of the east country that have attracted him most. From other
countries, Gude has also taken subjects for a number of his
pictures — from the Rhine and from Austrian mountain lakes,
from the Welsh mountains and from Scotland's rocky coast, from
Denmark and from the shores of Rügen Island.
In water-colour, also, which he handles with a master’s hand,
Gmde has often given delightful proof that his sense of beauty
and constant pleasure in Nature does not forsake him in his old
age, when he stands face to face with her.
Among the numerous Norwegian pupils that Gude has had,
none has .possessed a richer and more personal order of talent than
H e r m a n A u g u s t C a p p e l e n (1827—G852). He is the most decidedly
lyric of a ir Norwegian painters. His larger pictures are majestic,
free eolour-poems on nature, rather than artistic representations of
its realities. His «TJddoende urskov» (Dying-out of a Primeval
Forest) is the most emphatically romantic picture in Norwegian
art. But in addition to this fictional scenery, Cappelen has left
behind hipi a large collection of' capital open-air studies from
Norway; and in these .we find as intimate and devoted an acquaintance
with nature as in any old hunter and forester. Here
Cappelen ;is a painter that has forgotten the art of composition,
and disdained the gorgeous colours of the studio palette, only to
make himself thoroughly) acquainted with nature. Almost all these
sketches represent detached fragments of scenery, single natural
objects as they happened to occur. They are freely and broadly
painted, with the same ready talent as the pictures, but in a dark
and unassuming colouring that has nothing in common with the
Düsseldorf school’s display of colour.
J o h a n F r e d e b i k E c k e r s b e r g (1822 1870) was a marked
contrast to Cappelen, and the first true realist among Norwegian
painters.. With the exception of three years of study in Düsseldorf,
and a couple of years spent in Madeira to get rid of a
dangerous chest-affection, Eckersberg lived in Norway. In 1859
he established an art-school in Kristiania, which was soon well
attended and supported by government His 11 years’ work here
has had a.decided significance.for the younger generation of Norwegian
painters, most of whom have been his pupils. The foundation
of their respect for nature and sober vision was no doubt
laid under the guidance of this teacher, whose greatest qualities
as an artist were honesty and faithfulness to nature.