September 2026 – my daily art display

Nikolai Johannes Astrup. Part 2.

Portrait of Nikolai by Bernhard Folkestad (1910)

Now back home in Jølster Nikolai wanted to put into practice all that he had learnt in France and Germany. He decided not to go back to the city of Kristiania but instead return to what he termed his “homeland” the village of Jølster and the large nearby lake the Jølstervatnet. His idea was to find a way to depict pictorially this area, the area he referred to as his “kingdom of childhood”

Maps showing the Kleivafjellet mountain and the village of Sunde where Engel’s father’s farm was located. Jolster was were Nikolai was living at the time.

For the first few years Nikolai lived at the vicarage and produced many paintings. On December 23^rd 1907, he married Engel Marie Sunde. At the time of the wedding, she was still a month away from her sixteenth birthday, while Nikolai was twenty-seven. Her young age caused controversy in the village. There is an unusual story about how Nikolai and Engel met and became friends. Nikolai wanted to paint a landscape picture featuring the Kleivafjellet, a mountain on the north side of the Kjøsnesfjord but the best view of the mountain was found on the Sunde farm, on the opposite side of the Kjøsnesfjord lake.

Kollen by Nikolai Astrup (1906) Sunde farm in the foreground.

The Sunde Farm was owned by Anders Jensen Sunde who had a daughter Engel Marie. Nikolai asked for permission to stand in a room on the Sunde farm on the opposite side of the lake, where there was a great view of the mountain and paint the mountain using the farmhouse as his base. Nikolai was allowed to position himself and his easel in a room in one of the farm buildings. He completed the work in late 1906 and it was entitled Raw November Morning at Sunde in Jølster but later known as Kollen (The Fell). Nikolai and Engel’s friendship grew into love and eventually marriage on December 23rd 1907. Nikolai was twenty-seven and his bride had yet to celebrate her sixteenth birthday. For a time Nikolai believed that due to the age of his very young wife he was at risk of losing an art grant due to the controversy. In a letter to his friend Henrik Lund, Astrup wrote:

“…It is true that I married a rather young girl but I do not think that it is immoral to a degree that I should be deprived of my stipend for that reason…”

Vårlandskap (Spring landscape) by Nikolai Astrup (1908)

Nikolai and Engel Astrup went on to have eight children. Their first child, a daughter, Kari, was born in 1911 followed by their eldest son who was named Arnold Böcklin Astrup. Engel was a significant inspiration to her husband and was a source of positive sentiments for him. Unfortunately Nikolai despite his health problems, wrote in 1909 about how much his wife had enhanced his life in a letter in 1909:

“…I cannot afford to lose her, I had almost given up hope in life when I met her, and thanks to her my life-force re-ignited…”

June Night and Old West Country Farmyard by Nikolai Astrup (1907)

A recurring motif in Astrup’s landscape paintings were views local to where he lived in the municipality of Jølster. In his painting, June Night and Old West Country Farmyard, a twilight depiction of Ålhustunet in Jølster that seems to have a special meaning for Nikolai Astrup and it was one which he painted several versions of. In the middle ground of the picture we see a cluster of buildings (klyngetunet), one that was situated above Astrup’s childhood home, the vicarage at Ålhus. This cluster of log buildings indicated the presence of human life within this idyllic setting. In the background we see an imposing mountain looming behind the farm, and the rushing waterfall, the Kleberfossen, can be seen cascading down its side. For Astrup, the main aspect which seems to have captured his interest is the lush meadow full of bright yellow buttercups that we see in the picture’s foreground, translucent and shimmering in the clear summer night. The buttercups in this twilight scene are important as they do not close at sunset. Their role are to be points of light in the shadowy landscape. It is believed that Nikolai had to travel elsewhere to study buttercups as the marsh at Ålhustunet had been drained some years prior and thus the marsh-loving flowers had long since died out.

