Emil Carlsen

Who was Emil Carlsen?

Soren Emil Carlsen was an American Impressionist painter who emigrated to the United States from Denmark. He became known for his still lifes and while by some he has been described as "The American Chardin" he was in fact a far more sensitive aesthetically oriented artist. In an era when many artists succumbed to the pressure resulting from The Armory Show to follow modernistic "developments" Carlsen remained faithful to his inborn aesthetic sense continuing to create at an extremely high qualitative level. It is not a stretch to view him as one of the truly great American artists of the twentieth century. Later in his career Carlsen expanded his range of subjects and becoming known for landscapes and marines as well.

During his long career he won many of the most important honors in American art and was elected to membership in the National Academy of Design. For more than forty years he was also was a respected teacher in Chicago, San Francisco and New York.