PICTURES BY BERNHARD BERNTSEN

Bernhard Hilmar Berntsen was born near Oslo in 1900 and emigrated to the USA in 1919. In 1924 he began a forty-year career as an ironworker in the construction industry. After his marriage, he and his wife Alma moved to New York in 1928, where he remained until his retirement in 1965.

Berntsen began his career as an artist in Chicago and continued to paint after moving to New York. He had never received any formal training, but in 1933, he won a scholarship to study at ”The Art Students’ League”. Through his contacts there, he was able to exhibit at well-known galleries, thus making a name for himself in the city’s artistic milieu. Sales of his art also provided a welcome supplement to his income during the Depression.

 Berntsen became so well-known that for a time, he considered leaving his career as an ironworker to devote all his time to his art. His work was often shown in the Norwegian “colony” in Brooklyn, at ”The Norwegian Art and Craft Club” and the ”Leif Eriksson Cafe”.

His work falls into three periods, each with its main theme. During the first period (1923-1945) his work reflects daily life in the Big City, especially New York. From 1944-45 to 1965, Berntsen travelled extensively in the northeastern United States, and his work contains a growing number of landscapes from New York and Pennsylvania. After his retirement in 1965, he moved to Virginia. Here he often painted scenes from the rural areas west of Washington, DC. 

Bernsten died in 1992. Today he is considered one of the foremost of the Norwegian-American artists from the years between 1920 and 1970. It is a pleasure to present a selection of his work from the museum’s own collection.