47 Facts About Hans Gude

Hans Fredrik Gude was a Norwegian romanticist painter and is considered along with Johan Christian Dahl to be one of Norway's foremost landscape painters.

Hans Gude has been called a mainstay of Norwegian National Romanticism.

Hans Gude is associated with the Dusseldorf school of painting.

Around 1860 Hans Gude began painting seascapes and other coastal subjects.

Hans Gude had difficulty with figure drawing initially and so collaborated with Adolph Tidemand in some of his painting, drawing the landscape himself and allowing Tidemand to paint the figures.

Hans Gude initially painted primarily with oils in a studio, basing his works on studies he had done earlier in the field.

However, as Hans Gude matured as a painter he began to paint en plein air and espoused the merits of doing so to his students.

Hans Gude spent forty-five years as an art professor and so he played an important role in the development of Norwegian art by acting as a mentor to three generations of Norwegian artists.

Young Norwegian artists flocked to wherever Hans Gude was teaching, first at the Academy of Art in Dusseldorf and later at the School of Art in Karlsruhe.

Hans Gude served as a professor at the Berlin Academy of Art from 1880 to 1901, although he attracted few Norwegians to the Berlin Academy because by this time Berlin had been surpassed in prestige in the eyes of young Norwegian artists by Paris.

Hans Gude was the father of painter Nils Gude and watercolorist and illustrator Agnes Charlotte Guide.

Hans Gude was born in Christiania in 1825 the son of Ove Hans Gude, a judge, and Marie Elisabeth Brandt.

Hans Gude began his artistic career with private lessons from Johannes Flintoe, and by 1838 he was attending Flintoe's evening classes at the Royal School of Drawing in Christiania.

Hans Gude was rejected by the academy, but attracted the attention of Andreas Achenbach who provided him with private lessons.

Hans Gude was finally accepted into the academy in the autumn of 1842 and joined Schirmer's landscape painting class where he made quick progress.

Fifteen years later Hans Gude began attending the meetings of the society with other students from his class, but as he progressed to greater levels of realism Hans Gude began to make it clear that he did not agree with the ideas of composition Schirmer put forward during the meetings, saying specifically:.

In Dusseldorf Hans Gude met Carl Friedrich Lessing who, while initially aloof, became Hans Gude's friend and colleague.

Hans Gude served as a student teacher at the academy until 1844, before leaving to live in Christiania.

On July 25,1850, Hans Gude married Betsy Charlotte Juliane Anker, the daughter of General Erik Anker, in Christiania.

In 1854 Hans Gude was appointed the professor of landscape painting at the academy replacing his former teacher Schirmer.

Hans Gude was twenty-nine when appointed, making him the youngest professor at the academy.

Hans Gude's appointment was partially political, in a conflict between Rhineland and Prussian interests Gude was seen as a neutral candidate because of his Norwegian roots.

Hans Gude was recommended for the position by the current Director of the academy Wilhelm von Schadow, but only after Andreas Achenbach, Oswald Achenbach, and Lessing had refused the post due to lack of suitable pay.

In 1857 Hans Gude handed in his resignation, officially citing family considerations and failing health as his reasons for resigning, although in his memoirs he blamed opposition and backbiting from two of his pupils.

The landscape painting professorship was the bottom of the pay scale at the academy, and Hans Gude was one of the few professors to be refused a raise when others received them in 1855.

Hans Gude received better treatment from the academy after he turned in his resignation, and it would take him a full five years to finally leave Dusseldorf.

In defense of Norwegian artists at the academy, Hans Gude writes that they were not simply imitating German artists:.

Hans Gude was convinced that for Norwegian artists at the academy it was impossible to escape their heritage and that Norway influenced their art whether they wanted it to or not.

Von Schadow however argued the Hans Gude's art was in fact German in an attempt to defend his nomination of Hans Gude to succeed Schirmer.

Many of Hans Gude's peers moved on from the academy in Dusseldorf to other art institutes, but Hans Gude decided to seek more direct contact with nature.

Hans Gude rented a house overlooking River Lledr where he painted one of the ancient Roman bridges which was popular with artists of the time.

Hans Gude attempted to improve his reputation among the local painters with exhibitions at the Royal Academy's spring shows in London in 1863 and 1864, but both were flops that Hans Gude described as "useful but bitter medicine".

In December 1863 Hans Gude was offered and accepted a professorship at the Baden School of Art in Karlsruhe where he would succeed Schirmer, and so he left Wales.

Hans Gude was hesitant to take the position as he felt that it was working for the enemy but was unable to support himself in Norway due to the lack of an art school.

Hans Gude wrote about his thoughts on the position to Kjerulf, stating:.

In Karlsruhe Hans Gude continued to faithfully reproduce the landscapes he saw, a style that he passed on to his students by taking them to Chiemsee to paint the lake en plein air.

Hans Gude took special interest in how light reflected in water while in Karlsruhe, as well as expanding his study of the human figure.

The school in Karlsruhe was founded by the Grand Duke of Baden whom Hans Gude had good relations with.

Hans Gude served as the director of Karlsruhe from 1866 to 1868 and again from 1869 to 1870, where he introduced several of his own educational principles designed to develop pupil's individual talent.

Hans Gude remained at Karlsruhe for six more years after his first visits to the Berlin Academy of Art, but in 1880 he decided to retire from the Karlsruhe school to take up a position in Berlin.

In 1880 Hans Gude accepted a position to lead the master studio in landscape painting at the Academy of Art in Berlin, a position which gave him a spot on the academy's Senate.

In 1895 the Christiania Art Society held a comprehensive retrospective of Hans Gude's works including his paintings, oil studies, watercolors, sketches and etchings.

In Berlin Hans Gude began working more heavily in gouache and watercolor in an effort to preserve the 'freshness' of his art.

Hans Gude would spend a few weeks each summer near the Baltic coast where he drew material for numerous paintings of Ahlbeck and Rugen.

Hans Gude rallied around his friend Anton von Werner in defending the academies, going so far as to mock "the so-called Symbolism" movement.

In 1880 Hans Gude had between five and eight students, but this number had shrunk to two or three by 1890.

Hans Gude was a member of the Order of the Zahringer Lion, Order of the Red Eagle, and the Order of Franz Joseph.