# Emil Carlsen artist context and auction value notes

Canonical page: https://appraisily.com/artist/emil-carlsen/
Profile generated: 2026-05-09T15:03:32.207Z
Quality: high confidence, strong sources

## Artist identity

- Birth date: 1853-10-19
- Death date: 1932-01-02
- Nationality: Danish, American
- Movements: American Impressionism
- Common media: oil painting

## About Emil Carlsen

Emil Carlsen (born Søren Emil Carlsen) was a Danish-American painter and educator recognized for his landscapes, marine compositions, and still-life works. Born in Copenhagen, Denmark, Carlsen trained in architecture at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts before emigrating to the United States in 1872. He established his career across several American art centers—Chicago, Boston, San Francisco, New York, and Connecticut—serving as director of the California School of Design in San Francisco during the late 1880s and sharing a studio with Arthur Mathews. Carlsen spent his final decades working in New York and Connecticut, where he produced the refined landscape and marine paintings for which he is best known today. His work bridges Danish academic training and American painting traditions of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

## Common works and media

Carlsen's most frequently encountered works are oil paintings of landscapes, coastal and harbor marine scenes, and still-life compositions. His Connecticut hillside landscapes, harbor views, and fish-and-game still lifes are recurrent subjects in auction records. Works range from intimate cabinet-sized paintings to larger exhibition-scale canvases. Drawings and archival material may also surface in estate or museum deaccession contexts.

## Market and appraisal context

Emil Carlsen's paintings appear with moderate regularity at auction, with nearly 500 recorded lots. Collectors and appraisers should consider several factors when evaluating his work. The medium—primarily oil on canvas—subject matter, dimensions, date of execution, and condition all influence appraisal outcomes. Provenance, including gallery labels and exhibition history, can significantly strengthen a work's market position. Attribution requires care, as Carlsen's name appears in variant spellings (including 'Carlson') in some historical records. Comparable public auction results should be consulted alongside specialist review.

## Appraisily data basis

Appraisily artist pages combine artist identity research from authority files and institutional sources with auction records, auction-house context, sale dates, realized prices, and comparable lots when those records are available. For Emil Carlsen, identity data is drawn from the Getty Union List of Artist Names, the Library of Congress Name Authority File, the RKD Netherlands Institute for Art History, VIAF, and Wikidata.

## Sources

- Wikidata: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5371205
- Getty Vocabulary Program: https://vocab.getty.edu/page/ulan/500005813
- VIAF: https://viaf.org/viaf/33432533/
- VIAF: https://viaf.org/viaf/6610148814312845330005/
- Library of Congress: https://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n85141186
- RKD Netherlands Institute for Art History: https://rkd.nl/en/explore/artists/15432