Portrait of the Painter Eilif Peterssen

Hans Heyerdahl's 1877 portrait of his fellow painter Eilif Peterssen captures one of the significant Norwegian history painters of the era. Peterssen would become known for his large historical and religious canvases, including his celebrated 'Christian II Signs the Death Warrant of Torben Oxe.' Heyerdahl's portrait of Peterssen as a young man contributes to the important tradition of Norwegian painters documenting their contemporaries, creating a visual record of the artistic community that was defining Norwegian painting in the years before the naturalist revolution of the 1880s. The National Museum in Oslo holds both painters' work.

Heyerdahl renders Peterssen with the direct, observational confidence of his Paris-influenced naturalist approach. The portrait has an informal, collegial quality — a painter observing a painter — with brushwork that is fresh and direct rather than formally constrained.