Julius Olsson
The Longships Light from Lands End, c. 1895
Signed
Oil on canvas
24 x 30 inches
Provenance
Private collection
Note: Of all the personalities in the first art colony in St. Ives Julius Olsson was certainly the most dominant and influential. Largely self-taught, he became the most renowned sea painter of his generation and through his painting school in St. Ives he was recognised as an important teacher. An article in The Artist in 1898 noted - 'Believing that a good picture has other qualities than qulaities of imitation, the larger pictorial truths are those he seeks, and, with an excellent sense of decorative fitness the result is art, the art of picture-making in the best use of the term. There is nothing literary about his work. He feels his motifs as a painter, looking at them for their qualities of line and colour.'