Jonas Lie (April 29, 1880 - January 18, 1940) was a

Norwegian Norwegian, Norwayan, or Norsk may refer to: *Something of, from, or related to Norway, a country in northwestern Europe * Norwegians, both a nation and an ethnic group native to Norway * Demographics of Norway *The Norwegian language, including ...

-born American painter and teacher. Lie is best known for his

Expressionist Expressionism is a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Northern Europe around the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it rad ...

paintings of the

New England New England is a region comprising six states in the Northeastern United States: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. It is bordered by the state of New York to the west and by the Canadian provinces ...

coastline and

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

. He documented construction of the

Panama Canal The Panama Canal ( es, Canal de Panamá, link=no) is an artificial waterway in Panama that connects the Atlantic Ocean with the Pacific Ocean and divides North and South America. The canal cuts across the Isthmus of Panama and is a conduit ...

with thirty canvases, and represented the United States in the

1928 Summer Olympics The 1928 Summer Olympics ( nl, Olympische Zomerspelen 1928), officially known as the Games of the IX Olympiad ( nl, Spelen van de IXe Olympiade) and commonly known as Amsterdam 1928, was an international multi-sport event that was celebrated from ...

art competition.

Background

Lie was born in

Moss Mosses are small, non-vascular flowerless plants in the taxonomic division Bryophyta (, ) '' sensu stricto''. Bryophyta (''sensu lato'', Schimp. 1879) may also refer to the parent group bryophytes, which comprise liverworts, mosses, and hor ...

, in

Østfold Østfold is a traditional region, a former county and a current electoral district in southeastern Norway. It borders Akershus and southwestern Sweden (Västra Götaland County and Värmland), while Buskerud and Vestfold are on the other side o ...

county,

Norway Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe, the mainland territory of which comprises the western and northernmost portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and t ...

. His father Sverre Lie (1841–92) was a Norwegian

civil engineer A civil engineer is a person who practices civil engineering – the application of planning, designing, constructing, maintaining, and operating infrastructure while protecting the public and environmental health, as well as improving existing ...

and his mother Helen Augusta Steele (1853–1906) was an American from

Hartford, Connecticut Hartford is the capital city of the U.S. state of Connecticut. It was the seat of Hartford County until Connecticut disbanded county government in 1960. It is the core city in the Greater Hartford metropolitan area. Census estimates since the ...

. He was named for his father's cousin (and brother-in-law), the famous Norwegian author Jonas Lie, who had married his father's sister Thomasine. Following his father's death in 1892, 12-year-old Lie was sent to live with Thomasine and Jonas Lie in Paris. His aunt and uncle's home was a meeting place for famous artists such as

Henrik Ibsen Henrik Johan Ibsen (; ; 20 March 1828 – 23 May 1906) was a Norwegian playwright and theatre director. As one of the founders of modernism in theatre, Ibsen is often referred to as "the father of realism" and one of the most influential playw ...

Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson Bjørnstjerne Martinius Bjørnson ( , ; 8 December 1832 – 26 April 1910) was a Norwegian writer who received the 1903 Nobel Prize in Literature "as a tribute to his noble, magnificent and versatile poetry, which has always been distinguishe ...

Edvard Grieg Edvard Hagerup Grieg ( , ; 15 June 18434 September 1907) was a Norwegian composer and pianist. He is widely considered one of the foremost Romantic era composers, and his music is part of the standard classical repertoire worldwide. His use of ...

, and

Georg Brandes Georg Morris Cohen Brandes (4 February 1842 – 19 February 1927) was a Danish critic and scholar who greatly influenced Scandinavian and European literature from the 1870s through the turn of the 20th century. He is seen as the theorist behind ...

. He had already received drawing instruction from

Christian Skredsvig Christian Skredsvig (12 March 1854 – 19 January 1924) was a Norwegian painter and writer. He employed an artistic style reflecting naturalism. He is especially well known for his picturesque and lyrical depictions of the landscape. Biogr ...

in Norway, and Lie attended a small private art school in Paris. The following year he traveled to the United States, where he joined his mother and sisters in

. From 1897–1906, he trained at the

Art Students League of New York The Art Students League of New York is an art school at 215 West 57th Street in Manhattan, New York City, New York. The League has historically been known for its broad appeal to both amateurs and professional artists. Although artists may stu ...

Career

Between 1901 and the memorial exhibition in 1940 his work was shown all over America. In 1905 Lie exhibited 34 pictures in the

Pratt Institute Pratt Institute is a private university with its main campus in Brooklyn, New York (state), New York. It has a satellite campus in Manhattan and an extension campus in Utica, New York at the Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute. The school was ...

Brooklyn Museum of Art The Brooklyn Museum is an art museum located in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. At , the museum is New York City's second largest and contains an art collection with around 1.5 million objects. Located near the Prospect Heights, Cro ...

. Between 1905 and 1938 Lie had 57 one-man shows, each including from 12 to 45 paintings. He participated in important annual and biennial exhibitions at the

National Academy of Design The National Academy of Design is an honorary association of American artists, founded in New York City in 1825 by Samuel Morse, Asher Durand, Thomas Cole, Martin E. Thompson, Charles Cushing Wright, Ithiel Town, and others "to promote the fin ...

, the

Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) is a museum and private art school in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.Art Institute of Chicago The Art Institute of Chicago in Chicago's Grant Park, founded in 1879, is one of the oldest and largest art museums in the world. Recognized for its curatorial efforts and popularity among visitors, the museum hosts approximately 1.5 mill ...

, and the

Corcoran Gallery of Art The Corcoran Gallery of Art was an art museum in Washington, D.C., United States, that is now the location of the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design, a part of the George Washington University. Overview The Corcoran School of the Arts & Design ...

in Washington as well as most of the world fairs. Lie traveled to Panama in 1913, to paint scenes of the construction of the

. His thirty resulting canvases brought him wide acclaim. In 1929, twelve of these were donated to

United States Military Academy The United States Military Academy (USMA), also known metonymically as West Point or simply as Army, is a United States service academy in West Point, New York. It was originally established as a fort, since it sits on strategic high groun ...

in memory General George W. Goethals, the West Point graduate who had been the canal's chief engineer. In 1932, King Haakon conferred on Lie Norway's highest civilian honor, making him a Knight of the Order of St. Olav. Lie was a member of various art organizations including the

Salmagundi Club The Salmagundi Club, sometimes referred to as the Salmagundi Art Club, is a fine arts center founded in 1871 in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan, New York City. Since 1917, it has been located at 47 Fifth Avenue. , its membership roster ...

and was active in the

. Among Lie's students was the New Hope School painter John Fulton Folinsbee. Jonas Lie often depicted the sea, channels, and ships with dramatic perspective and powerful use of color. He became known for colorful impressionistic scenes of harbors & coves, painted during the many summers he spent on the coasts of New England & Canada. Throughout his prolific career he painted brilliantly colored images of the rocky coves and harbors that identify the region's dramatic shoreline. Lie painted a landscape mural in honor of his wife, Sonia, in the sanctuary of the First Unitarian Society of Plainfield, New Jersey in 1929. It is inscribed, "I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills." Paintings of Jonas Lie are on exhibit at art museums throughout the United States including at

Utah Museum of Fine Arts The Utah Museum of Fine Arts (UMFA) is the region's primary resource for culture and visual arts. It is located in the Marcia and John Price Museum Building in Salt Lake City, Utah on the University of Utah campus near Rice-Eccles Stadium. Works ...

;

Cornell Fine Arts Museum The Rollins Museum of Art is located on the Winter Park campus of Rollins College and is the only teaching museum in the greater Orlando area. The museum houses more than 5,000 objects ranging from antiquity through contemporary eras, including ...

;

Phoenix Art Museum The Phoenix Art Museum is the largest museum for visual art in the southwest United States. Located in Phoenix, Arizona, the museum is . It displays international exhibitions alongside its comprehensive collection of more than 18,000 works of ...

;

San Diego Museum of Art The San Diego Museum of Art is a fine arts museum located at 1450 El Prado in Balboa Park in San Diego, California that houses a broad collection with particular strength in Spanish art. The San Diego Museum of Art opened as The Fine Arts Galler ...

;

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston The Museum of Fine Arts (often abbreviated as MFA Boston or MFA) is an art museum in Boston, Massachusetts. It is the 20th-largest art museum in the world, measured by public gallery area. It contains 8,161 paintings and more than 450,000 works ...

