Kitty Kielland

Biography

She first saw Jæren in the summer of 1876, on the advice of her teacher Hans Gude, who had been there in 1869 and 1872. Kitty Kielland later turned the studies she made on the spot into paintings in Munich. It is said that no one before her had painted this flat country in such a way.

She was born on 8 October 1843 in Stavanger, into one of the oldest merchant families in the town. Her father, Jens Zetlitz Kielland, was a consul and bank director, but lived mostly on private income and himself painted and made music. Kitty was the second of eight children; her younger brother Alexander became a writer. He supported her when the family did not approve of her choice of career. In her early twenties, after a knee injury, she spent some time in a wheelchair, and it was then that she began to paint. Her first lessons were given in her home town by Fanny Zeuthen. Systematic training began late, in 1873, when she turned thirty. Gude, who had seen her work during a family visit to Stavanger, took her on in Karlsruhe, but women were not admitted to his landscape class, and she took private lessons. In two years her skill grew markedly, and what remained of Gude was a commitment to realism. In 1875 she moved to Munich, to a colony of Norwegian artists. There she was taught by Hermann Baisch and Eilif Peterssen, whom some consider her most important teacher. She lived in Munich until 1878 and shared lodgings with Harriet Backer.

In the summers she went to Jæren: the peat bogs and monotonous plain became one of her favourite motifs. What drew her, as she put it, was “the grandeur of the landscape and the wealth of poverty”. In Norwegian painting of the time it was new for a woman to paint landscape rather than the portraits, interiors and flowers thought suitable for her.

From 1879 to 1889 she lived in Paris, and from 1880 to 1888 shared a studio with Backer. In 1879 she showed work at the Salon for the first time and received favourable reviews; her pictures were accepted by the Salon six times, up to 1887. She studied at the Académie Julian and the Académie Colarossi, and in Cernay-la-Ville and Brittany took lessons from the landscape painter Léon Pelouse. The painting “Un jour sombre en Norvège”, accepted for the Salon of 1880, is darker and quieter than her earlier pictures. A subject linked to it she gave to her brother: he wrote the short story “Torvmyr” (1880, “Peat Bog”) from her drawing of the same title.

She spent the summer of 1886 at Fleskum near Bærum, where artists had gathered around Christian Skredsvig. There she painted a second version of “Efter solnedgang” (“After Sunset”), simplified, with details dissolving in the evening light. Pelouse, to whom she showed the picture, decided that his pupil had gone astray and was painting like Puvis de Chavannes. At the World’s Fair in Paris in 1889 this work won a silver medal. The Fleskum summer is usually regarded as the beginning of Neo-Romanticism in Norway, and Kielland, along with Peterssen, was among those who drove it forward.

In 1884 she became one of the founders of the Norwegian Association for Women’s Rights and sat on its board. In 1885 she spoke out in print against two theologians who claimed that the emancipation of women harmed society. For a woman this was unusual at the time, and she wrote to friends that she herself was surprised it had been printed.

From 1889 she lived permanently in Kristiania. In the 1890s she was influenced by the Dane Jens Ferdinand Willumsen: she simplified form, strengthened colour and painted more flowers and high-mountain motifs. In 1893 she showed work at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. In 1900 the Egersund faience factory produced a Art Nouveau tea and dinner service, “Bækkeblom”, from her designs. Solo exhibitions were held in 1899, 1904 and 1911. In 1908 the King awarded her the gold Medal for Services.

In her last ten years she hardly painted. She spent the summer of 1914 in Jæren, and died on 1 October in Kristiania. Arne Garborg was present at the funeral; she had left him the choice of one of her paintings. She also left 20,000 kroner for the National Gallery to buy works by young artists.