August Cappelen
1827–1852 · Norwegian Romantic landscape painter
Herman August Cappelen (1827–1852) was a Norwegian landscape painter associated with national Romanticism and with the Düsseldorf school, where many Norwegian artists trained in the mid-nineteenth century. Though his career was brief, his work offered a melancholic and dramatic view of Norway's nature, and he is now regarded as one of the most promising landscape painters of his generation.
He came from a family of industrialists of German descent, owners of ironworks and other properties. In 1835 the family moved to Ulefoss, in the Telemark county, whose forests, waterfalls and lakes would become the subject of his painting. In 1845 he went to Christiania (now Oslo) to attend the School of Arts and Crafts, where he befriended Hans Gude, who was two years older.
In autumn 1846 he travelled to Düsseldorf, whose academy drew many Norwegian painters at the time. He stayed there until 1850, while making increasingly frequent trips to Norway to work from nature. Sources differ on some details of his academic training: one places him in the landscape class of Johann Wilhelm Schirmer, while another notes that, although he was later named as a student after his death, he never actually gained admission to the academy.
His most productive period came in the last two years of his life, between 1850 and 1852, when he developed a personal style. His works include Galería De Olden (1850), Study of a Decaying Trunk (1851), Study of a Waterfall (c. 1851), Waterfall in Lower Telemark (1852), Dying Trees and Dying Native Forest (1852). He suffered from stomach cancer and died at the age of 25. He was buried in Düsseldorf, though his remains were later moved to Norway.
His legacy is largely preserved in Norway. The National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design holds the most important collection of his art, and the National Gallery owns three of his major works, including Waterfall in Lower Telemark, together with 26 smaller pieces and studies. In 1952 a monument to him by the sculptor Dyre Vaa was unveiled in a park in Holla.