Fjord in Bergen

In the history of Norwegian painting, Andreas Monsen Askevold is remembered primarily as the author of picturesque views of the local fjords. He most often composed paintings with a long perspective led through steep mountain sides. The centre of the painting was usually discreetly enlivened by staffage, presentation of a coastal settlement and ships. The painting does not present the view of any specific place, but is an idealised artistic vision, recreated by the artist with certain modifications in other works (among others in the painting of 1892, private collection). Andreas Askevold was one of the landscape painters from the Düsseldorf School, whose representatives combined the accomplishments of Romanticism with in-depth observation of nature. Its many representatives presented the Norwegian landscapes, among them Themistokles Eckenbrecher, Hans Andreas Dahl and Adelsteen Normann. Askevold, after initial studies in Bergen, moved to continue his education in Düsseldorf where, between 1855 and 1858, under the supervision of Hans Gude, he learnt about the art of landscape painting with clearly Romantic undertones. The artist's later trip to Paris, between 1861 and 1866, bore fruit in the adoption of a more realistic stance under the influence of the Barbizon School (including Theodore Rousseau and Constantine Troyon). Andreas Monsen Askevold was a laureate of numerous prizes, among others at Vienna’s World Fair (1873) and the Centennial International Exhibition in Philadelphia (1876).

Dariusz Kacprzak