GOTTSCHALK, Albert - b. 1866 Stege, d. 1906 Frederiksberg

Danish painter. He was educated at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts from 1882 to 1883 and under Peder Severin Krøyer at the Artists Studio Schools from 1883 to 1888. He also studied privately with Karl Jensen (1851-1933) and Karl Madsen (1855-1938). Gottschalk was inspired by the Danish Krøyer as well as by French art.

He was ambitious, technically skilled, and he worked a long time with his motifs in his mind before painting them. He searched for his motifs in Denmark on his bicycle, and he found them often around Copenhagen. As an open-air painter, Gottschalk finished his paintings on-site, usually completing them in a single sitting or as an unbroken process.

Within the Danish art scene of the decades preceding 1900, only Theodor Philipsen and Anna Ancher can be said to consistently use an Impressionistic touch in larger groups of work. Nevertheless, a number of Gottschalk’s works also evince this endeavour to let painting be about the purely painterly, about light and colour made palpable. However, his art is a primarily naturalistic style of atmospheric painting where Impressionistic elements will occasionally be employed in order to depict the chosen subject matter as realistically as possible.

Winter Landscape. Utterslev near Copenhagen

Albert Gottschalk found many of his motifs in what was at the time the outskirts of Copenhagen. Here, he painted a scene from Utterslev north of Copenhagen on a clear and frosty day. The foreground is shaded, but in the middle distance and between the trees we sense the strong sunlight that makes the snow luminous.