Biography from Edenhurst Gallery (Artists A to L):
| Emil Carlsen is counted among the important early California painters of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He was born in Copenhagen, Denmark in 1853. At first pursuing a career in architecture, he, by the age of twenty, had emigrated to the United States, finding himself in Chicago and beginning a career in painting.
He studied briefly in Paris and returning to Chicago, began to teach at the Art Institute. He then moved on to San Francisco and shared a studio with his close friend from the Paris days, Arthur Mathews.
Finding sales difficult in California, Carlsen again left for New York and Connecticut where his career turned more into a mode of success. He became a member of the National Academy of Design in 1906.
Carlsen, though chiefly self-taught, was most influenced by his stay in Paris and his study of French art. He is considered an impressionist, and his most successful period is characterized by softly colorful and delicate landscapes, seascapes, and in particular beautifully rendered still lifes in an almost oriental manner in terms of objects and compositions. There is always a very ethereal sense of light in Carlsen's most successful canvases.
Carlsen was well-honored in his lifetime and won medals at the St. Louis World's Fair in 1904 and the Panama Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco in 1915. He died in 1932.
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Biography from Owen Gallery:
| Danish by birth, and originally trained as an architectural draftsman, Emil Carlsen was distinguished for his still-life painting as well as later in his career for his Impressionist land and seascapes.
He first came to the United States in 1872, teaching for three years at the Art Institute of Chicago. He then traveled to Paris to study painting, but was forced to return to the United States after only six months because of financial difficulties. Upon his return, he settled in New York where he built his reputation as a still life specialist, but he returned to Paris from 1884 to 1886.
The earliest criticism written on Carlsen's work emphasizes the relation to the work of Jean-Baptiste Simeon Chardin, the principal artist that got the attention of Carlsen in Paris.
Of Carlsen's work, William Gerdts wrote: "the tonal harmonies are very close and evince Carlsen's preference for the monochromatic-grays, silver, and beige tones-embodying an aesthetic in still life that closely resembles the contemporaneous tonalist or Quietist movement in landscape painting.
Credits by Owen Gallery: "Painters of the Humble Truth: Masterpieces of American Still Life" by William Gerdts; and "Pots and Pans or Studies in Still- Life Painting" by Arthur Edwin Bye. |
Biography from The Caldwell Gallery - I:
| Emil Carlsen was born in 1853. His extensive art training was all European, starting at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts de Copenhagen, and then the Danish Royal Academy and Academie Julian from 1884-86. Carlsen immigrated to the U.S. in 1872 and worked as an architectural assistant before teaching at the Chicago Institute of Art. In 1875, he returned to Paris for 6 months of study, and then settled in California for four years.
There he became the Director of the San Francisco Art Association's California School of Design. Carlsen moved back to New York City permanently in 1891 to teach at the National Academy of Design.
Carlsen's early career was marked by still lifes of yellow roses and other bright flowers. However, he gained critical recognition for rich, sensuous paintings of dead game and kitchen still lifes that made him an important figure in the Chardin revival of the 19th century. With an emphasis on subtle light and form, visual truths such as wet scales or gleaming copper became completely believable. Carlsen is recognized for his traditional representation with an Impressionistic approach to color and light.
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Biography from William A. Karges Fine Art - Beverly Hills:
| Emil Carlsen was born in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 1853 and studied architecture in his native land before immigrating to Chicago in 1853. While in Chicago Carlsen found work as an artist’s assistant. Returning to Europe, Carlsen enrolled at the Academie Julian, and set about studying the old masters.
Returning to Chicago, he found work at the newly formed Chicago Art Institute. In 1887, at the request of Mary Curtis Richardson, Carlsen moved to San Francisco to accept a post as Director of the California School of Design. Carlsen would remain in San Francisco four only four years, returning to New York for financial reasons. There he taught at the National Academy of Design, and found an eager audience for the meticulous still lifes for which his is now best known.
Emil Carlsen died in New York City in 1932. |
Biography from The Columbus Museum-Georgia:
| Soren Emil Carlsen emigrated from Denmark and arrived in the United
States in 1872, settling in Chicago. Although trained as an
architect, he initially worked with Laurits Bernhard Holst, a Danish
painter in Chicago, who gave over to Carlsen his studio when the
instructor returned home. Carlsen remained mostly self-taught,
and his early ventures to France included no formal instruction.
Ironically, Carlsen began teaching art in Chicago, at a school that
would later become part of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Carlsen’s early career also included subsequent moves to New York and
Boston. Although he established himself as a painter, economic
misfortune led him to work as an engraver and designer. By the
1880s, Carlsen was exhibiting his paintings more consistently, and he
received a significant commission from a New York dealer to paint
still-life images.
