Amaldus Nielsen

Amaldus Nielsen was a Norwegian landscape painter from Mandal, who lived in the 19th century. He was inspired by Hans Gude's realistic style and became known for depicting the landscapes of Western and Southern Norway in his paintings. Nielsen's motifs consist of coastal and fjord landscapes, which he painted with a solid study of nature that made the transition from Düsseldorf to naturalism. Nielsen's best works were often painterly en plein air sketches and in the 1880s he began to paint his large canvases outdoors. He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen in 1854 and with Hans Gude in Düsseldorf in the years 1857–1859 and Karlsruhe in 1867–1868, before returning home to Norway. The National Museum/National Gallery in Oslo owns 11 of his pictures, which show both the idyllic and lyrical-elegiac side of his art. Among his most famous paintings are "Morgen ved Ny-Hellesund" (1885) and "Lonely place" (1901). Nielsen's heirs donated close to 300 of his works, mainly studies, to Oslo municipality in 1933. These works were later exhibited in the newly restored Gamle Logen in Oslo from 1988 and from 1994 in the Stenersen Museum in Oslo.