Carl Christian
 Oluf Jensen

(1871-1934)

Danish painter, printmaker, and ceramist.

Stumbling over this small but very charming print and composition was an invitation to investigate further this obscured printmaker. And I've placed it on  my wish list. For future use and reference I show and share in this posting all prints  by Oluf Jensen I could find in old auction catalogues and websites.      

Oluf Jensen was born in Copenhagen, Denmark on February 17, 1871. He graduated from technical school in 1890 and then studied at the Royal Danish Academy until 1985. 

That same year he apprenticed at Royal Copenhagen as a blue painter and worked for the company until 1934, painting art pottery and porcelain and eventually managing the underglaze departments. Jensen also worked at Holmegaard Glassworks in 1924. 

Jensen is best known for his decorative painting on ceramic but he was also highly regarded painter in oil and watercolor. He also produced etchings in black and white, and in color whose motifs were floral or landscape. 

His etchings are often signed Oluf Jensen. Today Jensen is considered with Arnold Krog as the artists who had the greatest impact on the development the Danish underglaze porcelain. Examples of his decorated porcelain are in the Nationalmuseum, Stockholm. Carl Christian Oluf Jensen died in Copenhagen on January 31, 1934.

As an exception I’ve copied and pasted an artist biography (with permission, thank you Daniel) that I’ve found in Annex Galleries in Santa Rosa, California, USA. Couldn't have done any better myself. The delicate fuchsia etching is for sale among the many fine prints and varied stock of this renowned American gallery.

"Eger Tryck" = Hand pulled in Danish

For reasons I cannot explain almost all pictures I could find and scratch together by Jensen were of thumbnail dimensions. I have enhanced most of them in Photoshop to improve screen visibility and quality. 

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Nice surprise, and "déja vu", was finding this watercolor, roses, by Jensen reminding me of a strikingly similar composition, in print, by a printmaker that I mentioned earlier in this Blog: Charlotte Rollius (aka Charlotte Rollins after an historical typo or simply a mistake by the great Malcolm Salaman in the Studio magazine in 1927). Rollius had been a student of Emil Orlik in Berlin, the Godfather of modern printmaking. 

Very little is known about either her person (born around 1885 and last mentioned 1944/45 in Berlin) or professionally: fewer then a hand full of most wonderful but hardly ever seen woodblock prints is all what remains to remember her. I'll show them in a next posting.   

Opening in march: my new Shop and Swap "Galerie Souris". For sharing and swapping of pre-owned and vintage woodblock prints, etchings, engravings and  drawings from my collections. 

All pictures borrowed freely from the Internet for friendly, educational and non-commercial use.