By Robbie LaFleur

Update (2022): It is found. See A Missing Frida Hansen Tapestry Rediscovered.

Fans of Frida Hansen and fans of mysteries–here’s a quest for you.  Where is this missing Frida Hansen tapestry? We’re looking for your help.

Frida Hansen (1855–1931) was one of Norway’s most famous tapestry artists. She fit perfectly into the national romantic period at the end of the 19th century; she studied traditional weaving techniques and dyes. Her Art Nouveau style gained international acclaim; her most famous work, “Melkeveien,” (Milky Way), won a gold medal at the Paris Worlds Fair in 1900. As her style became more “European,” her popularity waned in Norway–in contrast, for example, to Gerhard Munthe’s popular tapestry images based on Norwegian folk tales.

Frida Hansen is overlooked no more.  Especially after the retrospective of her work at the Stavanger Art Museum in 2015, she regained her place as an important figure in Norwegian art, and her innovation and excellence in weaving is fully recognized. 

Most of Frida Hansen’s works were purchased outside Norway by museums and collectors.  That brings us to our story of the missing swans and maidens. A few years after “Melkeveien,” she wove “Sørover,” or “Southward,” with ten maidens riding on swans. The pieces have a similar diagonal composition. 

“Southward” was purchased off the loom in 1903 by Berthea Aske Bergh, who had studied with Frida Hansen. She brought it back to the United States, where it was  exhibited several times up to 1931, at venues including the Walforf Astoria Hotel in New York (1904), the Smithsonian (1924), the Hotel Astor in Boston (1928), the Toledo Museum of Art (1931), and the Brooklyn Museum (1926, 1931). No color photos remain, but according to the cartoon and a description in House Beautiful in 1929, the main colors were blue, white, and silver, with a border of green and violet (“An Old Art for the New World,” by Miriam Ott Munson, House Beautiful, July 1929, p. 42+). From that article, here is the flowery description of Berthea Aske Bergh’s purchase of “Southward,” and also “King Sigurd’s Entrance into the Holy Port”  (based on a cartoon by Gerhard Munthe, and woven by Frida Hansen):

Some years ago Mrs. Bergh made a statement to a group of American connoisseurs that her country not only possessed a highly developed art of weaving, but that it antedated by many centuries any similar European art. Her audience was skeptical and so, to prove her assertion, she sailed to Norway just one week from the date of the discussion to bring back to America convincing and beautiful proof of her statement.

Straight to Mrs. Hansen’s studio she went, where the magnificent tapestry “Southward” stood on the loom, nearing completion. To Mrs. Hansen she said, “I must have that tapestry to take back to America.”

Mrs. Hansen demurred, because practically all her tapestries are sold on the loom, and, true artist that she is, she does not duplicate work. But so insistent was Mrs. Bergh that Mrs. Hansen yielded to her entreaties, and ‘Southward’ was destined for America. So too was a duplicate of the tapestry “King Sigurd’s Entrance into the Holy Port,” since King Oskar II of Norway, who possessed the original, was unable to withstand Mrs. Bergh’s enthusiasm and entreaties.

My interest in finding the missing ‘Southward” tapestry was sparked by two curators, Monica Obniski and Bobbye Tigerman, who are working on an upcoming exhibit, Scandinavian Design and the United States, 1890-1980, which will open at the Milwaukee Museum in May 2020 and at the Los Angeles Museum of Art in October 2020. They are exploring the influence of Scandinavian design in America and the exchange of design ideas between the US and the Nordic countries throughout the 20th century. Monica Obniski wrote, “The textiles of Frida Hansen were shown in the United States (which is why we are interested in her work); her textiles also spurred interest in Norwegian weaving. We have tried to track down “Sørover,” which was owned by Berthea Aske Bergh; it was shown at an important 1931 show at the Brooklyn Museum, and it was prominently displayed at the Norse-American Centennial in Minneapolis in 1925.”

Southward was woven with wool and silver threads on a cotton warp and at approximately 114″ x 142″, it was impressively large. When it was shown at the Brooklyn Museum as part of an exhibition of Scandinavian Industrial Arts in 1926, Katrine Hvidt Bie wrote in Brooklyn Life and Activities of Long Island Society  (Saturday, May 1, 1926):

“Southward” is of great beauty; as lovely as “The Milky Way” and “Salome’s Dance” or “The Finding of Moses.” It is a thing one will always remember, and love to dream about; the lithe and clean-limbed goddesses are speeding swiftly southward through the sea on the backs of young swans. They are carrying back the sun, and flowers which they loaned the North to make the long summer.

