In 2013, I bought an oil painting at an auction in Skien, Norway. It dates from 1920, and depicts a man reading a newspaper. The artist – a Norwegian named Henry Thue, isn’t well known to the general public, but he was a student under Chr. Krohg from 1914-16. He had a few shows in Norway before he moved to Paris in 1919. In 1921 he dies, only 30 years old of pneumonia, during a stay in Nice. Ever since I bought the painting, I have always wondered about what kind of life Henry Thue was living – Who was he with? How did he spend his days? The newspaper the model is reading in the painting actually has a date on it, so at one point, it became an obsession to find a copy of this particular issue. In January 2015 I finally found it. Le Matin, 19.02.21. It is now framed, with glass on both sides, so that the viewer can read what he was reading that day in Paris, February 1921.
The work has been showed at Høstutstillingen Kunstnernes Hus in Oslo 2015, and in the groupshow Defaced at Prosjektrom Normanns in Stavanger 2016
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