St. Hansbål ved Jølstravatnet (Midsummer Eve Bonfire) by Nikolai Astrup (1909)

Nikolai’s father, the clergyman, was a devout religious believer who condemned the pagan celebration of Midsummer Eve and would not allow his son to attend these festivals when he was young. However his son would often sneak out of the house and attend the festivities. In a letter to Mayor Aslaksen of Arendal, Nikolai recalled his time as a teenager during the Midsummer Eve celebrations:

”…it was sinful for Christians to join the [pagan] celebration. Then […] I had to stand back behind the fence and look and listen while the others danced around the bonfire and whooped for joy […] It struck me that the bonfire was something sinful, something bad being practiced in the green dusk – it was pagan. This idea was reinforced by the jealousy festering inside me when the other children could attend, but I had to stand behind the fence…”

In 1909 Nikolai Astrup completed a painting entitled St. Hansbål ved Jølstravatnet (Midsummer Eve Bonfire). It is a vibrantly coloured painting, in which we see a group of people sitting in the grass at the edge of a large lake, the Brenden. There is a large yellow-orange bonfire from which we witness orange sparks and black smoke billowing upward. On the far side of the lake there are tall, dark mountains appearing in the background. We can see another bonfire with its grey smoke rising into the sky on that mountainside in or around the village of Ålhus.

Midsummer Eve Bonfire by Nikolai Astrup

The Midsummer Eve bonfires depicted in this painting were part of pagan fertility celebrations and rituals dating back to ancient times. In this version, the spectators sit and watch quietly, in other versions they participate in lively dancing and music-making, such as fiddle-playing, as music and folk dancing were also important aspects of the Midsummer Eve celebrations.

Of Nikolai Astrup’s many Midsummer Eve paintings, the art critic Claudia Massie, noted:

“…as a Christian child, Astrup was forbidden to participate in these rituals. Instead, he had to watch, simultaneously seduced and scared by what he saw […] This conflict is evident in the work. Astrup is an observer, not a participant, and what might in another artist’s hands be a glib, gleeful scene becomes something profound and unnerving; the prelapsarian seen through the pastor…”

Nikolai and Engel Astrup

Nikolai and Engel Astrup bought a dilapidated smallholding on a steep hill at Sandalstrand (now called Astruptunet) in 1912 and he, his wife and young daughter moved there in 1913. Astrup was interested in old building traditions and built up the farm on his own.The property was on thirty acres of land and lay three kilometres from the town of Myklebust where he had his studio. Eventually after two years of hard work he renovated the house and created a studio within it. Today it is part of Sogn og Fjordane Art Museum.

Astruptunet on the south side of Jølstravatnet, Nikolai and Engel Astrup’s home 1914–1928, is today part of Sogn og Fjordane Art Museum Photo: Panorama with distorted perspective, spring 2015.

Engel Astrup left her distinctive mark on the artist’s home. She collected antiques and textiles and had a large collection of historical Jølster yoke clothes in various patterns. Gradually, Engel Astrup also developed as a textile artist and became particularly known for her fabric prints, and especially for national costume aprons in up to three-coloured patterns. In 1939 she exhibited hand-printed tablecloths at Bergens Kunstforening, and was also elected vice-chairman of Jølster Husflidslag.

Vårnatt og seljekall (Spring Night and the Call of the Goat Willow) Hand coloured woodcut by Nikolai Astrup (1917)

During his studies in Paris in 1901, Nikolai Astrup became fascinated with Japanese woodcuttings and the world of Japonisme, a French term that refers to the popularity and influence of Japanese art and design among a number of Western European artists in the nineteenth century following the forced reopening of foreign trade with Japan in 1858.

Martzmorgen by Nikolai Astrup (1917). Oil on canvas.

It was not until 1914 when he was back in Norway that Nikolai began to produce his own woodcuts. One of his best-known woodcuts is entitled (Spring night and the call of the willow) which he completed in 1917. The title of the work refers to the whispering sound made by the wind as it blows past the Selje tree (willow tree). In the centre of his depiction, inside the tree, Nikolai has depicted the tree and its branches in such a way that we can see a round head-like shape with protrusions that look like ears, and on either side of this, arm-like branches each with five “fingers” reaching upward. The tree itself is silhouetted against a natural background with a lake and mountains beyond which he has rendered with light pastel colours.

