Soren Emil Carlsen -- painter

Soren Emil Carlsen (1853 - 1932). He emigrated to the US from Denmark. He's been called the American Chardin. In 1917, Duncan Phillips said this:

I know that Carlsen's only philosophic intention is to paint beautiful, pleasurable pictures. And yet it always seems to me that he is trying to find a formal symbolical expression for the thought that nature exerts an influence curiously hypnotic.

On the Lagoon, Venice (1910)

I appreciate it when an artist paints water as if it's light-blue mystic plasma. That really pleases me. A half-ton of stuff instantly lifts off me when I see such water.

Still Life with Self Portrait Reflection (1931)

Sometimes, I like to stare at black glazed jugs and white ceramic bowls.