Gabriel Kielland

Who was Gabriel Kielland?

Gabriel Kielland was a Norwegian painter, architect and designer.

Gabriel Kielland was born in Trondheim, Norway. Kielland is one of the many notable alumni of the Trondheim Katedralskole. Kielland later studied to become an architect in Hanover and then went to Munich in 1892 to study painting. He was a pupil in Weimar during 1894 and later studied with Alfred Philippe Roll in Paris.

From 1896 he worked for a time as an architect in Trondheim, in a rigorous and constructive art nouveau style, but also painted landscapes, portraits and several altarpieces. As an architect he designed, among other things, Trondheim electricity primary station at Øvre Leirfoss, Finnes orphanage and Dr. Cureas clinic in Trondheim. He later became a teacher of freehand drawing at Norwegian Institute of Technology in Trondheim 1899-1902.

Kielland is best known as the creator of the Rose Window in the Nidaros Cathedral in Trondheim. In 1908 he won the competition for the stained glass windows for the reconstruction of the Nidaros Cathedral’s southern gable. In addition, Kielland delivered proposals to design all of the church windows and received the commission to create the stained glass windows. The paintings are iconographic imagery which were produced in collaboration with Oluf Kolsrud, professor of church history.