1.
Frogner Manor
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Frogner Manor was a manor house and former estate in todays borough of Frogner in Oslo, Norway. The estate comprised most of the borough of Frogner, which has been named after the estate. The remaining part of the estate is now the site of the Frogner Park, with the house found in the south of the park. The 18th century buildings on the grounds are now occupied by the Oslo Museum, Frogner was one of the largest and oldest agricultural properties in the Oslo area. In the Middle Ages, Frogner became ecclesiastical property, mostly owned by the Hovedøya Abbey, however, significant parts of the estate instead became a public park. Frogner Manor was built in 1750 by Major Hans Jacob Scheel, in 1790 the estate was bought by timber merchant and shipowner Bernt Anker, Norways richest person at the time. He extended the building to its present size. He died a widower in 1805, and Frogner was bought by his nephew Morten Anker in 1807. His business was hit by the economic depression during and after the Napoleonic wars. The buyer was the director-general of the Modum Blue Colour Works, Benjamin Wegner, in 1848 Fredrik Georg Gade, a wealthy merchant from Bergen, purchased the manor. His heirs held the property in joint ownership, under the management of his son Gerhard Gade and he was married to an American, Hellen Allyne, and was the United States consul in Oslo. The former U. S. president and general Ulysses S. Grant visited Kristiania in the summer of 1878, the last private owner, Gerhard Gade, retained the right to inhabit the house until his death in 1909. This spared the house from demolition, and a recession prevented further building on the land. In the meantime, the house was recognised as an important cultural monument and it was restored and placed at the disposal of the Oslo City Museum. The private garden surrounding the house was historically much smaller. In 1914 the area was the site of the 1914 Jubilee Exhibition, the seter of Frogner was situated near the summit of the Holmenkollen hill north of Oslo, and included parts of the Nordmarka forest. The name is preserved in the terminal Frognerseteren station of the suburban Holmenkoll Line, opened in 1898. Frognerseteren and the forest was split from Frogner Manor when Benjamin Wegner sold the manor, wegners heirs sold it to Thomas Johannessen Heftye in 1864, and his heirs sold it to the municipality in 1889, thus making it the first forest owned by Oslo municipality
2.
Oslo
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Oslo is the capital and the most populous city in Norway. It constitutes both a county and a municipality, founded in the year 1040, and established as a kaupstad or trading place in 1048 by Harald Hardrada, the city was elevated to a bishopric in 1070 and a capital under Haakon V of Norway around 1300. Personal unions with Denmark from 1397 to 1523 and again from 1536 to 1814, after being destroyed by a fire in 1624, the city was moved closer to Akershus Fortress during the reign of Christian IV of Denmark and renamed Christiania in his honour. It was established as a municipality on 1 January 1838, following a spelling reform, it was known as Kristiania from 1877 to 1925, at which time its original Norwegian name was restored. Oslo is the economic and governmental centre of Norway, the city is also a hub of Norwegian trade, banking, industry and shipping. It is an important centre for industries and maritime trade in Europe. The city is home to companies within the maritime sector, some of which are among the worlds largest shipping companies, shipbrokers. Oslo is a city of the Council of Europe and the European Commission intercultural cities programme. Oslo is considered a city and ranked Beta World City in studies carried out by the Globalization and World Cities Study Group. It was ranked one in terms of quality of life among European large cities in the European Cities of the Future 2012 report by fDi magazine. A survey conducted by ECA International in 2011 placed Oslo as the second most expensive city in the world for living expenses after Tokyo. In 2013 Oslo tied with the Australian city of Melbourne as the fourth most expensive city in the world, as of January 1,2016, the municipality of Oslo has a population of 658,390, while the population of the citys urban area was 942,084. The metropolitan area had an population of 1.71 million. The population was during the early 2000 increasing at record rates and this growth stems for the most part from international immigration and related high birth rates, but also from intra-national migration. The immigrant population in the city is growing faster than the Norwegian population. As of January 1,2016, the municipality of Oslo has a population of 658,390, the urban area extends beyond the boundaries of the municipality into the surrounding county of Akershus, the total population of this agglomeration is 942,084. To the north and east, wide forested hills rise above the city giving the location the shape of a giant amphitheatre. The urban municipality of Oslo and county of Oslo are two parts of the entity, making Oslo the only city in Norway where two administrative levels are integrated
3.
