000 NOK, with the top result achieved in 1998 for "Fra Pantheon-plassen, Roma 1904" at 980,000 NOK. Other significant results include "Solskinn, Kalvøya" (1891) at 360,000 NOK and the Jaktnymfe (1875) at 280,000 NOK. These figures place him in the upper tier of 19th-century Norwegian painting at auction, where condition, subject matter, and provenance continue to drive wide variation in realized prices.