Carl Forup (1883 - 1939)

About Carl Forup

Carl Christian Forup was born at Vejle, Denmark on 26 February 1883. He studied at the Academy of Art in Copenhagen under Ole Olsen from 1902 – 1906 and again from 1907 to 1911 at the Royal Danish Academy of the Arts.

In 1908 Forup married Eugenie Augusta Isabella Schmidt, a model in many Forup paintings. In 1908, following his marriage, he moved to Charlottenberg where he lived almost all his life.

Forup painted a broad spectrum of subjects, from portraits and genre scenes to landscapes, book illustrations and murals. Many of his subjects were drawn from Italian folklore.

He exhibited regularly in Denmark at the Danish Royal Academy and also in Munich in 1906 and Paris in 1910, in the recently opened Henri Matisse School of Painting. Examples of Forup’s work are in a number of important collections in his native country including the museums of Horsens and Vejle.

The Windmill, Loading a Flour Dray is a stunningly bold composition with a definite ‘Nordic’ feel, certainly one cannot imagine an English or French artist painting from such a striking perspective.

This painting was exhibited at The Royal Danish Academy in 1927 and it’s position was number two ‘on the line’. The painting still bears the appropriate Royal Academy sticker on the stretcher.