Norway
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The Antarctic Peter I Island and the sub-Antarctic Bouvet Island are dependent territories and thus not considered part of the Kingdom. Norway also lays claim to a section of Antarctica known as Queen Maud Land, until 1814, the kingdom included the Faroe Islands, Greenland, and Iceland. It also included Isle of Man until 1266, Shetland and Orkney until 1468, Norway has a total area of 385,252 square kilometres and a population of 5,258,317. The country shares a long border with Sweden. Norway is bordered by Finland and Russia to the north-east, Norway has an extensive coastline, facing the North Atlantic Ocean and the Barents Sea. King Harald V of the Dano-German House of Glücksburg is the current King of Norway, erna Solberg became Prime Minister in 2013, replacing Jens Stoltenberg. A constitutional monarchy, Norway divides state power between the Parliament, the Cabinet and the Supreme Court, as determined by the 1814 Constitution, the kingdom is established as a merger of several petty kingdoms. By the traditional count from the year 872, the kingdom has existed continuously for 1,144 years, Norway has both administrative and political subdivisions on two levels, counties and municipalities. The Sámi people have an amount of self-determination and influence over traditional territories through the Sámi Parliament. Norway maintains close ties with the European Union and the United States, the country maintains a combination of market economy and a Nordic welfare model with universal health care and a comprehensive social security system. Norway has extensive reserves of petroleum, natural gas, minerals, lumber, seafood, the petroleum industry accounts for around a quarter of the countrys gross domestic product. On a per-capita basis, Norway is the worlds largest producer of oil, the country has the fourth-highest per capita income in the world on the World Bank and IMF lists. On the CIAs GDP per capita list which includes territories and some regions, from 2001 to 2006, and then again from 2009 to 2017, Norway had the highest Human Development Index ranking in the world. It also has the highest inequality-adjusted ranking, Norway ranks first on the World Happiness Report, the OECD Better Life Index, the Index of Public Integrity and the Democracy Index. Norway has two names, Noreg in Nynorsk and Norge in Bokmål. The name Norway comes from the Old English word Norðrveg mentioned in 880, meaning way or way leading to the north. In contrasting with suðrvegar southern way for Germany, and austrvegr eastern way for the Baltic, the Anglo-Saxon of Britain also referred to the kingdom of Norway in 880 as Norðmanna land. This was the area of Harald Fairhair, the first king of Norway, and because of him
4.
Sculpture
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Sculpture is the branch of the visual arts that operates in three dimensions. It is one of the plastic arts, a wide variety of materials may be worked by removal such as carving, assembled by welding or modelling, or molded, or cast. However, most ancient sculpture was painted, and this has been lost. Those cultures whose sculptures have survived in quantities include the cultures of the ancient Mediterranean, India and China, the Western tradition of sculpture began in ancient Greece, and Greece is widely seen as producing great masterpieces in the classical period. During the Middle Ages, Gothic sculpture represented the agonies and passions of the Christian faith, the revival of classical models in the Renaissance produced famous sculptures such as Michelangelos David. Relief is often classified by the degree of projection from the wall into low or bas-relief, high relief, sunk-relief is a technique restricted to ancient Egypt. Relief sculpture may also decorate steles, upright slabs, usually of stone, techniques such as casting, stamping and moulding use an intermediate matrix containing the design to produce the work, many of these allow the production of several copies. The term sculpture is used mainly to describe large works. The very large or colossal statue has had an enduring appeal since antiquity, another grand form of portrait sculpture is the equestrian statue of a rider on horse, which has become rare in recent decades. The smallest forms of life-size portrait sculpture are the head, showing just that, or the bust, small forms of sculpture include the figurine, normally a statue that is no more than 18 inches tall, and for reliefs the plaquette, medal or coin. Sculpture is an important form of public art, a collection of sculpture in a garden setting can be called a sculpture garden. One of the most common purposes of sculpture is in form of association with religion. Cult images are common in cultures, though they are often not the colossal statues of deities which characterized ancient Greek art. The actual cult images in the innermost sanctuaries of Egyptian temples, of which none have survived, were rather small. The same is true in Hinduism, where the very simple. Some undoubtedly advanced cultures, such as the Indus Valley civilization, appear to have had no monumental sculpture at all, though producing very sophisticated figurines, the Mississippian culture seems to have been progressing towards its use, with small stone figures, when it collapsed. Other cultures, such as ancient Egypt and the Easter Island culture, from the 20th century the relatively restricted range of subjects found in large sculpture expanded greatly, with abstract subjects and the use or representation of any type of subject now common. Today much sculpture is made for intermittent display in galleries and museums, small sculpted fittings for furniture and other objects go well back into antiquity, as in the Nimrud ivories, Begram ivories and finds from the tomb of Tutankhamun
5.