The second time it appeared at the Brooklyn Museum, as part of the “Modern Tapestries” exhibit (February 7-February 28, 1931), the press notice stated: 

One of the most famous contemporary tapestry makers, Mme. Frieda Hansen of Christiana, Norway, is well represented by “Southward” and “Pond Lilies”, both of which were designed and woven by her. She became known as early as 1900 and now her works in this field hang in royal palaces in Norway, England, Italy, Germany, Sweden and Denmark and in three large museums. “Southward” is lent by Mrs. Berthe D. Aske Bergh of The Weavers, New York. This tapestry illustrates a Norse myth of golden-haired daughters of the sun who go sailing southward in diagonals across a geometric sea after having brought flowers and light to the north. It is woven in wool and silver.

On June 7, 1931, the New York Times carried an article about a new exhibit at the Homemaking Center at Grand Central Palace (“Arts and Crafts from Foreign Lands,” by Walter Storey Rendell, New York Times, June 7, 1931: SM9). The “Norwegian Exhibit” was shown courtesy of Berthea Aske Bergh, and featured tapestries by Frida Hansen from her collection. “One of her wall hangings on exhibition depicts the entry of King Sigurd into Byzantium, Istanbul of today, and another has a motif of pond lilies.”  “Southward” is not mentioned, which is interesting, but not definitive. Could she have sold it during or after the Brooklyn Museum exhibit earlier that year?

What happened to “Southward” and the other pieces by Frida Hansen owned by Berthea Aske Bergh? Did she own them until the end of her life? Did her son inherit them? He died only five years after her. These are the details of their life spans, from Ancestry.com pages gleaned from a Google search.

Berthea Antonia Aske was born in Stavanger, Rogaland, Norway on October 18th, 1867.  She married Oskar William Bergh, who died in 1937. She died on June 15, 1954, in Brooklyn, New York.

Bethea and Oskar had three children. One died the same year he was born, in 1893. Their son Norman Meriam Bergh was born in Duluth, Minnesota, on August 6, 1890.  Norman  married Elizabeth Lamson Griffin. He passed away on November 21, 1959, in Keene, New Hampshire, and his wife died in the same town in 1961.

Another son, John Nito Bergh, was born in 1895, but the Ancestry database does not have information on his death date, nor that of his wife, Ann Loretto Kinchsular.

I can picture the beautiful hand-dyed blue tones of the waves on “Southward,” set off by glistening silver threads. Odds are they will only remain in my imagination.  I’ll continue my research, and try to find more information on Berthea Aske Bergh and her studio, The Weavers, Inc.,  when I visit New York City in February, 2019. Perhaps before then an alert Norwegian Textile Letter reader, or someone you know, will locate Frida Hansen’s missing masterpiece?  Let’s crowdsource this conundrum.

Do you have information about Frida Hansen’s works in the U.S., or information about Berthe Aske Bergh and her weaving school in Brooklyn?  Do you have ideas for further research?  Please let me know at lafleur1801@me.com.

Looking for more information on Frida Hansen? Anniken Thue is the premier Hansen biographer.  Her book, Frida Hansen: En Europeer i Norsk Tekstilkunst (A European in Norwegian Textile Art), published in 1986, is only in Norwegian. A more recent title, Frida Hansen: Art Nouveau i Full Blomst, published by the Stavanger Art Museum in 2015, includes several essays on Hansen’s art, with English translations.  (Neither are easily available in the U.S.)

There are many references with images online.  You could start with the website of the Stavanger Art Museum, here, with this overview on the the Norwegian Absolute Tapestry site (the overview of Norwegian tapestry puts Frida Hansen in context), and with two recent interesting blog posts: “Fabricadabra: Frida Hansen, 1855–1931” by Travis Boyer and “Frida Hansen and the Making of Art Nouveau.” I wrote about Hansen in “Now I Like Frida Hansen Even More,” and recently in “When Frida Hansen Sought a Weaving Teacher.” I will continue to write about Frida Hansen as I embark on a study of her work in Norway, with the support of the American Scandinavian Foundation.  Robbie LaFleur