;

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...

;

High Museum of Art The High Museum of Art (colloquially the High) is the largest museum for visual art in the Southeastern United States. Located in Atlanta, Georgia (on Peachtree Street in Midtown, the city's arts district), the High is 312,000 square feet (28, ...

; the

Detroit Institute of Arts The Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA), located in Midtown Detroit, Michigan, has one of the list of largest art museums, largest and most significant art collections in the United States. With over 100 galleries, it covers with a major renovation a ...

and at the Memorial Art Gallery.

Honors, exhibitions and awards

Lie was elected an associate of the

in 1912, and a full member in 1925.Peter Hastings Falk, ed., ''The Annual Exhibition Record of the National Academy of Design, 1901-1950'' (Madison, CT: Sound View Press, 1990), pp. 325-326. He served as NAD's president from 1934 to 1939. He was invited to exhibit four paintings in New York City's 1913

Armory Show The 1913 Armory Show, also known as the International Exhibition of Modern Art, was a show organized by the Association of American Painters and Sculptors in 1913. It was the first large exhibition of modern art in America, as well as one of ...

: ''The Black Teapot'', ''At the Aquarium'', ''A Hill Top'', ''The Quarry''.

Prizes

*St. Louis Purchase Exposition, silver medal for ''A Mill Race'', 1904 *

, First Hallgarten Prize for ''Afterglow'', 1914 *

Panama–Pacific International Exposition The Panama–Pacific International Exposition was a world's fair held in San Francisco, California, United States, from February 20 to December 4, 1915. Its stated purpose was to celebrate the completion of the Panama Canal, but it was widely se ...

, San Francisco, silver medal for ''The Gates of Pedro Miguel'', 1915 * Newport Art Association, Richard Greenough Memorial Prize, Newport, RI, 1916 *Art Week, Philadelphia, gold medal, 1925 * Chicago Norske Klub, Bendickson Prize, 1920 *Chicago Norske Klub, Oscar H. Haugan Prize, 1927 *National Academy of Design,

Carnegie Prize The Carnegie Prize is an international art prize awarded by the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It currently consists of a $10,000 cash prize accompanied by a gold medal. History The Carnegie Prize was established in 1896, to ...

for ''The Cloud'', 1927 * National Arts Club, Maida Gregg Memorial Prize, 1929 *Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Jessie Sesnan Medal for ''Snow'', 1935Peter Hastings Falk, ed., ''The Annual Exhibition Record of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Volume 3, 1914-1968'' (Madison, CT: Sound View Press, 1989), p. 295. *National Academy of Design, Saltus Medal for ''The Curtain Rises'', 1936 *National Academy of Design, Obrig Prize for ''Rockbound Coast'', 1937 *National Academy of Design, Saltus Medal for ''Old Smuggler's Cove'', 1938 *

1939 New York World's Fair The 1939–40 New York World's Fair was a world's fair held at Flushing Meadows–Corona Park in Queens, New York, United States. It was the second-most expensive American world's fair of all time, exceeded only by St. Louis's Louisiana Purchas ...

, third prize for ''Rockbound Coast'', 1939

Selected works

*''A Mill Race'' (1903),

Los Angeles County Museum of Art The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) is an art museum located on Wilshire Boulevard in the Miracle Mile, Los Angeles, California, Miracle Mile vicinity of Los Angeles. LACMA is on Museum Row, adjacent to the La Brea Tar Pits (George C. Pa ...

, Los Angeles, California. Awarded a silver medal at the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair *''View of the Seine'' (1909),

Cummer Museum of Art and Gardens The Cummer Museum of Art and Gardens is a museum located in Jacksonville, Florida. It was founded in 1961 after the death of Ninah Cummer, who bequeathed her gardens and personal art collection to the new museum. The Cummer Museum has since expa ...

, Jacksonville, Florida *''The Black Teapot'' (1911),

Everson Museum of Art Everson may refer to: People with the surname * Ben Everson (born 1987), English footballer * Bill Everson (1906–1966), Welsh international rugby union player * Cliff Everson, a New Zealand car designer and manufacturer * Corinna Everson (born ...

