Hans Fredrik Gude (March 13, 1825 – August 17, 1903) was a Norwegian romanticist painter and is considered along with Johan Christian Dahl to be one of Norway's foremost landscape painters. He has been called a mainstay of Norwegian National Romanticism. He is associated with the Düsseldorf school of painting and is best known for landscapes of Norway’s mountains, fjords, and coast.
Gude’s work developed gradually, moving from idealized inland landscapes to seascapes and coastal scenes from the 1860s onward. After early collaborations with Adolph Tidemand due to difficulties with figure painting, he later incorporated figures independently. He worked primarily in oil but increasingly emphasized en plein air practice and, later in life, watercolor and gouache. In parallel with his artistic career, Gude exerted major influence as a teacher, serving as a professor in Düsseldorf, Karlsruhe, and Berlin and mentoring generations of Norwegian artists. He received numerous honors, including the Grand Cross of the Order of St. Olav.
Gude was born in Christiania in 1825 the son of Ove Gude, a judge, and Marie Elisabeth Brandt.
On July 25, 1850, Gude married Betsy Charlotte Juliane Anker (1830–1912), the daughter of General Erik Anker, in Christiania (today called Oslo).
He was the father of painter Nils Gude and watercolorist and illustrator Agnes Charlotte Gude. His daughter Sigrid married German sculptor Otto Lessing.
Gude began his artistic career with private lessons from Johannes Flintoe, and by 1838 he was attending Flintoe's evening classes at the Royal School of Drawing in Christiania. In the autumn of 1841 Johan Sebastian Welhaven suggested that the young Gude should be sent to Düsseldorf to further his education in the arts.
At the Academy of Art in Düsseldorf Gude encountered Johann Wilhelm Schirmer – a professor in landscape painting – who advised him to give up his ambitions of being a painter and to return to his regular studies before it was too late. Gude was rejected by the academy, but attracted the attention of Andreas Achenbach who provided him with private lessons.
Gude was finally accepted into the academy in the autumn of 1842 and joined Schirmer's landscape painting class where he made quick progress. The landscape painting class at the academy was new at the time, having been founded in 1839 as a counterpart to the more long standing figure painting class.
At the time figure painting was considered a more prestigious genre than landscape painting as it was thought only through painting the human body could true beauty be expressed.
Gude had difficulty with figure drawing initially and so collaborated with Adolph Tidemand in some of his paintings, drawing the landscape himself and allowing Tidemand to paint the figures.
Gude, along with most of the class of twelve, received a grade of "good" his first semester and was described as "talented". On his report card for the 1843–44 school year he was the only student to be described as "very talented", and the report for his fourth year said that he "paints Norwegian scenery in a truthful and distinctive manner".
While Gude was a student, two different trends in landscaping were developing at the academy: a romantic trend and a classical trend. The romanticists depicted wild, untamed wildernesses with dark forests, soaring peaks, and rushing water to capture the terrifying and overpowering aspects of nature. They used rich, saturated colors with strong contrast of light and shadow. The classicists were more interested in recreating landscapes from the heroic or mythical past and often set them in the midst of religious or historical events. The classicists focused on lines and clarity in their compositions. It was through Achenbach – Gude's first teacher upon arriving in Düsseldorf – that he was exposed to the romanticist tradition, while it was through his classes with and later time teaching for Schirmer that he was exposed to the classicist traditions.
In 1827 Schirmer and Carl Friedrich Lessing founded a Society for Landscape Composition that would meet a few times each year at Schirmer's home where Schirmer would offer advice on the composition of landscape paintings. Fifteen years later Gude began attending the meetings of the society with other students from his class, but as he progressed to greater levels of realism Gude began to make it clear that he did not agree with the ideas of composition Schirmer put forward during the meetings, saying specifically:
I painted a large mountain view for which my studies of the Rondane Mountains provided the subject, and I had severe problems because Schirmer did not approve of the realistic rendering, and his suggestion that I should group the mountains more in accordance with the Classical ideal was impossible for me to accept.
In Düsseldorf Gude met Carl Friedrich Lessing who, while initially aloof, became Gude's friend and colleague. Their relationship was such a close one that Gude's eldest daughter eventually married one of Lessing's sons. The two artists differed in style though, with Lessing painting dramatic, historical works while Gude never once introduced historical events into his own paintings.
Gude served as a student teacher at the academy until 1844, before leaving to live in Christiania.
Gude spent forty-five years as an art professor and so he played an important role in the development of Norwegian art by acting as a mentor to three generations of Norwegian artists. Young Norwegian artists flocked to wherever Gude was teaching, first at the Academy of Art in Düsseldorf and later at the School of Art in Karlsruhe.
He was first appointed professor of landscape painting in 1854 at the academy replacing his former teacher Schirmer. Gude was twenty-nine when appointed, making him the youngest professor at the academy. His appointment was partially political, in a conflict between Rhineland and Prussian interests Gude was seen as a neutral candidate because of his Norwegian roots. Gude was recommended for the position by the current Director of the academy Wilhelm von Schadow, but only after Andreas Achenbach, Oswald Achenbach, and Lessing had refused the post due to lack of suitable pay. In regards to his position and compensation, Gude wrote: