Station: [11] Louis Gurlitt: "At Hardangerfjord", 1835


The 1835 painting At Hardangerfjord by the north German landscape painter Louis Gurlitt shows Norwegian mountain scenery. The viewer is guided into the landscape along a narrow path running from the foreground to a small village right by the water. The fjord and the imposing, partly snow-covered mountains extend from there. Gurlitt on the one hand adhered to a classical and National Romantic ideal of beauty which called for the idealisation of the landscape, yet on the other strove for an accurate depiction of nature. He received his artistic training in Copenhagen and Hamburg, during which he came into contact with the art of Christian Morgenstern and Johan Christian Dahl. Dahl’s dramatic nature paintings in particular aroused in him a fascination with the Norwegian landscape. Gurlitt first visited his model’s native country in 1832. During another trip in 1835 he developed numerous studies on the basis of which he executed the painting At Hardangerfjord in his studio in Copenhagen. In the course of his long life, Gurlitt visited numerous European countries, yet Norway remained over several years an important subject of his art.