Baroque
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The style began around 1600 in Rome and Italy, and spread to most of Europe. The aristocracy viewed the dramatic style of Baroque art and architecture as a means of impressing visitors by projecting triumph, power, Baroque palaces are built around an entrance of courts, grand staircases, and reception rooms of sequentially increasing opulence. However, baroque has a resonance and application that extend beyond a reduction to either a style or period. It is also yields the Italian barocco and modern Spanish barroco, German Barock, Dutch Barok, others derive it from the mnemonic term Baroco, a supposedly laboured form of syllogism in logical Scholastica. The Latin root can be found in bis-roca, in informal usage, the word baroque can simply mean that something is elaborate, with many details, without reference to the Baroque styles of the 17th and 18th centuries. The word Baroque, like most periodic or stylistic designations, was invented by later critics rather than practitioners of the arts in the 17th, the term Baroque was initially used in a derogatory sense, to underline the excesses of its emphasis. In particular, the term was used to describe its eccentric redundancy and noisy abundance of details, although it was long thought that the word as a critical term was first applied to architecture, in fact it appears earlier in reference to music. Another hypothesis says that the word comes from precursors of the style, Giacomo Barozzi da Vignola and he did not make the distinctions between Mannerism and Baroque that modern writers do, and he ignored the later phase, the academic Baroque that lasted into the 18th century. Long despised, Baroque art and architecture became fashionable between the two World Wars, and has remained in critical favour. In painting the gradual rise in popular esteem of Caravaggio has been the best barometer of modern taste, William Watson describes a late phase of Shang-dynasty Chinese ritual bronzes of the 11th century BC as baroque. The term Baroque may still be used, usually pejoratively, describing works of art, craft, the appeal of Baroque style turned consciously from the witty, intellectual qualities of 16th-century Mannerist art to a visceral appeal aimed at the senses. It employed an iconography that was direct, simple, obvious, germinal ideas of the Baroque can also be found in the work of Michelangelo. Even more generalised parallels perceived by some experts in philosophy, prose style, see the Neapolitan palace of Caserta, a Baroque palace whose construction began in 1752. In paintings Baroque gestures are broader than Mannerist gestures, less ambiguous, less arcane and mysterious, more like the stage gestures of opera, Baroque poses depend on contrapposto, the tension within the figures that move the planes of shoulders and hips in counterdirections. Baroque is a style of unity imposed upon rich, heavy detail, Baroque style featured exaggerated lighting, intense emotions, release from restraint, and even a kind of artistic sensationalism. There were highly diverse strands of Italian baroque painting, from Caravaggio to Cortona, the most prominent Spanish painter of the Baroque was Diego Velázquez. The later Baroque style gradually gave way to a more decorative Rococo, while the Baroque nature of Rembrandts art is clear, the label is less often used for Vermeer and many other Dutch artists. Flemish Baroque painting shared a part in this trend, while continuing to produce the traditional categories
6.
Romanticism
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Romanticism was characterized by its emphasis on emotion and individualism as well as glorification of all the past and nature, preferring the medieval rather than the classical. It was embodied most strongly in the arts, music, and literature, but had a major impact on historiography, education. It elevated folk art and ancient custom to something noble, Romanticism assigned a high value to the achievements of heroic individualists and artists, whose examples, it maintained, would raise the quality of society. It also promoted the individual imagination as a critical authority allowed of freedom from classical notions of form in art, there was a strong recourse to historical and natural inevitability, a Zeitgeist, in the representation of its ideas. In the second half of the 19th century, Realism was offered as a polar opposite to Romanticism, the decline of Romanticism during this time was associated with multiple processes, including social and political changes and the spread of nationalism. Defining the nature of Romanticism may be approached from the point of the primary importance of the free expression of the feelings of the artist. The importance the Romantics placed on emotion is summed up in the remark of the German painter Caspar David Friedrich that the feeling is his law. Samuel Taylor Coleridge and others believed there were laws that the imagination—at least of a good creative artist—would unconsciously follow through artistic inspiration if left alone. As well as rules, the influence of models from other works was considered to impede the creators own imagination, so that originality was essential. The concept of the genius, or artist who was able to produce his own work through this process of creation from nothingness, is key to Romanticism. This idea is called romantic originality. Not essential to Romanticism, but so widespread as to be normative, was a strong belief, however, this is particularly in the effect of nature upon the artist when he is surrounded by it, preferably alone. Romantic art addressed its audiences with what was intended to be felt as the voice of the artist. So, in literature, much of romantic poetry invited the reader to identify the protagonists with the poets themselves. In both French and German the closeness of the adjective to roman, meaning the new literary form of the novel, had some effect on the sense of the word in those languages. It is only from the 1820s that Romanticism certainly knew itself by its name, the period typically called Romantic varies greatly between different countries and different artistic media or areas of thought. Margaret Drabble described it in literature as taking place roughly between 1770 and 1848, and few dates much earlier than 1770 will be found. In English literature, M. H. Abrams placed it between 1789, or 1798, this latter a very typical view, and about 1830, however, in most fields the Romantic Period is said to be over by about 1850, or earlier
7.
Benjamin Wegner
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Jacob Benjamin Wegner was a Norwegian industrialist, estate owner and timber merchant. In 1822, he relocated to Norway, after he had bought Blaafarveværket on behalf of a consortium led by the Berlin banker Wilhelm Christian Benecke. He was also owner of Frogner Manor, the largest co-owner of the Hafslund estate, a co-owner of the Hassel Iron Works and a co-owner of the timber firm Juel, Wegner & Co. Most of his business activities, both in the timber, grain and cobalt segments, focused heavily on export to England, where he spent much time throughout his life. He served as general to Norway of the sovereign city-republics of Hamburg, Lübeck and Bremen. Seyler, and a granddaughter of the Swiss-born banker and theatre principal Abel Seyler and of the Hamburg bankers Johann Hinrich Gossler, jacob Benjamin Wegner, who went by the name of Benjamin, was born in Königsberg, an important port city on the coast of the Baltic Sea. Relatively little is known about his background, not even his parents names and his mother remarried to the Königsberg merchant Benjamin Gutzeit. He may have had a brother named Salomon and he received a solid commercial education and joined a leading Königsberg firm as an apprentice. He was an agent and close associate of the London firm Isaac Solly and Sons and of the Berlin firm Gebrüder Benecke and its head Wilhelm Christian Benecke, in 1821, Modums Blaafarveværk in Norway, the worlds leading producer of cobalt blue, was announced for sale. Edward Solly wanted to buy the company and send Wegner as his representative to complete the transaction, but as he had financial problems, Wegner subsequently bought the company at a public auction on behalf of an investment group of which Benecke was the prime investor. Wegner was appointed the new Director-General of Modums Blaafarveværk and became a co-owner, and he relocated to Norway, upon taking up residence in Norway, he automatically became a Norwegian citizen under Norways nationality law at the time. From 1826, Benecke and Wegner were the owners of Modums Blaafarveværk. The main export market was England and the companys largest customer by far was the London firm Smith, in its heyday, Blaafarveværket generated an annual income of around 10,000 Norwegian speciedaler for Wegner, partially as dividend and partially as tantième. As a consequence of the crisis following the revolutions of 1848 and also of the invention of the synthetic ultramarine colour. Together with Benecke, Wegner owned the Hassel Iron Works from 1835 to 1854 and he was also a co-owner, eventually the largest co-owner, of the major estate Hafslund with large forests in eastern Norway and the countrys largest sawmill, from 1835 to 1864. His co-owners included Benecke and Herman Wedel Jarlsberg, and subsequently Thorvald Meyer, in 1856, he co-founded the timber firm Juel, Wegner & Co. with Iver Albert Juel. In 1836, he bought Frogner Manor, where he lived with his family until 1849, the family then sold Frogner Manor and moved to Christiania. Wegner however retained a part of the Frogner property, Frognerseteren with a part of the Nordmarka forests, Frogner Manor is today best known as the site of Frogner Park
8.
