Bernt Tunold

Bernt Tunold (February 25, 1877 – January 23, 1946) was a Norwegian painter. Influenced by his early years in a rural environment on the small island of Selja on the west coast of Norway, his paintings, initially inspired by the style of his countryman Nikolai Astrup, are known for their depictions of the dramatic and contrast-filled nature and landscape of western Norway.

Tunold was born on the island of Selja on Norway's west coast. His father, an emigrant from Stryn, and his mother, a native of Vanylven, had established a farm on the church grounds on the island. Bernt, the youngest of nine siblings, was named after his father and the island priest, Wilhelm Koren. Selja was a poor rural society, but was not separated from the surrounding world. A steamboat frequently visited the island, carrying passengers to the mainland or Bergen, later serving as the first part of a poor peasant's journey to America. The family farm, which Tunold depicted in several of his works, had, according to the census of 1875, three cows, one bull, a dozen sheep and a few goats. This could not support a family of eleven, and the father was forced to work as a travelling tailor in the winter.

In the middle ages, one the country's three bishops had his seat on the island for a time, but the bishop's seat was later moved to Bergen. During the reign of king Sigurd Jorsalfare, a Benedictine monastery, Selje Abbey, was built, but it burned to the ground in 1305. It is not clear whether the monastery was rebuilt: according to some sources, a monastery "existed on the island in 1451", while according to other sources, Selja's monastic community was eradicated when the Black Death arrived in 1349. At the time of Tunold's childhood, only the ruins of the monastery, a tower 14 meters high and low walls, still remained. Tunold often explored the ruin, later writing poems and making drawings of it. The church contained most of the art present on the island: most likely, the first paintings Tunold had a chance to study were the altarpiece and the portraits of the priests Claus and Peder Frimann.

...
Wikipedia