Albert Julius Olsson
1864–1942 · British landscape painter, known for his marine works
Albert Julius Olsson (Islington, London, 1864 – Dalkey, near Dublin, 1942) was a British landscape painter, best known for his maritime scenes. Born to a Swedish father and an English mother, he had no formal art training and worked in a bank before committing fully to painting. He is one of the leading English landscape painters of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
By around 1890 he was already an important figure in the St Ives school in Cornwall, where he settled with his wife Kathleen, also an artist. With Louis Grier he founded the St Ives School of Painting, teaching alongside Algernon Talmage; his pupils included Emily Carr and John Anthony Park. His paintings show Impressionist traits and many were made en plein air, with strong luminosity, a sense of harmony and subtle colour contrasts. During the First World War he served as a lieutenant in the RNVR, which gave him the chance to paint warships in action. He won two gold medals at the Paris Salon.
His works are held in museums across the United Kingdom, and his teaching left a lasting mark on the artistic community of St Ives.