Johan Christian Clausen Dahl
Fjord near Holmestrand, 1843

Artist
Johan Christian Clausen Dahl

Title
fjord near Holmesstrand

Year of creation
1843

Technique and dimensions
oil on canvas, 38 x 52.5 cm

Year of acquisition
2004

"A young Norwegian had now come to Dresden who caused a great sensation among the students. It was Christian Dahl." When Ludwig Richter recalled Johan Christian Dahl's enthusiastic reception in Dresden in his life review after 1870, he had already gone down in art history as the discoverer of the Norwegian landscape for painting, as an important romantic naturalist and as one of Caspar David Friedrich's few close friends .

After settling in Dresden, Dahl remained closely connected to his homeland. He traveled to Norway a total of five times and acquired a wealth of motifs through meticulous nature and landscape studies. He also used one of his travel sketches for the painting “Fjord near Holmestrand,” which he acquired from the London art market at the beginning of 2005 through the Association of Friends of the National Gallery. Dahl captured the details of the nighttime fjord landscape precisely and at the same time poeticized it romantically. The motif ensemble with moonlight, ships, coast, sea and a lonely longing figure on the shore shows the intellectual and artistic closeness to Caspar David Friedrich. A romantic landscape view by Dahl was previously missing from the National Gallery's holdings. The new acquisition of "Fjord near Holmestrand" has significantly enriched the National Gallery's collection, which already has three small-format studies by Dahl.

Birgit Verwiebe