Engel Astrup in the Garden by Nikolai Astrup

In addition to farming and maintaining his growing family, (his eighth child was born in 1924), Nikolai continued with his artistic work, but his finances were very tight, and he struggled with poor health. Nikolai’s farm, being situated on a steep terrain, was so steep that he had to build terraces to make room for fields and meadows. One of the crops he grew was many types of rhubarb, which he would often depict in several of his paintings featuring his and Engel’s garden.

Vårkveld ved Jølstervannet (Spring evening by Jølstervannet) by Nikolai Astrup (1900)

Astrup was plagued by asthma from childhood. The frequent seizures often forced him to go outside at night to catch his breath and his illness is frequently mentioned in his letters. It is thought that the medication he used at times probably caused problems with his sight. For someone suffering from this ailment, where he lived affected his health as the climate in Jølster and the waterlogged soil at Ålhus probably had exacerbated his illness. In 1906 he was severely affected by tuberculosis, and he medicated himself with adrenaline in injection form. In a letter from 1909, he writes that he had been declared free of infection.

Ålhus church, where Nikolai’s father was a priest, with Sandalstrand on the opposite side of Jølstravatnet. Astrup was buried at Ålhus church at the family gravesite.

In early January 1928 he travelled in an open car to Førde, caught a cold and died of pneumonia on January 21^st 1928, aged 47. He was buried at Ålhus church and the funeral was paid for by the Jølster municipality. Engel was left alone, a widow with eight children under the age of 17. She died Dec 29th 1966 at age 74 in Jølster, Sogn og Fjordane.

Information for this blog came from various Wikipedia websites as well as websites alluded to in Nikolai Astrup. Part 1.

Nikolai Johannes Astrup. Part 1.

When you think about Norwegian artists and famous Norwegian paintings, I think you will immediately think of Edvard Munch and his well-known painting entitled Scream. However, there were many great Norwegian artists and some of them have featured in my blogs such as the Romantic artist Thomas Fearnley, Peder Balke, Eilert Adelsteen Normann and Harriet Backer to mention just a few. Today I am looking at the life and works of another great Norwegian artist, Nikolai Johannes Astrup.

Nikolai Johannes Astrup (c.1910)

Nikolai was born on August 30^th, 1880, in the village of Kalvag Bremanger, a municipality on the coast in Vestland county on the west coast of Norway but spent his early years in the nearby village of Ålhus. He was the eldest of fourteen children. His father, Christian Astrup, who came from a family of civil servants, became a parish priest at the Lutheran Ålhus Church in Jølster; his mother, Petra Konstanse Lodtz, was the daughter of Peder Mørch Lodtz, a glove manufacturer from Bergen. When Nikolai was three years old, the family moved to the municipality of Jølster following his father receiving the priesthood at the local church. The vicarage was both a residence and an ordinary working farm and Nikolai learned practical farm work as a boy. The vicarage was relatively poor and the farmhouse was partly rotten and run down.

Nikolai had a troubled childhood often rebelling against his father’s strict Christian morals. He also suffered from ill health and had to endure a life of isolation but gained pleasure from his love of drawing.

Nikolai’s father, Christian (1900)

His schooling started at home before, as a teenager, he went to live with his grandmother in Trondheim where from 1895 to 1897 he attended the cathedral school. However, due to his continuous bouts of illness (asthma) and his general dislike of school, his school achievements were limited to the one subject, natural sciences.

Nikolai’s mother, Petra (c.1900)

It was expected that as the eldest son he would become a priest like his father or maybe a magistrate. This was a custom in the Astrup family and so his father allowed Nikolai to move to the cathedral school, which would then lead him to become a priest but unknown to his mother and father Nikolai had discounted that idea from an earlier age.

Nikolai Astrup painted by his friend Henrik Lund in 1900

Instead Nikolai had decided that he would become an artist. The year he attended the Cathedral School it was noted that due to ill health Nikolai missed a lot of the school year and his grades were the worst in the class, and among the worst that year. Astrup biographer Øystein Loge suggests that some of his abences were due to him missing classes to visit Trondhjems Kunstforening (TKF) which is described as:

“… a meeting place in Trondheim where art enthusiasts of all ages, professional artists and amateurs have a common arena to experience and create visual art, as well as share their art experiences…”

It was here that he could see the works of the great Norwegian artists. Prior to moving to Trondheim, he had little contact with the paintings of well-known artists but once living in the city he was able to visit museums and take in the works of famous painters. The inevitable clash with his parents came after he completed his schooling but refused to join the priesthood saying his future lay in the world of art. Living back with his family the war of words lasted for a couple of years during which time he was tasked with the tutorship of his young siblings. He also designed wall hangings to be woven by his mother.

