Works by Norwegian-American Artists:

During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, about three hundred individuals were considered Norwegian- American artists, "who felt they had to speak to express their feelings by creating some object," (Rolf H. Erickson, 1986). While a universally accepted definition of "Norwegian-American art" has not been determined, the definition followed by the Chicago Norske Klub of 1920 still serves us today. Norwegian- American art was then defined as "painting and sculpture produced by artists with Norwegian backgrounds."

Over 180 works in the Luther College Fine Arts Collection concentration were created by Norwegian- American artists. Fifteen of these artists were born in and emigrated to America while fifteen other artists are American but have a strong Norwegian background. Their works form a significant component of the Collection, especially meaningful since Luther College was founded by Norwegian immigrants. Some of the art works in the Norwegian-American Collection also are components of other Named Collections.

The fifteen artists born in Norway are Sigvald Asbjørnsen (sculptor and painter from ); Arne Berger (painter from ); Emil Biorn (painter from Oslo); Ben Blessum (painter from Marstein, Romsdalen); Nils Saebjørn Buttedahl (actor and sculptor from Lier); Herbjørn Gausta (painter from Tinn, ); Claus Hoie (print-maker and painter from Stavanger); Tarkjel Landsverk (stone artisan, painter, and carver from , Telemark); Marie Løkke, aka Mrs. Finn Mathiesen (painter from Oslo); Elizabeth Maurland (potter from Oslo); Karl Peter Andreas Ouren (painter from ); Gulbrand Sether (painter from Saerslovbygda, ); Yngvar Sonnichsen (painter from Oslo); and Svend Rasmussen Svendsen (painter from ). One artist, Lars Haukaness, a painter from Granvin, Hardanger, is considered Norwegian-Canadian, although he spent a substantial portion of his life in the United States.

American artists born in the United States who have strong Norwegian backgrounds are Charles Nelson Beck (painter whose parents had ties to Hedemark); William J. Ellingson (printmaker with ancestors from Norway); Paul Fjelde (sculptor whose father emigrated from Norway in 1887); Sydney Glen Fossum (painter whose father emigrated from Oslo and whose mother came from Stranden, near Ålesund); Alexander Grinager (painter whose parents emigrated from , ); Halvor Landsverk (sculptor and carver whose father, Tarkjel, also an artist emigrated from Seljord, Telemark); Arnold Ness Klagstad (painter whose father emigrated from Vingen, ); John Maakestad (painter whose grandfather was born in Sørfjord, Hardanger); Lena Qualley (artist and art educator whose family originated from , , Norway); Harley Refsal (woodcarver whose paternal grandfather and grandmother came from Hedemark [grandfather from a farm called Refsal] and whose maternal grandmothers came from Brekke, near Sandnes and from Lista); Gilbert P. Risvold (sculptor whose parents emigrated from Norway) and Cyrus, Orville and Paul Running (artists whose parents had family ties to the Trondheim and Nordfjord areas in north central Norway); and Philip J. Thompson (painter, printmaker and calligrapher who is descended from forebears who came from the Horg Parish near Hovin y Gauldal in Norway and from Varmland in Sweden).

Norwegian-American Artists- Who Are They? It has been estimated that there were approximately 300-450 individuals who could be categorized as Norwegian-American artists during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. During more recent times, some contemporary artists also have joined this group but are much fewer in number.

It must be said that Norwegian-American artists are relatively unknown in the larger world of art. The Union List of Artist Names, the internal database of artists maintained by the J. Paul Getty Trust, contained almost no Norwegian-American artists' names until very recently. Marion Nelson ascribed this obscurity to the fact that there was no natural leader among the Norwegian-American artists to blaze the trail for other artists. He also pointed out that it was difficult to establish Norwegian-American art as a concept as opposed to Norwegian-American literature which had Norwegian as its basic language.

