Emil Carlsen

Born Soren Emil Carlsen in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 1853, the artist first began his studies at the Royal Danish Academy as a teenager. At the age of 19, he left the Academy in 1872 and travelled to America, settling in Chicago and working for an illustration house to support himself.  Although trained as an architect, he initially worked with Laurits Bernhard Holst, a Danish painter in Chicago, who gave his studio to Carlsen when the instructor returned to Denmark. Carlsen remained mostly self-taught, and his early ventures to France included no formal instruction.

Carlsen taught painting in Chicago at a school that would later become part of the Art Institute of Chicago. His early career also included subsequent moves to New York City 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, for which he became well known.

By 1875, he had saved enough money to travel to both Paris and Copenhagen to paint and study, staying for six months before returning to America, this time to New York.  By 1875, he had developed a unique love affair with the still life. His 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 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.” (William H. Gerdts, Painters of the Humble Truth: Masterpieces of American Still Life, 1801-1939 (Columbia, Miss.: University of Missouri Press, 1981, page 22).

In New York Carlsen befriended fellow painter John Francis Murphy; yet the city could not contain him, and after only a year he relocated to Boston, where he developed a life-long friendship with Childe Hassam (1884-1886). In 1884, he travelled to Paris to be with Hassam and then sailed for San Francisco (1887-1891). In California he was director of the San Francisco Art Association’s California School of Design (1887-1889), and he shared a studio with Arthur Matthews (1889-1891).

He returned permanently to NYC in 1891 and continued teaching at both the National Academy of Design and PAFA through 1918, and he became known for painting pictures that reflected Tonalism and Impressionism in a sophisticated manner. By 1916, he discovered St. Thomas in the Caribbean and went there frequently through 1917 to paint its shoreline and sea.

While Carlsen lived in Boston, he developed painting skills in a style which scholars refer to as “kitchen still lifes.”  These were still life scenes that often included fish or birds along with pots and pans which gave implied presence of the cook outside the frame (or a human element). Carlsen’s style echoed the work of the Dutch and Spanish Masters of still life, particularly that of Jean Simeon Chardin and, to a lesser degree, Johannes Vermeer (whom the Boston school headed by Edmund C. Tarbell admired).

Carlsen spoke and wrote often of the influence of these artists on his own work, and yet he was already beginning to develop the eye for color, light and composition that is identified as “Carlsen’s style.”

Regarded today as a prominent artist of the late 19th Century, Emil Carlsen spent many years as a penniless painter on the fringes of the art world, while he continued developing still-life and landscape painting techniques that would take the rest of the art world several decades to fully appreciate.

Some historians describe Carlsen as having a rather uneventful life, and while there may be an absence of the kind of unpredictability and turbulence that make for interesting biographies, Carlsen’s existence was far from dull.  He lived the life of a bohemian and wandered from one locale to the next in search of art and beauty, befriending hundreds of artists along the way, and he tirelessly painted.

When Carlsen moved to Paris in 1884, he kept a low profile, preferring the mediation of working in the studio to the more social and recreational gathering places of artists and expatriates. In 1887, he moved to San Francisco, working for the directorship of the San Francisco Art Association School, and in 1891 moved back to New York where he lived until 1901.  It is during this period, in the last decade of the nineteenth century that could be regarded as the most formative in terms of the development of the techniques that produced the paintings for which he is most celebrated today. Often encouraged by other artists and would-be patrons to switch over to landscapes and marines to make better money, Carlsen resisted this for many years, remaining stubbornly in his pursuit of the still life. And when one looks at examples of Carlsen’s work in this crucial transitory phase, one can tell that he felt himself truly on the verge of something wonderful.  Many other artists perhaps felt the still life genre to have exhausted itself; that it offered few possibilities for new ground, and that it was certainly not a genre on which one bases the core of their work.

Carlsen began to move away from the traditional arrangements and elements of still lifes and became increasingly fascinated by textures like the copper, bronze, brass and silver of pots and bowls and the shadows that their curves and lines produced against shaded backdrops.  While the Dutch still life painters had already developed the moody tones of dark pockets and shadows, Carlsen brought out a great range of the emotions that accompany that moodiness.  As he progressed, Carlsen managed to decontextualize the objects in his paintings, until they were no longer just brass and copper pots or the pure effects of the colors they radiated, but something in between; where it was no longer the actual use or purpose of an object that mattered in relation to other objects around them or the arbitrariness of their arrangement together, but the very singular existence of the objects themselves, separated from the people and the ordinary use they would have for it, as well as the ordinary light in which they would usually be seen.  The dimness of the light only added to the mystery.  And yet Carlsen’s fascination with surfaces made him often instill his shadows with great textures that played with and complemented the qualities of the objects that seem to glow from the canvas.  The effect is that even the ‘somber’ darkness of shadows radiate light and color.

It was not until the 1910’s and 20’s that Carlsen began to really benefit financially from his painting, even though he had the respect of his fellow artists.  Despite his long career and extensive travels, he left few written accounts of his adventures.  His habit of dating some pictures and leaving others blank made it difficult to reconstruct the exact progression of his technique from picture to picture.  He often abandoned certain traits only to pick them up again before finally discarding them as he honed his style and his eye.  The result is evidence of an artistic meditation that progressed with consistency and caution. By 1912, he was consistently painting dreamy, soft-toned landscapes and coastal scenes, which are his most popular subjects today. The Mentor in 1913 stated that Carlsen was “a rare poetical and lyrical painter of the sea (see vol. 1, no. 21, 7/7/1913, “American Sea Painters). The artist was so pleased with his painting The Caribbean that he exhibited it many times and gained an even finer reputation as a marine painter.

Carlsen was a member of the Society of American Artists (1902); National Academy of Design (Assoc. 1904, Academician 1906); Bohemian Club; National Institute of Arts and Letters (1906); National Art Club; Lotos Club; fellow, PAFA; Salmagundi Club (1903); Century Association; AFA Jury of Awards and more.

Carlsen’s awards include: PAFA gold medal (1912 and 1916) and prize (1913); National Academy (1907 medal; gold medal 1916; prize 1919); SAA prize (1904, 1905); Salmagundi Club medals (1904, 1905); St. Louis Exposition gold medal (1904); Carnegie Institute medal (1908); Buenos Aires medal (1910); National Art Club medal (1915); Pan-Pacific Exposition medal of honor (1915).

Retrospective and solo exhibitions include: Grand Central Art Galleries, 1928-29, 1968, retrospective 1958; Tyler Museum of Art, TX (1973); Lotus Club; San Francisco IA; Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC and more. He frequently exhibited with the Macbeth Galleries in NYC and his work is represented in numerous museums throughout the U.S.

Carlsen’s death in 1932 was at the height of his popularity, and he left behind an admirable body of work. Surviving him was his son Dines who was a successful painter who developed the unique techniques of color, light and textures found in his father’s work.