1914 Jubilee Exhibition
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The 1914 Jubilee Exhibition took place in Kristiania, Norway, from May to October 1914. It marked the anniversary of the 1814 constitution and focused on industry. The main location was the grounds of Frogner Manor, in addition to a subsection on shipping at Skarpsno at Frognerkilen, the exhibition opened on 5 May, and was closed on 11 October 1914. The total number of visitors was more than 1.5 million, on 11 October, the final day, more than 100,000 visitors visited the exhibition. The idea for the exhibition is credited to architect Torolf Prytz, Prytz became chairman of the planning committee, and later also chairman of the exhibition. Various location alternatives were discussed, including Hovedøya, but it was decided on Frogner. In August 1911 the Kristiania city council granted a funding of 300,000 kr to the exhibition, the park area was designed by architect Josef Nickelsen, and leading architects were Henrik Bull, August Nielsen, Rudolf Emanuel Jacobsen and Adolf Jensen. The exhibition showcased developments in Norway over the last 100 years, among the pavilions were the Industry Hall, the Machinery Hall, restaurants, and more than hundred other buildings. Two locomotives were on display, one constructed at Hamar Jernstøperi og Mekaniske Verksted, kværner Bruk won a gold medal for their contributions, which included construction elements of the Machinery hall. Lilleborgs soap bubble fountain, which was placed in the Industry Hall, a department of agriculture included a farm with barn and living house, in addition to separate exhibition buildings for forestry and agriculture. Among the exhibitions was a village with 80 inhabitants brought in from Kongo, other amusements were a 700 meter long roller coaster, the Tanagra theatre, and Lilleputbanen. Another display was Hjalmar Welhavens large collection of skis, a maritime department was located in Frognerkilen, at Skarpsno. Most of the pavilions were demolished after the exhibition, with a few exceptions, the exhibition opened on 5 May 1914, and was met with great interest from the public. Among the performances in Sangerhallen was Edvard Griegs Kongekvadet, and a new cantata written by Nils Collett Vogt with music by Christian Sinding, actor Johan Fahlstrøm recited the national hymn Ja, vi elsker dette landet. The exhibition was declared open by King Haakon, in the evening a dinner was given for 1,400 invited guests, which included 300 mayors from various municipalities. Several large gatherings took place during the exhibition period, at one assembly the restaurant served dinner for 4,000 guests. On 4 July a dinner was served for 2,600 guests, in July the exhibition faced some unexpected problems. A tram strike reduced the accessibility drastically, at the outbreak of World War I the Tyrolean orchestra and a German brass band had to leave, heading for the front
9.
