Life
Oluf Braren was born in Oldsum on Föhr in North Frisia. His father was a blacksmith and farmer. Aged 19 years, Braren became a teacher on the neighbouring island of Sylt after having educated himself in private study. His nephew Brar C. Braren noted that Oluf Braren had never had any other teachers than books. On 25 September 1808 he married a local woman named Meete Wilhelms. In addition to painting, Braren also enjoyed studying nature and built up an extensive natural history collection.
Around 1810, the couple moved to Utersum on Föhr where Braren worked as a teacher. There he began an affair with Ing Peter Matzen, a woman from the nearby hamlet of Hedehusum. That relationship lasted for about seven years and spawned two children while Braren's marriage remained without child. When it eventually became public, Braren lost his employment and was posted to Toftum to work as an auxiliary teacher—at a third of a regular teacher's salary.
Ing Peter Matzen's brother Peter Nahmen Matthiesen had befriended Braren and took lessons in painting and sketching from him. As Mathiessen developed an unusual talent around 1818, he went to Eutin to learn from Wilhelm Tischbein. Braren accompanied his former student on the journey and it is known that he stayed with Tischbein for a week. Thus he was at least indirectly influenced by Tischbein's art as can be seen in his later works.
In 1839 Braren died in Toftum, impoverished, from tuberculosis.
Read more about this topic: Oluf Braren
Famous quotes containing the word life:
“If, then, we would indeed restore mankind ... let us first be as simple and well as Nature ourselves, dispel the clouds which hang over our own brows, and take up a little life into our pores. Do not stay to be an overseer of the poor, but endeavor to become one of the worthies of the world.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“What should we think of the shepherd’s life if his flocks always wandered to higher pastures than his thoughts?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Music is of two kinds: one petty, poor, second-rate, never varying, its base the hundred or so phrasings which all musicians understand, a babbling which is more or less pleasant, the life that most composers live.”
—Honoré De Balzac (1799–1850)