Norwegian-American artists who emigrated early, before 1910, tended to study in Norway or other European art centers such as Munich. For example, Emil Biorn trained at the Royal Norwegian School of Drawing in Oslo. Herbjorn Gausta studied at Knud Bergslien's Academy of Art in Oslo and attended the Munich Academy of Art where he won an academy medal. Gulbrand Sether studied at Norway with Fritz Thaulow. Artists who came later (1910-1930) or who were born in the U.S., studied mostly in America. Arne Berger studied in Minneapolis while Ben Blessum attended classes at the Art Institute of Chicago. Sydney Glen Fossum earned his BFA degree at the Minneapolis School of Art and studied at the Art Students League in New York. Marie Løkke studied art in both Europe (Norway and ) and the U.S., including work with several teachers in Provincetown, Massachusetts, and with the American impressionist, Charles W. Hawthorne.

Norwegian-American artists tended to gather in urban areas, especially Chicago (which had the largest urban concentration of in 1900), New York, Minneapolis, Brooklyn, and Seattle. Immigrants in these communities naturally provided a ready market for art that showcased images of the home country. Immigrants also were interested in contemporary portraits of friends and family members and in images of the new world around them. Norwegian-American artists sold some art outside the immigrant community but typically not in significant quantities.

Most Norwegian-American artists needed to supplement their studio careers by creating commercial art or teaching. For example, Fossum taught at a number of art schools including the Minneapolis Art Center, the Duluth Art Center and the Walker Art Center. Biorn was a cartoonist, created caricatures and provided illustrations for books. Blessum worked for the Chicago Tribune and other newspapers as an illustrator and promoted tourism to Norway with a poster campaign, lectures and articles for the Norwegian State Railways. Both Biorn and Blessum also provided illustrations for Norwegian-American magazines such as Jul i Vesterheimen (1911-1957) which included art reproductions suitable for framing. Sether worked at numerous jobs to support himself including waiter, dishwasher, and train conductor and became the published author of several Norwegian-language works of fiction.

On the other hand, Gausta, Berger, and Løkke, were more or less self-supporting with their art. Gausta, although virtually penniless all his life, painted not only scenes of Norway (Telemark and the Oslo Fjord were favorite subjects) and his new home in southeast Minnesota, but also produced portraits of important Norwegian-Americans, over 400 altar paintings for churches, and copied the paintings of great masters for income. Considered an especially skilled and talented artist, Gausta was plagued by ill fortune, even having his studio burn to the ground in 1889, losing over 100 paintings. Berger was a canny businessman, selling his art works according to a formula he publicized in small catalogs. Art could be commissioned of any size and the customer purchased it according to the number of square inches in the final painting and the media with which it was made. Løkke sold work to American buyers through Marshall Fields in Chicago and also painted portraits of children, landscapes, marinescapes and genre paintings which she sold successfully during the years she lived in the United States.

Some institutions helped to support Norwegian-American artists as well. The Norwegian-American Lutheran churches purchased altar paintings from Norwegian-American artists. Both Gausta and Berger sold many altar paintings, mostly modeled after other well-known paintings containing religious subject matter which were suitable for vertical spaces. Institutions such as nursing homes, orphanages and hospitals purchased some art made by Norwegian-American artists. Biorn painted a series of fourteen paintings depicting significant Norwegian historical events for the Norwegian-American orphanage in the Edison Park area of Chicago. The paintings, equipped with banners at the bottom describing the subject matter of the historical event, hung in the dining room of the orphanage as a daily history lesson for the children.

A few artists also enjoyed the patronage of well-to-do individuals although this was not the norm. Gausta was hosted by pioneer pastor Ulrich Koren and his wife in their parsonage from time to time and the Korens financed some of his travels. Finally, some Norwegian cultural organizations were formed which helped support the artists in a variety of ways. The Chicago Norske Klub (1920-1030), Norse Art League, the Norwegian Art and Craft Club of Brooklyn, New York, Scandinavian American Artists Association, and the Odin Club of Minneapolis (comprised of Scandinavian professional and business men) all contributed to this effort. They provided exhibit space and publicity that helped generate sales and customer contacts. However, media coverage generated from the activities of these organizations was limited.

