October 10, 1913

Little girls are all alike. Cats though, can be wildly variant. And here is an artist who appreciates that.

Hans Heyerdahl (July 8, 1857 to October 10, 1913) was a Norwegian artist.  The painting that inspired us is titled, "Girl with a Cat," and dated 1887.





There's seems to be little relevant in English about this great painter. Here is a translation of a Norwegian article on Hans Heyerdahl:


Painter. Parents: City Engineer Halvor Heyerdahl (1825-1900) and Hilda Margretha Haak (1834-1917). Gift 1) 4.9.1879 with singer Maren Christine Heyerdahl (28.4.1854-15.5.1931), daughter of proprietor Rasmus Holmsen Heyerdahl (1813-94) and Gunhild Dorthea Pettersen (1825-1901), the marriage dissolved 1907; 2) 18.1.1908 with Olga Westergaard (15.4.1873-1957), daughter of bookkeeper and correspondent Anders Dedekam Westergaard (born 1843) and Laurentze Charlotte Stenine Dahl (born 1850). The son of the grandson of Hieronymus Heyerdahl (1773-1847).

Hans Heyerdahl is considered among his generation's foremost language talent. He soon became known as figurative painter, characterized by the Munich Academy's dark history, and received a number of awards and scholarships for this. His national breakthrough was only after his stay in Paris and Florence, but as an outdoor painter and colourist. He had a special talent for naturalistic reproduction, the pair of rich colors and thrilling contrasts, and he excelled in all genres. The quality of his production over the years became very uneven, due to failing self-criticism and a naive and lightweight nature, but also the rapidly changing art of the time. Today he is especially appreciated as an interpreter of the Norwegian summer platter at Oslofjorden.

Heyerdahl grew up in a cultivated conservative home in Drammen and was the eldest of 12 children. He would be an engineer as his father and was a skilled schooleval, but drawn and painted next to it. In the fall of 1873 he was enrolled at the Royal College of Arts in Christiania, where he studied under the landscape painter Peder Cappelen Thurmann. The following year he was admitted to the art academy in Munich, and by his painter Ludvig von Löfftz he was soon encouraged to choose the figure painting in front of the landscape.

Munich had become the venue for many of them who would be influenced by Norwegian visual arts in the next decade, and Heyerdahl's portraits of Christian Skredsvig and Eilif Peterssen show both the close relationship between the students and what historical models underpinned the teaching: the tight Renaissance and the Sensual Baroque. Under the guidance of Professor Wilhelm Lindenschmit, Heyerdahl in 1877 concluded his perhaps most original composition, the more than Adam and Eve Adam and Eve extorted by Paradise. Here he uses the mastery of the contrast between the threatening figure of the raging Adams and the desperate Eve. The painting is one of the most important examples of the Munich School of Norwegian Art, with its historical subject, its detailed study and its psychological character. And maybe the painting was a picture of Heyerdahl's own situation? He was in opposition to his teacher and had to leave the academy before the year was over.

The Arts and the World Exhibition in Paris in 1878 attracted the Norwegian painters, and the meeting with France became shattering. Heyerdahl attended the Norwegian department at the exhibition and was awarded a third prize for his Adam and Eve by the International Jury. A study stay at the academically educated portrait painter Léon Bonnat, as well as the copy of old masters in the Louvre, shows that Heyerdahl did not immediately change the form of expression. But through a sober naturalism, like in the intimate half-war Champagne girl , he approached the French open air painting , with its brighter tone and airier coat, as we see in the window , a portrait of his wife from 1881.

Heyerdahl debuted at the Salon des Beaux Arts in Paris in 1879 with a portrait of composer Johan Svendsen , in Bonn's strict style. The following year he participated with a completely different piquant motif, A nymph who talks with a star . In 1882, he won the Le Grand Prix de Florence - 5,000 francs and two years in Florence - with the dying child, a modern image with journalistic momentary character, a lighter color scheme and more friable brushing, but composed in the academic tradition. In Florence, Heyerdahl hit the famous symbolist Arnold Böcklin and rejoiced in the European history world, a motive that he had been working since academia. The last impression seems to have Böcklin's colors to have given, and perhaps the master's big income? Even then, Heyerdahl would have to price his work high in all years.

In 1884 Heyerdahl settled in Kristiania, but spent most of the following summers in Åsgårdstrand. Here he painted the works that gave him space among our finest colorists. Pictures like a fisherman , a rest , sisters and strawberry peek show all children in a restful calm. As he portrayed the less harmonious aspects of life, the weight lay as much on the picturesque as the thematic, as in the sensual half-guard Black-Anna and the sad laborer's labor .

In 1890, Heyerdahl established himself as portraiture painter in Kristiania with representative portraits in the "big style" as a specialty, but soon became more intimate formats to dominate this part of his production. Around 1895 he returned to the Nordic world of history, clearly inspired by British symbolists, but also spurred by the enthusiasm of the Old Norse. However, work such as Brynhild's Helfart was received with overwhelmingcriticism, without this breaching Heyerdahl's self-esteem.

During his second stay in Paris, 1900-07, Heyerdahl Montmartre made his main motive and refined the suburbs' picturesque qualities in a simplified design language. His latest production is characterized by the beloved Åsgård beach. Heyerdahl was nominated as a knight of the 1st grade of St. Olav's Order in 1904.

I found the above helpful in categorizing this artist. I know of no other painter who surpassed Heyerdahl in his depiction of the feline eye.