Frants Bøe

Frants Diderik Bøe started his apprenticeship as a thirteen-year-old with master painter Momsen in his home town of Bergen. He later studied in Copenhagen and eventually became a pupil of the landscape painter Christen Købke.

In 1849 he traveled to Paris where, for the next eight years, he studied among other things under the flower painters Theude Grønland and Saint Jean. The year before, in 1848, he undertook study trips to Holland and Belgium, and later visited cities with artistic recognition such as Düsseldorf, Dresden and Berlin.

Already as an apprentice in applied art, Bøe painted his first still life, and it was in this genre that he later specialized. In 1851 he painted the picture A Bunch of Grapes, which was bought by the French state. The following year, the painting Fruktstykke was awarded an honorable mention and bought by the National Gallery in Norway.

About his relationship with the Nordland region he wrote: In the summer of 1858 I traveled to Nordland to study the bird life in the remarkable light of the midnight sun. I was hospitably received by Frits Jensen, who was now parish priest in Vesterålen. I spent two years with him, where I painted, among other things, An eagle with prey. After repeated calls from parish priest Neumann in Lofoten, I spent three years with him. Here I completed The swimming duck, Grouse in spring dress and my masterpiece Fuglebjerg.

In 1864 he married Hanna Maria Arnesen, a teacher from Lofoten. The couple moved the same year to Bergen, where Bøe lived for the rest of his life.