Harald Moltke

Harald Viggo Graf Moltke ( born June 14, 1871 in Helsingør, † June 24, 1960 in Frederiksborg ) was a Danish portrait and landscape painter, draftsman, polar explorer, as well as porcelain and stamp artist.

Life

Harald Moltke was the second of four children of his parents, Oscar and Karen Marie née Jensen. In the 1870s, the family moved to York, North Carolina, United States. After his father's death on 12 November 1882, the family returned to Denmark. 1889 Harald began his studies at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen, graduating in 1893. In 1894, he exhibited his works for the first time out in the autumn exhibition in the Kunsthalle Charlotte Borg.

1898 Harald Moltke took his first expedition together with the geologist John Knud Vogelius Steenstrup and the botanist Morten Pedersen Porsild to Disko Bay on the west coast of Greenland. 1899-1900 undertook the Danish Meteorological Institute under the leadership of its director, Adam Paulsen an expedition to Iceland. With the help of two specially constructed for the expedition spectrograph wanted to explore the northern lights. However, as no pictures of the northern lights phenomena could be made with the former photographic device, it required a visual artist to hold her. So Harald Moltke took part in this expedition, as well as on the to Utsjoki in Finland 1900/1901, when it also went to the Northern Lights. Moltke Northern Lights Photos from Iceland and Finland are kept in the Danish Meteorological Institute, but are not accessible to the public.

1902-1904 took Moltke under Ludvig Mylius Erichsen together with Knud Rasmussen on the Literary Greenland Expedition on the northwest coast of Greenland in part. The aim of the expedition that crossed the Melville Bay to Cape York, there to hold the myths and legends of the Polar Eskimos and publish together with illustrations in a great work on Greenland was. During this expedition ill Moltke heavy and floated a long time between life and death. He was left with a paralysis that would affect him for the rest of his life in the performance of his work. During his convalescence, he finished his major work, the portraits of the Inuit of Cape York. His companion, he portrayed.

From 1907 to 1908 Moltke worked for the Royal Danish Porcelain Manufactory, for whom he designed three plates commemorating the Danish expedition to the north-east coast of Greenland from 1906 to 1908, in which the researcher Niels Peter Høeg -Hagen ( 1877-1907 ), Mylius - Erichsen and Jørgen Brønlund lost their lives - the subject he took in 1933 for a commemorative medal again on. He then worked for the porcelain manufacturer Bing & Grøndahl, for which he designed the plate years 1909 and 1910, the latter with the theme " northern Poland Erobring " ( conquest of the North Pole ).

For the anti-tuberculosis campaign in Greenland in 1930 he designed a poster, later, the first two stamps of Greenland.

Moltke's artistic work can be found in the National Museum of Copenhagen, Frederiksborg in Hillerød National History Museum as well as Museum at Kronborg in Elsinore. In Greenland, several place names recall Harald Moltke, so to Qeqertarsuaq ( Disko Island ), the Harald Moltke Dal (Harald Moltke Valley) and Moltke Glacier, in the northwest, south of Qaanaaq, the Harald Moltke Brae (Harald Moltke Glacier) with the subsequent Moltke Sø ( Moltkesee ), on Independence Fjord in northeast Cape Harald Moltke, south of it on the inland ice of outstanding. Moltke Nunatak and finally on the south east coast of Cape Moltke