, Syracuse, New York. Exhibited at the 1913 Armory show *''Morning on the River'' (1912), Memorial Art Gallery, Rochester, New York *''Afterglow'' (1913),

Art Institute of Chicago The Art Institute of Chicago in Chicago's Grant Park, founded in 1879, is one of the oldest and largest art museums in the world. Recognized for its curatorial efforts and popularity among visitors, the museum hosts approximately 1.5 mill ...

, Chicago, Illinois. Awarded NAD's 1914 First Hallgarten Prize *''The Bridge'' (1914),

Dallas Museum of Art The Dallas Museum of Art (DMA) is an art museum located in the Arts District of downtown Dallas, Texas, along Woodall Rodgers Freeway between St. Paul and Harwood. In the 1970s, the museum moved from its previous location in Fair Park to the Art ...

, Dallas, Texas *''Path of Gold'' (1914),

, Atlanta, Georgia *''The Old Ships Draw to Home Again'' (1920),

Brooklyn Museum The Brooklyn Museum is an art museum located in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. At , the museum is New York City's second largest and contains an art collection with around 1.5 million objects. Located near the Prospect Heights, Crown H ...

, Brooklyn, New York City *''When the Boats Come In'' (1921), Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts *''Out to Sea'' (1924),

Cleveland Museum of Art The Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA) is an art museum in Cleveland, Ohio, located in the Wade Park District, in the University Circle neighborhood on the city's east side. Internationally renowned for its substantial holdings of Asian and Egyptian ...

, Cleveland, Ohio *''Blue and Silver'' (1925), National Academy of Design Museum, New York City *''The Headlands'' (1934),

Montclair Art Museum The Montclair Art Museum (MAM) is located in Montclair, New Jersey, United States, a few miles west of New York City. Since it opened in 1914 as the first museum in New Jersey that granted access to the public and the first dedicated solely to a ...

, Montclair, New Jersey *''Snow'' (1935), Ex collection:

Saint Louis Art Museum The Saint Louis Art Museum (SLAM) is one of the principal U.S. art museums, with paintings, sculptures, cultural objects, and ancient masterpieces from all corners of the world. Its three-story building stands in Forest Park in St. Louis, Mi ...

, St. Louis, Missouri. Awarded PAFA's 1935 Jessie Sesnan Medal. Auctioned at Christie's New York, 27 September 2011, Lot 43.

Panama Canal Series

Lie painted thirty large-scale canvases depicting construction of the Panama Canal. Twelve of them are at the U.S. Military Academy at

West Point The United States Military Academy (USMA), also known Metonymy, metonymically as West Point or simply as Army, is a United States service academies, United States service academy in West Point, New York. It was originally established as a f ...

. *''The Conquerors'' (1913),

, New York City *''Culebra Cut'' (1913),

Detroit Museum of Art The Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA), located in Midtown Detroit, Michigan, has one of the largest and most significant art collections in the United States. With over 100 galleries, it covers with a major renovation and expansion project complete ...

, Detroit, Michigan *''Toil'' (1913),

, West Point, New York *''The Gates of Pedro Miguel'' (1913), United States Military Academy, West Point, New York. Awarded a silver medal at the 1915 Panama–Pacific International Exposition. *''Crane at Miraflores'' (1913), United States Military Academy, West Point, New York *''Heavenly Hoist'' (1913), United States Military Academy, West Point, New YorkHeavenly Host
from SIRIS.

Sources

''Biography of Jonas Lie''
by Dina Tolfsby, Curator of the Norwegian-American Collection, National Library of Norway. Published by the Norwegian chapter of the Norwegian-American Historical Association, Vol. XI, 285-311 * Haugan, Reidar Rye (1933) ''Prominent Artists and Exhibits of Their Work in Chicago'' (Chicago Norske Klub. Nordmanns-Forbundet, 24: 371—374, Volume 7) *Lovoll, Odd S. (1988) ''A Century of Urban Life: the Norwegians in Chicago before 1930'' (Northfield, MN: Norwegian-American Historical Association)

References

External links

Jonas Lie (Coley Gallery.com)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Lie, Jonas 1880 births 1940 deaths People from Moss, Norway 20th-century American painters American male painters 20th-century Norwegian painters Norwegian male painters Norwegian emigrants to the United States Recipients of the St. Olav's Medal Olympic competitors in art competitions 20th-century American male artists Art Students League of New York alumni 20th-century Norwegian male artists Members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters