Achton Friis

"Friis, Achton Johannes, 1871-1939, was a painter and illustrator. He was born 5.9.1871 in Trustrup, Lyngby Sogn, Randers County and died 17.12.1939 in Copenhagen.... His mother was Gårdsmandsdatter Maren F. Fries was married on 15.12.1909 with violinist Martha Elster in Copenhagen. She was born 17.9.1879 smst., died 28.2.1966 in Frederiksberg, daughter of gross. Search captain Chr. Gregers E. and Lovise Augusta Petersen.

Achton Friis was a farmer with aristocratic features, which, without being a superior gift in some of the many areas he was dealing with, nevertheless left a holy and rarely reasonable life work. At the Danish expedition with Mylius-Erichsen he became a writer and visual artist caught by the landscapes on the northeast coast of Greenland. In addition to a series of deep and insistent landscape paintings, he created etched and painted portraits of the friend Jørgen Brønlund, among others. For example Mylius-Erichsen Greenlandic books. Friis performed drawn and written travel descriptions, such as in the book Arctic Hunter, but his special talent was expressed in the artist's vastly landmark Denmark, The Islands of the Danes, De Jyders Land, and the Great Islands of Denmark. The vast work, supported by the Ministry of Education and the New Carlsberg Foundation, was initiated with a series of exploration of boat along the Danish coasts in partnership with the friend, Johannes Larsen, who, like Andreas Friis and Knud Kyhn, contributed to Denmark's Great Islands. Although it is not least the latter's many pencil drawings that have made the overall work of a classic, it is no less than Friis profit that he has managed to capture and maintain a now lost Denmark, in an effortless and richly registered language. He with a watchful eye for the distinctive character has drawn a large number of Danish general types. The effort, in continuation of reunion, appears as a sort of completion of the national romantic image of Denmark, which began in the Golden Age, and Friis was getting ready before the world to which he relate broke with World War II. Hans Denmark is coastal and caress, from place to place inhabited by both healthy and hard races with individual features and behaviors. The work can not be fragmented, but has its strength in the whole.

He was educated by the Technical School Aarhus 1894; Kunstacademy Copenhagen. February 1895-May 1899; Learned etching techniques from Carl Locher 1900-01. As a visual artist he attended as artist in the Danmark Expedition to Greenland 1906- 08; He also travelled to Germany, Italy, Switzerland and France 1909-10; Paris 1914; Berlin and Dresden 1915.

He worked for Bing and Gröndahl from 1912 - 1925."

Main information source: Kunstindex Danmark & Weilbachs Kunstnerleksikon