After Amaldus Nielsen - Evening at Fredrikstad, 1918

After Amaldus Nielsen (1838–1932) Norway

Evening at Fredrikstad, 1918

signed indistinctly, possibly “Hj. U…”, and dated “18” lower right
oil on board
unframed 42 × 55 cm (16.5 × 21.7 in)
framed 53 × 65 cm (20.9 × 25.6 in)

Comparative work:
Amaldus Nielsen, Aften ved Fredrikstad (Evening at Fredrikstad), 1909, oil on canvas, present location unknown.

Condition report:
Very good condition with bright and clear colors. Ready to hang.
Please contact the gallery for a detailed condition report.

Essay:
This atmospheric evening seascape was painted in 1918 by an as yet unidentified artist and closely follows Amaldus Nielsen’s Aften ved Fredrikstad of 1909. The relationship between the two compositions is unmistakable. In both, a sailing boat occupies the central waters beneath an expansive and dramatically clouded sky, while a narrow strip of intense evening light separates sea from horizon. Smaller vessels recede into the distance, establishing both scale and a sense of stillness across the broad surface of the water.

The present painting is nevertheless not a mechanical copy. The unidentified artist has altered several details and developed the scene through a more concentrated and chromatically intense palette. The central vessel is brought into sharper prominence, its sails forming a strong silhouette against the illuminated horizon. Deep blues dominate the foreground water and the upper sky, while streaks of orange, ochre and pale turquoise register the last light of sunset. The sky occupies approximately two thirds of the composition and becomes almost a subject in itself. Heavy clouds gather above the tranquil water, their dark masses opening intermittently to reveal passages of luminous blue and warm reflected light.

The model for the composition was created by Amaldus Nielsen, one of the most important Norwegian painters of the coast during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Born at Halse near Mandal in 1838, Nielsen studied in Copenhagen before continuing his training with Hans Gude at the Düsseldorf Academy. Gude’s emphasis on close observation of landscape remained fundamental to Nielsen, but he gradually moved away from the constructed romantic landscape towards an increasingly direct study of nature.

Nielsen became especially associated with the coastlines of southern and western Norway and has often been described as one of Norway’s earliest naturalist landscape painters. From the 1860s onward he frequently completed paintings outdoors before the motif, an unusually direct working method in Norwegian art of the period. Light, weather and changing atmospheric conditions became central to his practice. The same location might be returned to repeatedly under different conditions of morning, evening, mist or changing weather.

Fredrikstad and its surrounding archipelago formed part of this geography. Nielsen is documented working at Arisholmen near Fredrikstad as early as 1884, and surviving paintings demonstrate his continued interest in the coastal landscape of Østfold. By the time he painted Aften ved Fredrikstad in 1909, the theme of boats at rest or moving quietly across evening water had become deeply embedded within his art.

The 1909 painting is particularly memorable for its balance between naturalistic observation and atmosphere. The boats remain tangible objects, yet the true subject is arguably the transient light surrounding them. A band of yellow and orange at the horizon spreads across the water in broken reflections, while the sky above is constructed from successive layers of mauve, grey and violet cloud. Nielsen had spent decades observing precisely these effects.

The artist responsible for the present work returned to the composition nine years later. The means through which the 1909 painting became known to the later painter cannot presently be established. The artist may have encountered Nielsen’s original painting directly, or possibly through a photograph or reproduction. What is clear is that the composition was sufficiently compelling to be reinterpreted as an independent painted work.

There are also notable differences in mood. Nielsen’s version is softer and more tonally unified, its lavender and rose coloured atmosphere spreading gently across the entire scene. The 1918 interpretation is darker and more dramatic. The sea becomes a saturated blue, the boat is more strongly silhouetted and the cloud formations acquire considerable weight. The brilliant orange line of the setting sun consequently appears even more intense.

This contrast is particularly evident in the treatment of the water. Broken blue, turquoise, orange and dark strokes extend horizontally across the foreground, translating the reflections into a richly worked surface. The shadow of the principal boat descends vertically through these horizontal marks, creating one of the composition’s strongest structural elements.

The painting should therefore be understood not as a work by Nielsen himself, but as an intriguing early twentieth century interpretation of one of his known compositions. Its date of 1918 places it only nine years after Nielsen’s original and still within the artist’s lifetime. Nielsen lived until 1932 and continued painting into old age.

Seen alongside the 1909 painting, the present work offers an interesting example of how a successful Scandinavian coastal image could be repeated, adapted and given a new pictorial character. The unidentified painter preserves Nielsen’s fundamental motif of boats suspended between darkening sea and illuminated horizon while transforming its quiet naturalism into a more saturated and dramatic vision of the Nordic evening.