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About Siguard Skou
Sigurd Skou, whose art Edgar Lee Masters praised as showing "honesty, strength and joy in life," received his artistic training in Europe, first in Stockholm under the dynamic Swedish painter Anders Zorn (1860-1920), who made six trips to America and was well known throughout Europe. Zorn was the Scandinavian counterpart of *Joaquín Sorolla: both delighted in broad, bravura brushwork, virtuoso effects of sunlight sparkling on bodies of *water, and both focused on modern life, but Zorn retained black on his palette and might best be classified as a brilliant *plein-air tonalist. From Sweden, Skou went to Paris to study under the Norwegian-born Christian Krohg (1852-1925), who directed an academy in Montparnasse.
Having arrived in New York in 1914, Skou became a member of *Allied Artists of America, the *New York Water Color Club, the *American Watercolor Society, and the *Salmagundi Club, where he would later win the Foster Prize. In 1917, Skou exhibited at the *Society of Independent Artists and the following year he came to Chicago where he worked as an illustrator. Between 1919 and 1930, he exhibited oils and watercolors at the annual exhibitions of the *Art Institute of Chicago. The same institution honored him with a special show in December of 1921. During the 1920s he participated in Norwegian-American exhibitions, also in Chicago, and exhibited his works at the *Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the *National Academy of Design, and the *Corcoran Gallery. Skou, active in the Manhattan art scene with his wife Berthe, also a painter, was one of the founders of the *Grand Central Art Galleries in 1922.
Despite his many awards, Skou suffered the common fate of most late American impressionists, whose works were invariably forgotten. His canvas entitled In Harbor, Brittany, exhibited at the Grand Central Art Galleries in 1926, is a plein-air coastal scene at *Concarneau, executed with irregular, broken brushwork, which defines the expanse of glittering water dotted with sailboats. Another work that demonstrates how Skou was a master technician is Concarneau Harbor. Entirely executed with a palette knife, the canvas began as broad areas of thinly applied color. Despite the thick impasto pigment in Skou’s intricate web of broken color, there are tiny areas of the canvas that show through here and there. Upon some of the more diluted areas of washes, Skou scratched the surface with the palette knife to create greater luminosity. Daughters of the Gods (Grand Central Art Galleries) reveals the modernist direction that Skou took. The three female nudes have well defined contours and their rocky setting is rather abstract, while brushwork is free and uninhibited.
REF.
Bojer, 1923; Masters, 1926; Hall, 1939, p. 118; Swanson, 1982, p. 34; Preato, Langer, and Cox, 1988, pp. 37, 62-63, 69. |
Paintings by Siguard Skou
| Concarneau Harbor |
| oil on canvas: 30 x 36 inches |
| signed: lower right |
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| Brittany Fisherman |
| oil on canvas: 21 3/4 x 18 inches |
| signed: reverse |
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