Rome
NILS LANDMARK SOLBERG
1920 ~ 1955
About Nils Solberg
Nils was born in 1920 at Melmoth, Zululand, the son of Norwegian missionaries. He went to school in Eshowe and showed a great gift for drawing and painting. At the age of 16 he went to Durban to train in a commercial art firm, while studying part-time at Natal Technical College. In 1939 he won the College’s Emma Smith Scholarship, which would enable him to study in Europe but this was to be delayed seven years by the war.
In 1943, aged 23, he joined the Sixth South African Armoured Division as a tank driver and he became Art Editor for 'The Sable', the Division's official magazine. He actually managed to form an art class in the Egyptian desert, producing many watercolours from a one and elevenpenny child's paint box. It was said he was the only trooper to tell three generals what to do. Lt. Gen. Pierre van Rynevald, Maj. Gens. H.J. Klopper and W.H. Poole all sat for Solberg portraits.
Trooper Solberg is an able craftsman and can improvise – a most important attribute for the soldier–artist on active service. Indeed all his water colours produced in the desert have come out of a box of paints which cost him 1/11d.
Solberg is rapidly establishing a reputation for himself as one of the most promising of all South African war artists – his service in the ranks has a enabled him to introduce a quality of understanding of the suffering which the ordinary people – the men in the ranks – involved in this war have to endure.
Already two of his paintings have been purchased by the South African War Art Committee. These were “Soldiers’ Toilet” and “Desert Whirlwind”, and were on view at the Divisional Arts and Crafts Exhibition during 1943.
Holder of the coveted Emma Smith Scholarship, which will enable him to spend at least one year studying Fine Arts in London and on the Continent, Nils plans to concentrate purely on painting when he is able to continue with his career. Before his enlistment he served his apprenticeship as a commercial artist, but painting has always remained his greatest interest. His work first attracted public attention eight years ago when, at fifteen, he had a picture accepted for exhibition by the Natal Society of Artists. Since that time he has exhibited regularly with the S. A. Artists in Johannesburg, Pietermaritzburg and Capetown.
Solberg does not confine his art to painting. He is also an accomplished violinist and was a member of the Durban Philharmonic Orchestra before he enlisted. It is not unusual to see him hunched over his drawing board in the desert, busy on some water–colour, and whistling the strains of Dvorak’s ‘Humoresque’.
Cheerful, hard-working, unspoilt by the genuine successes he has achieved, Nils Solberg seems destined for big things in his chosen line.
There is a trooper in the Sixth Division who has had three Generals under his “command”. He is Nils Solberg, a 23 year-old South-African born Norwegian painter, who, with his brush, pen and pencil, has enriched the pages of “The Sable”. Lt.–Gen. Sir Pierre Van Ryneveld, Chief of the General Staff, Maj.–Gen. (now Brigadier) H. J. Klopper and Maj.–Gen. W. H. E. Poole have all sat for him and during these sittings they did exactly as he “ordered”.
PORTRAIT OF AN ARTIST
From 'The Sable', May 1944
He went with the Sixth Division up to North Africa, from Cairo across to Italy and on upwards to Rome, wielding a sketchbook and his cheap paintbox all the way. Thankfully largely unscathed, the only injury he sustained was when someone dropped a razor blade into a bar of soap. He was demobbed in November 1945 and returned to study art in Durban.
In 1946 Nils was able to take up the scholarship and set sail for the UK, studying for two years at London's Regent Street Polytechnic Art School. The Headmaster wrote to him after he had left "...thanks for, by coming here, introducing us to the best student we have had from South Africa, and one who, we are confident, will make a mark on the painting of his country."
While in London he met his future wife, Ann Cozens-Hardy. He often visited her home in Letheringsett, Norfolk, where he painted many pictures, including "Letheringsett Mill", which was exhibited at the 1947 Royal Academy exhibition. In 1948 Nils married Ann and they went to Italy where he studied in the British School in Rome, before sailing for Africa, arriving in Durban where he began work as a commercial artist. However, all his spare time was devoted to landscape, still life and portrait painting.
Letheringsett Mill
In 1951 he helped found the Bantu, Indian and Coloured Art Group (BICA), which he taught regularly. Two years later he held a successful one-man exhibition in Durban and a year later had the honour of becoming a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA). He was also elected President of the Natal Society of Artists but was already falling ill to Hodgkin's Disease. He struggled on with great courage until he was too weak to hold a paintbrush. His last painting "Ann with 'cello" was completed just before he died on April 28th 1955, a few days before his 35th birthday.
On May 2nd the "Nils Solberg Goodwill Exhibition" was opened by the Mayor of Durban to honour his memory and help his dependants. About one hundred paintings were donated by local artists. A friend wrote: "Nils' work will keep him alive among us all but as well as a great artist he was a great man, and I shall always feel that I have been privileged in knowing him." Ann and their children Karen, Graham and Richard Nils returned to live in Norfolk.