The Long Wave
Tuesday, May 17th, 2011
Bror Julius Olsson NORDFELDT (American 1878 – 1955)
The Long Wave, 1903
Donovan 3. Color woodcut on laid paper.
Signed and dated in pencil.
7 7/16 x 14 11/16 in.; 18.89 x 37.31 cm.
Bror Julius Olsson Nordfeldt was born in Sweden, moving at the age of 14 with his family to the United States, settling in Chicago. In 1896 he began studies at the Art Institute of Chicago while working as a typesetter on the Swedish newspaper, “Hemlandet”. At the Art Institute, he studied with Frederick Richardson and John H. Vanderpool. Nordfeldt traveled to Paris in 1900 to study at the Académie Julian and in 1901 he studied woodblock printing in Oxford, England with F. Morley Fletcher. He returned to Sweden to live and work in Jonstorp, a village on the Western coast. The Long Wave would appear to be from this period. After 1903 Nordfeldt lived in Chicago, then in Paris, San Francisco during WWI (where he supervised the camouflaging of merchant ships!), then Santa Fe and a host of other U.S. locations ending up in scenic Lambertville, New Jersey where he died in 1955.
