Frithjof Smith-hald (1846-1903) Navy The Departure Of The Fishermen

Frithjof SMITH-HALD (1846-1903) the departure of sinners at sunrise Painting signed and dated lower right Smith-Hald 1877 Frithjof Smith-Hald (Kristiansand (Norway) 09/13/1846 - Chicago (United States) 9 /March 11, 1903) The availability in France of this painting by one of the best representatives of the Nordic school is exceptional. The works of this artist are now worldwide sought after and renowned. They remain appreciated for the charm of their subjects, their impeccable realistic executions and the delicate emotion of the characters. Frithjof Smith-Hald's career is also exemplary. His great mobility throughout his career testifies to his artistic curiosity and his talent that transcends borders. The artist began his apprenticeship at the age of nineteen with his compatriot, the painter Johan Fredrik Eckersberg, whose technique is strongly imbued with the realism of the Düsseldorf school. In support, he obtained a two-year travel grant from the Norwegian government to train abroad. He continued his artistic studies in Germany between the art school of Karlsruhe, in the workshops devoted to landscape painting and anatomy directed respectively by Hans Gude and Wilhelm Riefstahl, and at the Academy of Fine Arts in Düsseldorf for five years. He lives in Bergen in Norway, travels to London, Berlin, before settling for twenty years in Paris. His correspondence testifies that Frithjof Smith-Hald speaks perfect French. From the 1890s, he moved to Antwerp, Belgium where he became an honorary member of the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Fine Arts. In 1902, he began a cycle of exhibitions of his works in the United States in New Orleans, Saint Paul in Minnesota and Chicago, where he died of pneumonia in 1903. In France, Frithjof Smith-Hald won a unanimous success from his first participation in the Parisian Salon from 1874. The French State bought him two paintings during their presentations at the Salon of the Society of French Artists in 1880 and that of 1884, a sign of exceptional recognition while the public procurement policy more readily encouraged French artists. A steamboat station in Norway (Salon from 1880, no. 3551) now belongs to the collections of the Lille Museum of Fine Arts, while Le vieux filet (salon from 1884, no. 2227) is kept at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Lille. Fine Arts of La Rochelle. Over the years, Frithjof Smith-Hald's production grew. His paintings can be seen in Lyon, Versailles, Bordeaux, Pau, Le Havre, Nantes, Rouen, Lille, Douai, Roubaix-Tourcoing, Vienna in Austria, Madrid in Spain, Ghent in Belgium. Its reputation is international. The painter represented the Norwegian school of painting at the Universal Exhibitions of 1878 and 1889 in Paris. Art critics argue over his talent as a landscaper: “if he were our compatriot: Corot would have found a successor1”. Our painting is representative of the artist's attachment to the description of the daily life of Norwegian fishermen. Le Retour de pêche brings together his favorite themes: the waiting on the wharf of a family of fishermen on a summer evening bathed in the luminosity of a rising moon. The virtuosity of the artist is due to his talent as a colorist and the accuracy of the representation. The clarity of the waters and the iridescent light make the shells and rocks in the foreground sparkle. Frithjof Smith-Hald delicately interprets the emotions of his characters, relieved by the end of the work done and to be reunited again. Indeed, navigation off this Norwegian coast was deemed dangerous, as he likes to recall in a letter addressed to a director of an artistic reproduction workshop asking him to explain his work. Highly appreciated during his lifetime, his paintings were the subject of numerous photographic reproduction campaigns under the impetus of the French Ministry of Fine Arts and in the form of a card-album by the Maison Adolphe Braun et Cie.