Knute Heldner (1877-1952)
A native of Vederlow Smoland, Sweden, Knute Heldner came to the United States in 1902. Upon his arrival, he worked as a cobbler in Minneapolis for several years. Heldner was later a miner on the Iron Range and a forest guide and lumberjack in the woods of northern Minnesota before he decided to devote himself completely to painting. After making this decision, he studied at the Minneapolis School of Art for three terms. Heldner subsequently studied at the Art Institute of Chicago, the Art Students’ League in New York, and the Academy of Scandinavian Art in Paris. He spent several winters in St. Augustine, Florida before visiting New Orleans in 1922.
In 1923, Heldner moved to New Orleans permanently, established himself in the Vieux Carre and lived with his family on St. Peters Street in the French Quarter. He died in New Orleans on November 5, 1952. Heldner was a socially-minded painter who created absorbing descriptions of lumber camps, mining areas, black Southerners, and sharecroppers. He was a man interested in every phase of life and represented these aspects of life and death in his landscapes, portraits, and genre scenes. Heldner followed no specific school or style and in fact felt equally comfortable in a conventional, impressionistic manner of painting as in a more abstract style.
During his lifetime Heldner was often praised for his ability to use and incorporate many different styles of painting. One critic commented that viewing an exhibition of Heldner’s works actually seems as if one was seeing an exhibition of paintings by five or six men of different techniques and temperaments. Heldner’s landscapes, many of which are of Louisiana’s bayous and marshes, possess a symbolic and spiritual quality. It is, however, his “toil and the soil” works which are most sympathetic and emotion-filled. “The Cost of Labor”, one of his most well-known paintings, depicts the tragedy of a mine accident. His “Cotton Pickers” inspired several critics to begin referring to Heldner as “America’s Millet.” “The Pig Woman” similarly represents a realistic and sympathetic portrayal of the rural life of Southern blacks during the first half of the 20th century.
Heldner exhibited for the first time in 1915 at the Minnesota State Fair where he won the gold medal. He won another gold medal at the fair in 1920. Early on in his career, Heldner had become a favorite artist of President Harding and one of his paintings hung in the White House from 1921-1923. By 1927, Heldner was considered one of the leading fifteen artists in the United States by the Art Institute of Chicago. He won the Scandinavian-United States Artist’s Award in two separate years, 1924 and 1938.
After 1923, he became a member of the New Orleans Art League and the New Orleans Art Association. Throughout his lifetime, his paintings were exhibited at the Art Institute of Chicago, Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C., Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and in Milwaukee. His painting of a black woman paddling a boat in a bayou became a part of the collection at the Smithsonian Institution in the 1930s. Moreover, he was an internationally acclaimed artist, winning honors at the Paris Salon and in Stockholm during his two-year stay in Europe which began in 1929.
By the time of his death, Knute Heldner was ranked by the American Federation of Artists as one of the twelve greatest living artists. He was considered one of the “old guard” of Vieux Carre artists who “worked, and played. . . obtained glamor from and cast glamor on the French Quarter.” Although nearly blind, Heldner continued to paint until his death at age 77.
Information courtesy of Charlton Hall Galleries