Kjerringa med Lykta (Old Woman with a Lantern) by Nikolai Astrup (1895-99) One of his early paintings, Kjerringa med Lykta (Old Woman with a Lantern) was one of three Astrup created as a teenager who had little money and could not afford to buy canvases and instead used fabric from old trousers.

The painting depicts an elderly woman, dressed in black, hunched over, carrying a lantern which glows in the darkness. She is seen walking between two dark brown log cabins. It is a winter scene during heavy snowfall and we can feel the cold as we see long icicles hanging from the roof of the cabin on the right. The passage between the two cabins is filled with snow, and still more heavy snow falls on the cabins and on the woman. In his notebook Nikolai described the scene:

“…Early winter morning (fantasy) Snowdrifts. Grey on grey, white and blue, light grey sky with dark grey flakes. The only element not fitting into this grey scheme is a lantern carried by a dark grey figure. The pinkish light cast against the snow fuses with the lantern’s form. A vague suggestion of daylight [is] the only [thing] showing itself over the rounded snow shapes on a rooftop […] The grey probably contains some colors, but these are so subtle, they are not noticed, and nowhere is one stronger than another, to the extent that it sticks out!…”

“May Moon” (woodcut with hand-colouring. An example of Nikolai Astrup repeating several times a motif (Kollen) he painted for the first time as a child.

Finally, in 1899, aged 19, Nikolai was allowed to leave home and go to Kristiania (Oslo since 1924) where he spent just two weeks attending evening classes in printmaking at the Royal School of Drawing (Kongelige tegneskole), before he enrolled at Harriet Backer’s private painting school. Here he studied life drawing, worked in oil, and produced his first etchings. It was also here that he started to develop what was to become his Neo-Romantic style. Nikolai did not receive any financial support from his family and struggled to survive and pay the course fees and yet his achievements at the drawing school were exceptional and Backer was suitably impressed with his progress and later described him as one of her most promising students:

“…I allowed him to work in the direction he wanted, as I understood he was the true genius of the school…”

He remained at the painting school until the autumn of 1901 when the Norwegian painter Kitty Kielland, a colleague of Harriet Backer, recommended Nikolai for the Olaf Schou’s travel scholarship which allowed him to travel through Germany to Paris, where he enrolled to study at the Académie Colarossi under the Norwegian painter Christian Krohg. Although attending the academy for just one year he made an impression on his tutor. Krohg commented:

“…When I speak of Mr. Nicolai Astrup as an artist, it cannot be the way an older artist speaks of a young artist as a ‘beginner’. Mr. Astrup is in no way a beginner even though he has been painting for a very short time. His unique talent has brought him past the first phase of development, a period where most people stay for at least ten years…”

Kvennagongsvatten by Nikolai Astrup (1916)

In Paris Nikolai took the opportunity to visit art museums and one of the artists who impressed him was the Japanese ukiyo-e woodcuts artist Utagawa Hiroshige and he believed that his style could work when depicting the austere yet vivid landscape of his Norwegian homeland. Now based in Paris he was able to journey to other European countries. He became a lover of works by the French primitive painter, Henri Rousseau and the Swiss Symbolist painter Arnold Böcklin. Of the latter he is recorded as saying:

“…It seems to me at the moment that there is no artist I understand as well as him, but maybe [he] is also easy for everyone to understand […] what is most exciting about his pictures is their unexpectedness, a moment that sends a shiver down one’s spine, and yet one can enjoy the sight of them for a long time afterward…”

So enamoured by the Swiss painter, he named his first son who was born in 1914, Arnold Böklin Astrup !

From the Seine by Nikolai Astrup (1901)

Very few of Astrup’s Paris paintings, exist with the exception of his 1901 charcoal and watercolor on paperwork work entitled From the Seine. Whilst staying in Paris, Astrup took the opportunity to make short trips to Berlin, Dresden and Hamburg with the aim of visiting museums and studying their treasures.