Norwegian-American Artists: Identifying Characteristics Norwegian-American artists never developed a particular style or mode of expression and thus broke no new artistic ground. Personal styles can be attributed as much to training and individual disposition as they can to national identity. However, most of the work tended toward with an emphasis on nature and landscape imagery. Religious subjects and portraiture were also common, frequently as the result of commissions, but figure paintings were not. It should also be noted that marinescapes are an important genre for Norwegian artists, but not for the immigrant artists, most of whom settled in the middle portions of the United States, far from any ocean.

Although Norwegian-American artists were generally not at the forefront of artistic change, neither were they unaware of developments in the art world. Gausta and Berger were early adopters of photography as a source for their painting, but not always with the best results. Some of Guasta’s photographs are quite nice on their own, but his paintings tended to lose vitality after he abandoned sketching in favor of photography for his preliminary work. Løkke was heavily influenced by the American Impressionists and their insistence on working en pleine aire or on location. Fossum was another artist responsive to his times, incorporating subjects, media and stylistic elements common to the Pop Art movement of the late 1950s and early 1960s.

Norwegian-American artists merged Norwegian and American influences, in much of their work. For example, the Fine Arts Collection contains a painting entitled Peasant of Setesdalen, a portrait by Blessum that was long identified at Luther College as the Norwegian Indian. That can be attributed primarily to the sitter’s features, which look to many people less Norwegian and more Native American. In addition, only portions of the sitter’s costume are appropriate for the Setesdalen area. Those include the needlework and buttons on the shirt, but the hat is entirely wrong with its pushed-in crown and upturned brim. Research on Blessum reveals that he worked for a year in Santa Fe, New Mexico, painting portraits of Indians for the Santa Fe Railroad. It is entirely possible that the Peasant of Setesdalen reflects influences of Blessum’s new American home as well as his Norwegian heritage.

That statement is probably true to a greater or lesser extent for all of the Norwegian-American artists who arrived as immigrants to the United States. Some used their art to look back across the ocean, creating images reminiscent of their homeland. Others planted their artistic flag more firmly in American soil and drew inspiration primarily from their new home. In that respect, Norwegian-American artists were probably no different from any other group of immigrants, some of whom undoubtedly left their homes reluctantly and others who perhaps never looked back. Whatever their motivations, a group of seven Norwegian- American artists have now returned ‘home’ for an extended visit, through the auspices of the Art in Embassies Program and the art works they created so many years ago.

The Printed Word Historically, the art produced by Norwegian-American artists was promoted most effectively in the United States through the traditional means of the printed word. This published material included books, advertising catalogs, articles and essays, and exhibit catalogs. Standard reference books focusing on American art and artists contained some references to Norwegian-American artists but the citations usually provided minimal data. Little has changed with this practice to the present day.

Thus the printed word not only reached the largest number of people interested in learning more about Norwegian-American art, but also left an enduring legacy for the art and artists. The books tended to profile and describe numerous Norwegian-American artists within a larger context. These studies covered more subjects than art as their titles suggest. Examples are A.E. Strand’s A History of Norwegians in Illinois (1905), Carl G. Hanson’s My Minneapolis: a Chronicle of What Has Been Learned and Observed About the Norwegians in Minneapolis Through One Hundred Years (1956), or Odd Lovoll’s A Century of Urban Life: the Norwegians in Chicago Before 1930 (1988). There are no artists in the Fine Arts Collection who are the sole subject of a book.

