Hans Gude

Hans Gude was a Norwegian Romanticist painter. Along with Johan Christian Dahl he is regarded as one of Norway’s best landscape painters. He also became associated with the Dusseldorf school of Painting. He was born in Oslo on 13th March 1825 and died in Berlin on 17th August 1903 aged 78.

“Studies of a Woman from Rugen” (1887)
“Vikingskip” (Vikingship) (1889)
“Oban Bay, Scotland” (1889)
“Brenning Ved Hanko” (1890)

1825: Hans Gude was born on 13th March in Oslo (then known as Christiania). His father was Ove Gude who was a judge. His mother was Marie Elisabeth Brandt. 

1838: He attends Johannes Flintoe’s evening classes at the Royal School of Drawing in Christiania. 

1841: The poet and art theorist Johan Sebastian Welhaven suggests that he is sent to Dusseldorf in Germany to be educated in art. The landscape painting professor at the Academy of Art in Dusseldorf, Johann Wilhelm Schirmer, rejects him and advises him to give up painting altogether however the German landscape painter Andreas Achenbach offers to give him private lessons.

1842: In the autumn he is finally accepted by the Academy in Dusseldorf and enters Schirmer’s landscape painting class. He makes progress and is described as very talented at the end of the 1844 term. He attends meetings of the Society for Landscape Composition at Schirmer’s home. He meets Carl Friedrich Lessing and the two become close friends. He becomes a student teacher at the Academy

1844: At the end of his course he leaves to live in Christiania, Norway.

1847: He paints “Vinterettermiddag” (Winter Afternoon). 

1848: He paints “Tessefossen i Vågå I middagsbelysning” (Tessefossen in Vågå at midday)/

1850: He marries Betsy Charlotte Juliane Anker on 25th July, who is the daughter of General Erik Anker.

1851: He paints “Lystring på Krøderen” (Fishing with a Harpoon) with Adolph Tidemand.

1852: He wins a Gold medal at the Berlin Exhibition.

1854: He is appointed Professor of Landscape Painting at the Dusseldorf Academy taking over from his former teacher Schirmer. He was recommended for the position by the Director of the Academy, Wilhelm von Schadow, but only after Lessing, Andreas and Oswald Achenbach had refused the post due to the low levels of pay. He takes on private pupils to supplement his income.

1855: He wins the Medal, 2nd class at the Paris Exhibition.

1857: He resigns from the Dusseldorf Academy blaming opposition from some of his pupils, however he stays on for another five years as the situation improves. He paints “Norwegian Highlands”.

1860: He wins a Gold medal at the Berlin Exhibition.

1861: He wins a Medal, 2nd class at the Paris Exhibition.

1862: In the Autumn he decides to go to Britain having sold many paintings there over the years and moves to the Lledr Valley near Conwy in Wales which was already a colony of plein air artists.

1863: His exhibition at the Royal Academy in London and again in 1864 are both failures. In December he accepts a professorship at the Baden School of Art in Karlsruhe, Germany. Many Norwegian painters who would have gone to Dusseldorf now go to Karlsruhe over the following twenty years. He often takes his students out into the countryside to paint and he himself is particularly interested in light on the water. He paints “Fra Chiemsee” (From Chiemsee) at Karlsruhe which is exhibited in Vienna and bought by the Kunsthistoriches Hofmuseum.

1866: He becomes Director of the Karlsruhe Academy until 1868.

1867: He wins the Medal, 2nd class at the Paris Exhibition. 

1869: He becomes Director of the Karlsruhe Academy again for one year.

1873: He wins the Gold Medal at the Vienna Exhibition for his paining “Nodhavn Ved Norkekysten” (Port of Refuge on the Norwegian Coast).

1875: His daughter Sigrid marries the German sculptor Otto Lessing in Christiana.

1876: He wins a Medal for “A Fresh Breeze, Norwegian Coast and Calm, Christianiaford” at the United States Centennial Commission International Exhibition in Philadelphia, USA.

1880: He leaves Karlsruhe to take up leading the master studio in landscape painting at the Academy of Art in Berlin. The post entitles him to become a member of the Academy’s Senate which is state recognition for his achievements. He has between five and eight students but this declines over the next decade.

1883: He paints “Ladies in the Sunshine”.

1884: He paints “Landskap Ved Stavern”.

1888: He paints “The Lake of Constance”.

1889: He paints “Oban Bay” following another visit to Scotland.

1890: He paints “Molde Fra Utsikten” (View of Molde) and “Brenning Ved Hanko” (Burning at Hanko).

