Fine Canvas Art Blog

Valkyrie by Peter Nicolai Arbo, 1865

Academician / German / Inspirational prints / Paintings (Reproductions) - 1 year ago - troycapc

This is a reproduction of Peter Nicolai Arbo’s “Valkyrie” of 1865.  Arbo was a leading Norwegian painter who specialized in paintings from Norwegian history and mythology.  He attended Helsted’s Art School in Copenhagen in 1851 when he was twenty.  He went on the study in Dusseldorf and returned to Norway in 1861 where he became a Knight of the Royal Norwegian Order of St. Olav and of the Order of Vasa.  He was a member of the National Gallery Company from 1875 and a director of the Christiana (Oslo) Art Society from 1882.  He died in 1892.

The Valkyries were riders of Norse and Teutonic mythology who gleaned the battlefields for the mightiest warriors recently slain.  From the Old Norse valkyrja, chooser of the slain, these maidens were usually described as the daughters of Odin, or Wotan, who gathered warriors for Valhalla for the purposed of building an army with which to fight the forces of darkness in Ragnarök.  This masterpiece is in the National Museum of Sweden in Stockholm.

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The Water Sprite by Ernst Josephson, 1882

Impressionist / Paintings (Reproductions) - 1 year ago - troycapc

This a reproduction of Ernst Josephson’s 1882 masterpiece, “The Water Sprite” or “Strömkarlen” in Swedish.  Creating this masterpiece at the age of thirty-one, Josephson was from a prominent Jewish family in Sweden.  He contracted syphilis and became mentally ill in 1888 while in Brittany.  Plagued by religious hallucinations and delusions, he was returned to Uppsala where he was diagnosed with Schizophrenia.  He continued to paint and also wrote poetry.  He died in Stockholm, the city of his birth, on November 22, 1906.  This masterpiece is currently at the National Museum of Sweden.

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