Lot 262: Karl Isakson (Swedish, 1878-1922)

Nature Morte
oil on canvas
64.5 x 74 cm.
Painted circa 1916-1920

Göteborg, Kunstforening; Karl Isakson - Retrospective utställung, February-May 1962.
Oslo, Kunstnernes Hus; Karl Isakson - Udstillingen, February-May 1962.
Odense, Fyns Stift Museum, Karl Isakson - Retrospective utställning, 1962

Acquired from the artist by Peter Rostrup Boyesen
Lars Rostrup Boyesen, Copenhagen, thence by descent.

PROPERTY OF THE LATE LARS ROSTRUP BOYESEN (COPENHAGEN, 1915-1996)

Lars Rostrup Boyesen started as a student at his father's (Peter Rostrup Boyesen) art school. At the same time he read history of art at the Copenhagen University and worked as an art critic for several newspapers. In 1940 he received the university's gold medal for a thesis on the painter Abraham Wuchters, but after his examination for M.A. in 1943, he first and foremost dealt with contemporary art. From 1940 to 1967 he was employed at the 'Statens Museum for Kunst', From there he moved to Aalborg in the North of Jutland and became leader of the art museum of this town, which he developed into 'Nordjyllands Kunstmuseum', which became the most well known Danish museum outside Copenhagen. The buildings made by the famous Finnish architect Aalvar Alto. Not only the building created respect around Rostrup Boyesen as a museum's person, but also his purchase of Anna and Kresten Krestensens outstanding collection of young Danish art, by which he made a solid foundation for the museum's permanent collection. After 12 years in the north of Jutland Lars Rostrup Boyesen returned to Copenhagen as a director for "Statens Museum for Kunst" after Jorn Rubow. He retired five years later, but before that, he had put his personal mark on the museum, and created several big exhibitions abroad.

Karl Isakson and Edvard Weie were leading artists in Denmark in the first half of the 20th century. In Denmark the influence of the Swedish born Karl Isakson on his contemporary Danish artists was enormous.

In first instance it was Cézanne who made the greatest impression on both artists. Both travelled to France; Weie in 1912 and Isakson to Paris from 1905-1907 and again in 1911. Karl Isakson and Weie liked to spend their summer on Christianso, which developed something of an artist's colony, later known as the Bornholm School. Isakson and Weie were leading figures in this circle of artists.

They continued to cultivate a style which valued the pure colour intensity of the painting above considerations of resemblance to nature. A characteristic feature was the cultivation of pure colour that took the pure spectral colours as its starting point.

For Isakson and Weie there main concern seems to be to find a rhythm, a pulse, that escalates between the complimentary colours which enhance one another through contrast. In both still lifes the colour creates form. The depicted objects are of minor importance.

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