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Hans Johan Frederik Berg (1813-74) Norway’s first Orientalist and Watercolourist? Presentation at ICFA, Malta, October 2011 Berg was born on Christmas-Eve in 1813 at the island of Løkta in the district of Nesna, in the Northern part of Norway. His father was a merchant and he also had an inn at a small village called Kopardal. Unfortunately he lost both his parents when he was a boy, his mother when he was six and his father when he was 12. As a young man in the early 1830s, Berg worked as a clerk of Count Adam Trampe, the County Governor of Nordland and later of Trondheim. This position brought Berg in contact with a highly cultural milieu. In 1832 the Norwegian artist Peder Balke visited Trampe in Bodø, where he spent ten days. The County Governor was very fond of art, and he was probably the one who encouraged Berg to become an artist. Berg went to Christiania (Oslo) in 1835 in order to become a pupil at the Royal Drawing School. In 1836-37 he studied at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen. Back in Norway, he made his living as a portrait painter, portraying the celebrities of the capital as well as of different provincial towns. In 1843, Berg left Norway and travelled across Europe, painting cities, landscapes and people. He lived for several years in France and Italy, and later in England. In 1848, he travelled around the Mediterranean on a naval ship, visiting Malta and Corfu, Greece. He is also supposed to have visited the Balkans and Constantinople. In Malta he painted among others a part of the Grand Harbour of Valletta. He also painted the harbour of Sliema on a very clear day. In Rue St. Cristophe he found a very picturesque motif showing busy people carrying baskets on their heads, goats lying and walking on the stairs and a boy milking a goat. Women are looking out on the busy life from their bay windows. In the autumn of 1849, Berg arrived in Alexandria, Egypt, where he went on to Cairo. He painted several watercolours of topographical subjects – cities, villages, landscapes and monuments – as well as people. In Cairo he met by chance the Norwegian author, Peter Christen Asbjørnsen, a famous folklorist and scientist. By coincidence they were lodging at the same hotel. Asbjørnsen was very astonished to meet Berg in Cairo, since he had got the news in Norway that Berg had died abroad. However they became friends and spent a lot of time in each other company. Together they also travelled in the vicinity of Cairo, and at Christmas time they climbed the pyramids and studied the Sphinx. In Bergs watercolour it is possible to see tourists climbing the Cheops pyramid in the background. Berg and Asbjørnsen also visited the mosque of Sultan Hassan, which dates back to the 14th century. It is not only a mosque, but also a mausoleum and a madrasa for the four principle schools within the Sunni-Muslim religion. The small individuals underline the greatness of the mosque. They also went to the Al-Azhar Mosque with its beautifully ornate minaret. In the foreground a family has found a shelter in a ruin of a house. With his watercolours Berg is showing us the daily life at the different places he visited. Egypt was at that time ruled by Abbas-Pasja, and the two Norwegian friends were invited to visit the palace. The viceroy treated them with coffee and water pipes and asked about the health of the Swedish-Norwegian royalties, about the Norwegian trade and finally wished them a pleasant stay in Egypt and a nice trip back to their “cold home country”. Some years later, in 1852, Asbjørnsen wrote about his stay in Egypt and the meeting with Abbas-Pasja in a periodical called Jule-Træet (The Christmas-tree). Especially the meeting with the viceroy must have been a big event. In those days as well as today, a boat trip on the Nile is a must. Berg has painted a dahabiya who has both an American and a Norwegian flag – the Norwegian one at the top of the mast. The dahabiya has two masts and was used to transport tourists on the Nile until early 20th century. A fellukka is a smaller boat without a cabin. On the trip to Upper Egypt Berg visited Edfu and the Horus temple. He has chosen to depict the temple from the back side. In the foreground of the painting a group of people and camels are resting between two white copula graves, called marabout. In April, before leaving Cairo, Berg visited the slave market and painted three African girls. Two of them are looking Berg strait in the eyes. It was common that they had their lower parts cowered as we can see in this watercolour. The big slave market in Cairo was well known, and the girls were normally bought in order to serve in the houses and not as workers on the fields. By a well in Alexandria Berg found two women and a girl filling up their containers with water. They are all fellah females wearing long cotton dresses and shawls over their heads. The word fellah was used as a term for the lower classes in those days. The woman in the middle is covering her nose and mouth with at piece of cloth, and she has decorated her head linen with among other things coins, and she is also wearing a heavy necklace. The one to the left has a ring in her nose. All three of them are barefoot. After leaving Egypt, Berg spent the rest of the year 1850 in Italy. Born in Northern Norway, Berg visited the region regularly between1858 and 1872, two years before he died. In this period he spent most of his summers there, living in different places on the Continent during the winter season. During his travels to Northern Norway, he executed many topographical watercolours, as for instance from Svolvær, Harstad and Tromsø. His most important watercolours from Northern Norway, however, are those depicting Sami subjects: portraits and scenes from everyday life, as well as Sami camps. The watercolours from Hans Johan Frederik Berg’s travels reveal an interest in the ethnographic as well as the topographic, whether of Egyptian or of Sami subjects, typical of the mid 19th century. They are therefore not only of art historical interest, but also of documentary value. (The paper is based on an article by Ann Falahat in the exhibition catalogue: Anne Aaserud/Knut Ljøgodt (red.): Fra Nesna til Nilen: Akvareller fra Hans Johan Frederik Bergs reiser, The Art Museum of Northern Norway. Tromsø 2007.) |
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