Hans Gude - Wales

Wales

Many of Gude's peers moved on from the Academy in Düsseldorf to other art institutes, but Gude decided to seek more direct contact with nature. Gude had gained a foothold in the British art market in the 1850s after his works were accepted into the galleries of Francis Egerton, 1st Earl of Ellesmere and the Marquess of Lansdowne, and so when an English art dealer and former student of Gude — Mr. Stiff — suggested Gude might find success in England, he was quick to respond. In the autumn of 1862 Gude set off for the Lledr Valley near Conwy. Wales, a place renowned for its picturesque scenery, was already home to a colony of British plein-air artists. While small groups of artists living in the countryside in order to inspire each other, be closer to their subject and escape the city were common, Gude was one of the first Norwegian artists to live in such a manner. Gude rented a house overlooking River Lledr where he painted one of the ancient Roman bridges which was popular with artists of the time.

Gude reports that the British and Welsh landscape painters were disdainful of artists from the continent, and that they used a very different style of painting from the continental artists. Whereas Gude and fellow continental artists would go out in nature and make sketches to act as studies for studio works, the British and Welsh painters set up their easels in the field and worked on their paintings with their subjects in front of them. Gude attempted to improve his reputation among the local painters with exhibitions at the Royal Academy's spring shows in London in 1863 and 1864, but both were flops that Gude described as "useful but bitter medicine". Despite these setbacks — furthered by the strain the trip had put on Gude's finances due to lack of paintings being sold — Gude felt the trip was of great benefit to himself as an artist, writing to his brother-in-law Theodor Kjerulf:

It was sad to leave the lovely yet wild scenery that had become so dear to us, and a peaceful, quiet home it had been. My English stay was of great benefit to me in that I freed myself from many of the prevailing studio maxims by being alone and in a landscape so new to me that it forced me to observe more keenly.

— Hans Gude

While in Wales Gude was visited by Adolph Tidemand together with Frederik Collett, and the three traveled to Caernarvon and Holyhead from which Gude observed his first real Atlantic storm.