Pavilion
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In architecture a pavilion has several meanings. In architectural terminology it refers to a building that is either positioned separately or as an attachment to a main building. Often its function makes it an object of pleasure, such configurations provide an emphatic visual termination to the composition of a large building, akin to bookends. Pavilions may be small outbuildings, similar to a summer house or a kiosk, small rooms on the roof of a large house. These were particularly popular up to the 18th century and can be equated to the Italian casina and these often resembled small classical temples and follies. Especially if there is space for food preparation, they may be called a banqueting house. A pavilion built to take advantage of a view may be referred to as a gazebo, bandstands in a park are a class of pavilion. A pool house by a swimming pool may have sufficient character, a sports pavilion is usually a building adjacent to a sports ground used for changing clothes and often partaking of refreshments. Often it has a verandah to provide protection from the sun for spectators, in cricket grounds, as at Lords, a cricket pavilion tends to be used for the building the players emerge from and return to, even when this is actually a large building including a grandstand. Externally, pavilions may be emphasised by any combination of a change in height, profile, colour, material, internally they may be part of a rectangular block, or only connected to the main block by a thin section of building. The two 18th-century English country houses of Houghton Hall and Holkham Hall, illustrate these different approaches in turn, in the Place des Vosges, Paris, twin pavilions mark the centers of the north and south sides of the square. They are named the Pavillon du Roi and the Pavillon de la Reine though no royal personage ever lived in the square, with their triple archways, they function like gatehouses that give access to the privileged space of the square. French gatehouses had been built in the form of such pavilions in the preceding century, in some areas, a pavilion is a term for a hunting lodge. The Pavillon de Galon in Luberon, France is a typical 18th century aristocratic hunting pavilion, the pavilion, located on the site of an old Roman villa, includes a garden à la française, which was used by the guests for receptions. Notes Media related to Pavilions at Wikimedia Commons
10.
Johan Christian Dahl
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Johan Christian Claussen Dahl, often known as J. C. Dahl or I. C. Dahl, was a Norwegian artist who is considered the first great romantic painter in Norway, the founder of the age of Norwegian painting. He was also the first acquire genuine fame and cultural renown abroad, as one critic has put it, J. C. Dahl occupies a central position in Norwegian artistic life of the first half of the 19th century. Dahl came from a simple background – his father was a modest fisherman in Bergen, Norway –. From 1803 to 1809 Dahl studied with the painter Johan Georg Müller, still, Dahl looked back on his teacher as having kept him in ignorance in order to exploit him, putting him to work painting theatrical sets, portraits, and views of Bergen and its surroundings. Another mentor, Lyder Sagen, showed the aspiring artist books about art and awakened his interest in historical and it was also Sagen who took up a collection that made it possible for Dahl to go to Copenhagen in 1811 to complete his education at the academy there. As important as Dahls studies at the academy in Copenhagen were his experiences in the surrounding countryside, the mood was often idyllic, often melancholy. When he added snow to a landscape he painted in the summer, it was not to show the light and colors of snow, it was to use snow as a symbol of death. ”Thanks to Sagens recommendations and to his own personal charm, Dahl soon gained access to the leading social circles in Copenhagen. Dahl took part in art exhibitions in Copenhagen beginning in 1812, but his real breakthrough came in 1815. In 1816 C. W. Eckersberg returned from abroad with his paintings of Roman settings, Dahl was impressed at once, Dahls 1817 painting “Den Store Kro i Fredensborg” marked the real beginning of his lifelong production of oil paintings depicting natural subjects. After his success in Copenhagen, Dahl realized that he wanted to live as an independent, one challenge facing him was that the academic preference of the day was for historical paintings with moral messages. Landscapes were considered the lowest kind of art, and perhaps not as art at all. The only landscapes that could be considered art, according to the academy, were ideal, in accordance with this reigning taste, Dahl attempted to give his Danish themes a certain atmospheric character in order to lift them up above what was considered a merely commercial level. But at the time it was his deepest wish to provide a more faithful picture of Norwegian nature than were offered by the old-fashioned, dry paintings of Haas. This desire was partly motivated by homesickness and patriotism, but it was suited to the public taste of the day for “picturesque” works. Dahl traveled to Dresden in September 1818 and he arrived with introductions to the citys leading citizens and to major artists such as Caspar David Friedrich, who helped him establish himself there and became his close friend. Greifswald in Moonlight depicts the artists birthplace in Pomerania, on the Baltic coast, bathed in an even, gauzy moonlight, the ancient university town assumes an almost ethereal appearance. ”Together with Friedrich and Carl Gustav Carus, Dahl would become one of the Dresden painters of the period who exerted a decisive influence on German Romantic painting. In Dresden, as in Copenhagen, Dahl traveled around the area to draw subjects that could be of use to him in works that would be painted later in his atelier
