[Soren] Emil Carlsen

Trained as an architect at the Danish Royal Academy, Emil Carlsen decided to become a painter after emigrating to the United States in 1872. Carlsen's still lifes first received attention in 1883, when he began exhibiting at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. He spent the next several years in Paris, painting still lifes commissioned by a New York dealer. In Paris, Carlsen studied the work of French painter Jean-Baptiste Chardin, whose humble still lifes were experiencing a revival of interest. While Americans William Merritt Chase and J. Frank Currier were also successful with this genre, Carlsen has been found the most faithful of Chardin's followers. His early works, dedicated to such Chardinesque subject matter as copper kettles, brass bowls, and dead game, were executed in a stark manner characterized by bold contrasts of light and dark.

Carlsen later fell under the influence of the Impressionists, and his palette lightened considerably. While his subjects remained the same, he painted in a higher key, subordinating his early bold chiaroscuro to a more heightened interest in color values and atmosphere. Many of his later works reveal a preference for a monochromatic palette, a subtle luminous atmosphere, and a quiet poetic mood--qualities shared by Tonalist painters James McNeil Whistler, George Inness, and Thomas Wilmer Dewing.

Carlsen's many monochromatic still lifes, landscapes, marines, and portraits found devoted admirers. An extremely prolific painter, Carlsen gained considerable recognition during the last thirty years of his life. In 1906 he was elected an academician at the National Academy of Design, where he exhibited and taught for many years, and was quite active in the New York art world. In 1911 he began a successful association with Macbeth Gallery, where he exhibited yearly, sometimes with his son Dines (1901-1966), also a still-life painter.