August Cappelen
Illustration — August Cappelen 1850 • Illustration — Portrait sketch by Hans Gude (1846) Hermann August Cappelen (1 May 1827 – 8 March 1852) was a Norwegian painter. Cappelen was best known for his melancholic, dramatic and romantic landscape compositions.
Also recorded as Herman August Cappelen · Hermann August Cappelen
August Cappelen

lito by Bernhard Hoefling (1850) based on daguerrotype · Public domain
- Born
- 1827. · Skien.
- Died
- 1852. · Düsseldorf.
- Nationality
- Norway.
- Occupation
- painter.
- Fields
- landscape.
- Education
- Kunstakademie Düsseldorf.
- Languages
- Norwegian.
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Documentary summary
Illustration — August Cappelen 1850 • Illustration — Portrait sketch by Hans Gude (1846) Hermann August Cappelen (1 May 1827 – 8 March 1852) was a Norwegian painter. Cappelen was best known for his melancholic, dramatic and romantic landscape compositions.
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museum · 32e6f2c6-38f7-4ca8-88a4-6978342fb299 · wikidata · Q539239 · wikipedia · August Cappelen
In this article
Background
Background
August Cappelen studied at Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. The recorded working language is Norwegian. Subjects and genres recorded for the work are landscape. Work by August Cappelen is recorded in the collections of Nationalmuseum, National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, KODE Art museums and composer homes and Metropolitan Museum of Art.
• Illustration — Dying forest (1851) • Illustration — Waterfall in lower Telemark (1852) Hermann August Cappelen was born in Skien, Norway. He was the son of Diderik von Cappelen (1795–1866) and Margaret Noble Severine Henriette Løvenskiold (1796–1866). Both the Løvenskiold and Cappelen families were prominent Norwegian families of merchants, land owners, civil servants and politicians. His family were the owners of prominent iron works and various other properties. His grandfather, Diderik von Cappelen (1761–1828), was member of the Norwegian Constituent Assembly at Eidsvoll Manor in 1814. He grew up at Holden, a manor in Ulefoss in the Grenland district of the county of Telemark. After school graduation in Skien in 1845, he went to Christiania to take another exam at the Royal Frederick University. He subsequently went to Düsseldorf, where he studied with Hans Gude. Cappelen was a student at Kunstakademie Düsseldorf under Johann Wilhelm Schirmer in landscape painting class from 1846 to 1850. He is associated with the Düsseldorf school of painting.
Career
Career
Cappelen went on several study tours in Norway: Lom Municipality in Gudbrandsdalen (along with Gude and Johan Fredrik Eckersberg, 1846), Sogn and Hardanger (1847), as well as several summer residence in the countryside around Holden. His most productive period was between 1850 and 1852, the two last years of his life. He struggled against gastric cancer of which he died, aged 25, at Düsseldorf in 1852.
Notable works
Notable works
• Kvernhus, 1850 • Utdøende urskog i uvær, 1851 • Morkne trær, 1851 • Tjern i tåke, 1851 • Foss i nedre Telemark, 1852 • Skogtjern i Nedre Telemark, 1852 • Svarttjern, 1852 • Møllefossen, 1852 • Utdøende urskog, 1852
Life and career
Dated record
Life and career
The full dated record · 2 entries
1827
August Cappelen was born in 1827 at Skien.
1852
August Cappelen died in 1852 at Düsseldorf.
Places
Named by the record
Places
Only places the record itself states, plotted where the house gazetteer settles their coordinates. Nothing is inferred from a name or a nationality.
Skien.
Birth place
Düsseldorf.
Death place
Legacy
The most important collection of Cappelen's art is in the National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design. The National Gallery owns three of his major works: Waterfall in Lower Telemark, Forest Lake and Dying Forest, the last unfinished, together with 26 smaller images and studies. There is a mountain landscape by him in the Oslo Kunstforening, the scene of which he took from Telemark. In 1952, a monument to him by Norwegian sculptor Dyre Vaa (1903–1980) was unveiled in a park in Holla Municipality.
Primary material
Documents and archives
Institutional database
- MusicBrainz artist record for August Cappelen
Scholarly · MetaBrainz Foundation
reference work
- “August Cappelen”, English Wikipedia, consulted as further reading
Reputable secondary · Wikipedia
authority record
- Wikidata, structured authority record Q539239: August Cappelen
Unverified · Wikidata
Notes from the source article
Cited by Wikipedia
Notes from the source article
These works are cited by the source article, in its own numbering. They are recorded as its citations, not as sources VALÉORINE has verified.
- 1.Bettina Baumgärtel, Sabine Schroyen, Lydia Immerheiser, Sabine Teichgröb: Verzeichnis der ausländischen Künstler und Künstlerinnen. Nationalität, Aufenthalt und Studium in Düsseldorf. In: Bettina Baumgärtel (Hrsg.): Die Düsseldorfer Malerschule und ihre internationale Ausstrahlung 1819–1918. Band 1, Michael Imhof Verlag, Petersberg 2011, ISBN 978-3-86568-702-9, S. 428
- 2.Gabriele Ewenz: Quellen zur Düsseldorfer Malerschule 1825–1928. In: Bettina Baumgärtel (Hrsg.): Die Düsseldorfer Malerschule und ihre internationale Ausstrahlung 1819–1918. Band 1, Michael Imhof Verlag, Petersberg 2011, ISBN 978-3-86568-702-9, S. 404 (Reisebeschreibung von August Becker, Eintrag vom 12. Juni 1847)
- 3.Ernst Haverkamp: Die norwegischen Künstler in Düsseldorf. Der Kulturtransfer zwischen Düsseldorf und dem Norden. In: Bettina Baumgärtel (Hrsg.): Die Düsseldorfer Malerschule und ihre internationale Ausstrahlung 1819–1918. Band 1, Michael Imhof Verlag, Petersberg 2011, ISBN 978-3-86568-702-9, S. 178
- 4.Siehe auch Artikel Brudeferd i Hardanger in der Bokmål-Variante der norwegischen Wikipedia
- 5.Ernst Haverkamp, S. 179
References
Citations
References
Each reference names the institution holding it, so a reader may go to the document itself.
Institutional database
MusicBrainz artist record for August CappelenMetaBrainz Foundation
Verifiedreference work
Partially resolvedauthority record
Unverified
The Encyclopedia exists whether or not anything is for sale. Corrections are recorded rather than overwritten, and every version of this record is kept. Published 14 August 2026.
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