Lot 1106 | Fishermen on the Norwegian Sea

EKENAES, JAHN
1847 Hof (Vestfold) - 1920 Follebu

Title: Fishermen on the Norwegian Sea.
Date: 1898.
Technique: Oil on canvas.
Measurement: 60 x 107cm.
Notation: Signed and dated lower right: J. Ekenas. Norw. 1898.
Frame/Pedestal: Framed.
Provenance:
Private ownership, Germany.

On a small fishing boat in the middle of a wide fjord, a fisherman releases a freshly caught fish from the fishing hook. Two children watch him intently while another man at the bow of the boat smokes a pipe and holds his fishing line in the water. The small group is engaged in traditional herring fishing, which was the country's main occupation in pre-industrial Norway until well into the 19th century.
Fishing subjects, such as this one, are among the popular motifs of the Norwegian artist Jahn Ekenæs, who studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen from 1869 to 1870 and at the Munich Academy from 1872 to 1874, under the genre painters Otto Seitz and Wilhelm von Lindenschmit the Younger. Munich was considered the epicentre of Norwegian realism in the 1870s, which was to influence Ekenæs. His works were particularly well received in Germany and are represented in the Norwegian National Museum in Oslo, among other places.