Fjøsfrieri, (Courting in the Barn) by Nikolai Astrup (1904)

One of his paintings, Fjøsfrieri Courting in the Cowshed, was completed a couple of years after he returned home from Paris. It depicts a view along the corridor of a wooden barn which is home to a herd of cows. In the left foreground we see a young couple in a romantic embrace. The young man is dressed in all black and we see a bottle of liquor poking out his jacket pocket. Both his arms are wrapped possessively around the young girl who we see standing barefoot and wearing a green shirt, red dress, and a headscarf. She is blushing and has one arm draped around the shoulder of the young man which adds to the amorous scene. In the upper centre of the painting, we notice a man laying in the hayloft spying on the young couple. A look through a window at the back of the barn, we see a hill and, beyond that, a glimpse of vibrant green foliage of a Spring landscape along with clear blue skies. The theme of love between two young people from a farming community was a foreshadow of Nikolai’s own fate and his love of his own farm girl, Engel, two years later.

It took Astrup three months before he was satisfied with the printing of “Fox Bells”. It was printed in at least five variants. Astrup cut down a couple of trees for the sake of the composition, the stumps are visible in the foreground.

Astrup only stayed in France for a short period returning to Norway in the Spring of 1902 and although we cannot see many of his Parisian work, his tutor at Académie Colarossi, Christian Krohg, was full of praise with what Nikolai had produced, saying:

“…His extraordinary talent has meant that he has, as if in a game, undergone the first development, which generally stops others for at least 10 years. (…) I believe that he will be the one who will best assert the position of Norwegian art both at home and abroad…”.

…………………to be continued.

Information for this blog was gleaned from various websites such as Wikipedia and:

Emzari Kiknavelidze.

In the past I have written blogs on two artists, the Colombian painter, Fernando Botero and the English artist, Beryl Cook whose figurative work has a similarity in the way their characters are depicted.

The Dancers by Fernando Botero (1987)

The Lockyer Tavern by Beryl Cook (1974)

Artwork comes in many shapes and forms. To many, paintings range from magnificent to questionable, but it is all about “we like what we like”. The artist I am looking at today has produced art which I would term eccentric and yet I cannot help liking it. Let me introduce you to the Georgian artist Emzari Kiknavelidze.

Emzari Kiknavelidze.

Emzari Kiknavelidze was born on August 1st 1964 in the Western Georgia town of Zestafoni. At the age of fifteen he studied sculpture for four years at the M. Toyadze Art School in Tbilisi and later studied architecture at the Institute of Architecture in Tbilisi from 1986 to 1991. Maybe it is the fact that Emzari initially studied sculpture that led to the figures in his paintings being solid and sculpture-like and the background of his works often have a structural feel to them.

His life and thus his identity became a merging of two cultures – that of his homeland Georgia where he studied and remained until 1986 and the Ukrainian city of Odesa where he went to live and remains, which has a resonant tradition of theatricality, humour, cosmopolitanism and figurative art. His career has been closely associated with this city. His paintings are described as lyrical genre works, with a strong emphasis on people, relationships, everyday life and expressive imagery. They combine a distinctly Georgian warmth and lyricism, while Emzari’s characters and settings can possess something of the colourful, theatrical atmosphere associated with the Ukrainian city.

One particular theme depicted in his paintings shows his fascination with “ordinary” professions and human activity which comes across in his compassionate depictions of tailors and other craftspeople. His figures are nothing like photographic or realistic images but more those which lean towards typical cartoon-like figures often with extended comical dimensions. In his depictions it is often the clothing worn by his figures and the vivid colours which is what we notice first. There is a simplicity about his figures, almost an amusing naivete which attracts most viewers to his work.

Since moving to Odesa Emzari believes he has been inspired by the city and its culture and says:

“…I think that such paintings can only be made in Odesa. Everything that surrounds you here helps to do it: atmosphere, aura… It’s not like I sit down and make up a new story, but something catches my eye and stays with me somewhere deep inside. It constantly lives there, transforms, and ripens. Then, with time, it comes out, often in a quite modified form. And, apparently, this process of modification is called creativity…”