Ásgrímur Jónsson

Biography

Ásgrímur was born on 4 March 1876 on the farm of Suðurkot in Rútsstaðahverfi, in the Flói district of southern Iceland. His father, Jón Guðnason, was a farmer; his mother, Guðleif Gísladóttir, ran the household.

In 1897 he set out for Copenhagen. From 1900 to 1903 he studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, and then travelled widely in Europe, returning home only in the spring of 1910, after almost seven years abroad. In Reykjavík he brought his parents over from Suðurkot as well: they took over the housekeeping so that he could give himself wholly to his work.

Icelandic nature, above all its mountains, was his main subject from the start. He saw it through the eyes of nineteenth-century Romanticism and remained true to that view to the end, although over sixty years of work his manner and methods changed noticeably. He always painted from nature and worked especially hard to capture natural light. Oil and watercolour came equally easily to him, but it is as a watercolourist that he holds a special place in Icelandic art. His early works are close to naturalism. By the end of the 1920s the influence of the French Impressionists can be seen in them; the manner of his landscapes is compared to Corot. After 1940 he worked more freely and spontaneously, his colours grew brighter and his handling came closer to Expressionism. I think these changes are best followed in the watercolours, of which he left more than two hundred. He was also one of the first Icelandic illustrators of sagas and folk tales, and one of the most prolific. He painted murals for churches in various parts of the country.

After 1940 he often spent the summers at Húsafell, and many of his works are connected with the place. The present church at Húsafell was built to his sketches.

He was an honorary professor of the University of Iceland, an honorary member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Arts and a Knight First Class of the Order of the Dannebrog. In 1933 he received the Grand Cross of the Icelandic Order of the Falcon. He is called Iceland’s national artist. He taught the painter Þorvaldur Skúlason, and Jóhannes Sveinsson Kjarval was influenced by his example.

Ásgrímur died on 5 April 1958 in his house in Reykjavík. He was buried in the cemetery of the church at Gaulverjabær, in the municipality of Flóahreppur. He never married and had no children.

He bequeathed the house at Bergstaðastræti 74 and all the works remaining in his hands to the Icelandic people: 192 oil paintings, 277 watercolours and several hundred unfinished pictures from different periods. The Ásgrímur Jónsson Museum in the house opened in 1960. In 1987, when the Icelandic Art Museum moved into its own building, the collection was merged with it, under the terms of the bequest, to form the National Gallery of Iceland.