More recently, exposure to Norwegian-American art and artists has been widened with the publication of art books with a national scope such as William Gerdt’s Art Across America: Regional Painting in America, 1710-1920 (1990) which featured several Norwegian-American artists. Public notice for Norwegian-American artists was extended when individual images were used to illustrate books. The secondary literature textbook, Literature and Integrated Studies, published by ScottForesman (1996), featured a well-known painting by Herbjørn Gausta, "Boy Setting Trap. "The book Knitting in Art by Annemor Sundbo which included two paintings by Herbjørn Gausta was published in Norway in 2010.

Artists publicized their own art by advertising their services in small catalogs which they had published. Arne Berger contracted for such a catalog about 1920 entitled Catalogue and Price List of Altar Paintings, Landscapes, Oil Paintings from Life and from Photographs. This catalog, which was distributed to individuals and churches, contained a price list for the particular paintings he was willing to create, examples of his art works, and testimonials from satisfied customers. Berger was one of three artists in the Norwegian-American collection concentration who painted altar paintings for churches. Gausta and Berger were the most prolific altar painters but Arnold Klagstad, who helped his father, August Klagstad, with his altar painting business, also was responsible for some altar paintings.

Articles and essays about Norwegian-American artists were also published. The Norwegian-American Historical Association of Northfield, MN, has published several collections of essays exemplified by the essay written by Rolf Erickson in vol. 31 of Norwegian-American Studies entitled, "Norwegian-American Artists‘ Exhibitions Described in Checklists and Catalogs" (1986). Another important essay in a NAHA publication was written by Marion Nelson about Norwegian-American painters in Nordics in America: The Future of Their Past published in 1993. Individual artists were also surveyed in articles published in periodicals. Karl Ouren was the subject of an article in The Palette and Chisel in October 1927 while Claus Hoie wrote an article about his art in the well-known American journal, American Artist, in 1955.

Exhibit catalogs additionally have promoted the works of Norwegian-American artists such as Marion Nelson’s Paintings by Minnesotans of Norwegian Background, 1870-1970, which accompanied the Minnesota Historical Society exhibit of the same name held in St. Paul, MN, in 2000. Numerous exhibit catalogs have also been published focusing on single artists such as Syd Fossum: A Memorial, published by the University of Minnesota in 1978 to accompany a memorial exhibit of the artist’s works.

The Internet The newest and most far-reaching method for introducing Norwegian-American artists to audiences, both nationally and internationally, is through the Internet. Internet search engines have replaced the printed word for providing immediate, fast access to information on the World Wide Web.

To take advantage of this new world of information, profiles of the Norwegian-American artists in the Luther College Fine Arts Collection are available here and are also mounted on the Artist pages of the Collection website. Information consists of essays on each of the artists which contain their biographies, information about their professional careers, and specific facts abut the particular works by these artists in the Fine Arts Collection. Each essay is followed by significant references about the artist so the researcher has pointers for conducting on-going research. At least one image of a work in the Collection by the artist illustrates each essay.

Other websites are also publishing information on Norwegian-American artists. For example, a biography on Svend Svendsen is now available on the website published by the Illinois Historical Art Project http://www.illinoisart.org/biographies/Svendsen.htm. The AskART.com website, linked to the Worldcat database of books and media available in most American libraries, also provides biographies of many Norwegian-American artists. Norwegian-American artists are also the subject of gallery and museum websites such as Claus Hoie whose works are shown at the Maritime Gallery of the Mystic Seaport Museum http://www.mysticseaport.org.

The U.S. Ambassador's Residence, Oslo In March 2010, nine art works from the Fine Arts Collection were installed in the home of the U.S. Ambassador in Oslo, Norway. All works were created by a selection of Norwegian-American artists listed above (Arne Berger, Emil Biorn, Ben Blessum, Sydney Glen Fossum, Herbjørn Gausta, Marie Lokke, and Gulbrand Sether). The art works are intended to remain in the residence for three years or the term of the current ambassador, Barry White. The loan was arranged through the Art in Embassies Program of the U.S. Department of State with the leadership of their curator, Imtiaz Hafiz. An exhibit catalog was prepared to showcase the art works which included loans from other sources besides Luther College.