Art education played a role continuously throughout Carlsen’s career;
he served as the Director of San Francisco Art Association’s school,
and he taught at the National Academy of Design and the Pennsylvania
Academy of the Fine Arts. (1) Although Carlsen’s oeuvre contains
impressionistic landscapes and academic portraiture, his still-life
paintings indicate his strongest and most successful painting
explorations.
During the artist’s lifetime one critic noted, “Emil Carlsen is
unquestionably the most accomplished master of still-life painting in
America today. …It is evident that Carlsen has lifted his art to a
height it has never reached before.” (2)
Carlsen’s first trip to Paris in 1875 fortuitously introduced him to
the work of the eighteenth-century French artist Jean-Baptiste-Siméon
Chardin and Chardin’s incorporation of the seventeenth century Dutch
still-life tradition. Compared to Carlsen’s contemporaries and
considering his influence as a teacher, little has been written about
Carlsen and his dedication to the still life. More than likely
these biases results from the low esteem, which is relegated to
still-life painting within the thematic hierarchy of painting. “Great
art should be aesthetically demanding and it should be edifying and
inspirational; still life is neither.” (3)
In his position as a teacher of younger generations of artists,
Carlsen postulated on the status of still-life painting in an article
he published in 1908. “…still life painting is considered of small
importance in the Art schools, both here and abroad, the usual course
being drawn from the antique, the nude, and painting the draped figure
and from the nude. …Then why should the earnest student overlook the
simplest and most thorough way of acquiring all the knowledge of the
craft of painting and drawing, the study of inanimate objects, still
life painting, the very surest road to absolute mastery over all
technical difficulties.” (4)
Sources include:
1. For biographical information, see The Art of Emil Carlsen, 1853-1932 (San Francisco: Rubicon-Wortsman Rowe, 1975). Also, see Ulrich W. Hiesinger, Quiet Magic: The Still-Life Paintings of Emil Carlsen (New York: Vance Jordan Fine Art, 1999).
2. Arthur Edwin Bye, Pots and Pans or Studies in Still Life Painting (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1921), 213-214.
3. William H. Gerdts, Painters of the Humble Truth: Masterpieces of American Still Life, 1801-1939 (Columbia, Miss.: University of Missouri Press, 1981), 22.
4. Ibid, 30. Quoted from Emil Carlsen, “On Still-Life Painting,” Palette and Bench (October 1908): 6-8.
Submitted by the staff, Columbus Museum, Georgia
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Biography from AskART:
| A painter of still lives as well as landscapes, Emil Carlsen was especially noted for his still lives of humble everyday objects in the tradition of 17th-century Dutch painters. His methods were precise and labor intensive with much scraping, painting, and then scraping again with a build up of impastos. He perceived art as pure aesthetics with its only language being color, masses, and rhythms of line.
Carlsen was born in Copenhagen, Denmark, and studied architecture at the Danish Royal Academy before emigrating to Chicago at age 19. He worked as an architectural draughtsman, and then traveled in Europe to study the Old Masters and also enrolled at the Academie Julian in Paris.
Returning to Chicago, he taught at the newly formed Chicago Art Institute, and this activity was followed by periods of living in Boston and New York, but in 1887, he moved to San Francisco to be Director of the California School of Design. There he introduced his students to the work of his New York associates including Augustus Saint-Gaudens, J Alden Weir, and John LaFarge. He also taught the concept that art, like biological matters, was evolutionary and that America might well be the next center of the art world. His association with Weir and other prominent American impressionists influenced his style of landscape painting and as a result, he "combined traditional representational art with impressionistic approaches to color and light." (Zellman 472)
He shared a studio on Montgomery Street with Arthur Mathews, one of California's leading art teachers and painters. In 1889, penniless and chafing at the long hours required to be a teacher, he resigned in disgust and returned briefly to New York. However, several months later he came back to San Francisco and until 1892 taught at the Art Students League. Then he left for good and returned to New York where he became successful, selling his pictures to major museums, elected to the National Academy of Design, and often referred to as the best still life painter of his time.
Sources:
Edan Hughes, Artists in California, 1786-1940
Michael David Zellman, 300 Years of American Art
Added note:
Recently uncovered evidence (Danish birth certificate) reveals that Carlsen lied about his age and was actually five years older than originally thought.
Source:
Information courtesy of Bill Indursky
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Emil Carlsen is also mentioned in these AskART essays:
Old Lyme Colony Painters
San Francisco Panama-Pacific Exhibition 1915
Paris Pre 1900
Tonalism
California Painters
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