The piano player
Tuesday, May 20th 2025
by Karl Gustav Jensen-Hjell (Norwegian, 1862-1888)
The piano player, 1887
Oil on canvas.Signed and dated "87".
Height 47 Width 37 cm.
(recanvased, restorations, some flaking)
Giltwood frame.
Provenance: private collection, Eure-et-Loir (France).
Karl Jensen-Hjell was one of the most promising Norwegian painters of his generation. Born in Kristiania - today’s Oslo - in 1862, he went beyond the strict lessons he had received at the “Tegneskolen” Art school to propose a style akin to that of the European avant-garde. His travels to Munich, Paris and Italy awakened his naturalistic inclination – he was particularly inspired by Edouard Manet.
Upon his return to Kristiania in 1887, Jensen-Hjell started championing Bohemianism, promoting “an emphasis on truth” and “freedom of expression”. He was friends with Gustav Wentzel and Edvard Munch, whose 1885 full-length portrait of Jensen Hjell shows his “cheeky assurance”. He was described as “haughty, shabbily elegant, full of self-confidence”; in contrast, his rare paintings depict the warm intimacy of comfortable Norwegian home interiors in the 1880s.
The woman in this 1887 painting is seen from the back, playing the piano in a bourgeois living room where a marble bust and a medallion portrait stand side by side. The model's inner calm seems to be reflected in her surrounding environment, as is the case with other paintings from the artist’s limited corpus of work. Karl Jensen-Hjell died of tuberculosis the following year, at the age of 25.