1892: He paints “A Norwegian Seaport”.

1893: He paints “Den Gamle Sneplov Ved Skovkanten” (The Old Snowplow At The Edge Of The Forest) and “Honefos” (Hen’s Waterfall).

1894: He is awarded the Grand Cross of Saint Olave by the King of Norway.

1895: The Christiania Art Society holds a retrospective of Gude’s works including his paintings, studies, watercolours, sketches and etchings. In Berlin he begins to use Gouache and watercolour more frequently.

1896: He paints “Fra Kristianfjorden”.

1898: He paints “Sommernatt Ved Drobak” (Summer Night at Drobak) and “Kaien Pa Feste I Naer Moss” (The Jetty at Feste near Moss).

1900: He paints “Fishing at Solvkronen”.

1901: He retires from the Berlin Academy.

1902: His exhibition in Christiania is a failure as his style has fallen out of favour.

Hans Gude died on 17th August 1903 in Berlin. He was buried in the Vår Frelsers Gravlund, (Var Freslers Cemetery) in Oslo, Norway.

Hans Gude like Caspar David Friedrich and J. C. Dahl was influenced by the German Romantic painters. He was born and had his early education in Christiania (now Oslo in Norway) and taking private art lessons in the evenings from the prominent Norwegian-Danish painter Johannes Flintoe. In 1841 he moved to Germany to study with the leading German landscape artist Andreas Achenbach. In 1842 he moved to Düsseldorf in Germany to begin his formal art studies at the Academy of Art. He joined a landscape class taught by Johann Wilhelm Schirmer and rejected the existing notion that landscape paintings should be composed according to classical or artificial principles. He preferred to paint realistically direct from nature mainly outside “en plein air”. On completion of his studies he returned to Norway around 1846.

Early in his career he struggled to paint realistic figures, and in several works, he enlisted the help of Adolph Tidemand to paint them in for him. The most famous example being “Brudeferden i Hardanger” (Bridal journey in Hardanger) of 1848. His “Landscape Study from Vågå” of 1846 is an excellent example of his early oil studies and painted in Norway’s Oppland (upland) county north of the Jotunheimen Mountains. His parents moved from mountainous Hallingdal to the southern coastal village of Sand and his focus then switched from inland peaks to coastal marine scenes and fjords. 

In 1854 he was appointed professor in succession to his teacher Schirmer, even though he was still under thirty years old. A debate ensued as to whether his art was Norwegian at all as he was trained and worked in Germany. He defended his position by saying his students were not simply imitating German artists: “If we learn something from Achenbach and Lessing, it is certainly not to our detriment; no one has ever said about me or Tidemand or, so far as I know, any of us Norwegian Düsseldorfers that we copy and imitate”.

In 1862 he moved to Wales for a few years hoping to expand his reputation in Great Britain and there he painted pictures of river gorges with dynamic skies and powerful lighting such as “The Lledr Valley in Wales” of 1864. Quite often he would do sketches in the open air and then produce a finished painting in the studio unlike British painters who completed the whole work outside. His paintings were exhibited at the Royal Academy in London in 1863 and 1864 but they failed to sell.

At the end of 1863, he became professor at the Baden School of Art in Karlsruhe, Germany. During his tenure there, many Norwegians travelled to become his students including Kitty Kielland, Eilif Peterssen, Christian Krohg, and Frits Thaulow. Whilst teaching there his figure painting steadily improved which can be seen in “Fjord Landscape with People” of 1875. He also began to complete whole paintings in the open air and encouraged his students to do the same.

He painted several scenes around Britain in later years including “Estuary at Brodick, Arran, Scotland” and “Landscape with Tarbert Castle, Scotland” both of 1877. Although he painted mostly in oils his watercolours were admired by fellow artists if not the general public. His talents earned him membership of art academies in Amsterdam, Berlin, Copenhagen, Rotterdam, Stockholm and Vienna and he was awarded numerous medals of honour including the Grand Cross of the Order of St. Olav.

In 1880 he moved to teach at the Academy of Art in Berlin. In all he spent forty-five years as an art professor and so played an important role in the development of Norwegian art, mentoring three generations of Norwegian artists. Important artists influenced by his teachings and his art were the Impressionist Frits Thaulow, his private pupil Lars Hertervig who painted coastal landscapes, his direct disciple Amaldus Nielsen, and the pioneering female landscape painter Kitty Kielland who studied under Gude to hone her en plein air techniques. He also directly affected his son the painter Nils Gude and his daughter the watercolourist and illustrator Agnes Charlotte Gude.

List of paintings by Gude.