Lorentz Severin Skougaard

Lorentz Severin Skougaard (11 May 1837 - 14 February 1885) was a Norwegian tenor.

Lorentz Severin Skougaard
Born(1837-05-11)11 May 1837
Farsund, Norway
Died14 February 1885(1885-02-14) (aged 47)
New York City, U.S.
OccupationSinger
Partner(s)Alfred Corning Clark
Parent(s)Jonas Eilertsen Lund Schougaard
Sara Helene Jonasdatter Lund

Early life
Lorentz Severin Skougaard

Lorentz Severin Skougaard was born on 11 May 1837 in Farsund, Norway, the son of Jonas Eilertsen Lund Schougaard (1807-1877) and Sara Helene Jonasdatter Lund (1813-1910).

At first he was a trading officer, working at first in Memel, Norway, and then London. Later he moved to Paris and Italy to study music.[1]

Career

In 1864 Lorentz Severin Skougaard sang in Stockholm, Berlin and Christiania. In Paris in 1866, he met Alfred Corning Clark.[2]

In 1866 Skougaard gave a series of recitals in New York City in conjunction with Alfred H. Pease at the Irving Hall. The recitals introduced him favorably to the New York public and he became a successful vocal teacher.[3] In 1874 he have a charitable concert at the Steinway Hall in aid of the Scandinavian poor of New York City. There were a large number of performers and it was under the patronage of many prominent persons.[4]

Personal life
Brotherly Love (1886-87) by George Grey Barnard, Langesund, Norway

Lorentz Severin Skougaard moved to the United States in 1866.[3] In 1869, the same year when he married, Clark began making annual summer visits to Norway with Skougaard, eventually building a house on an island near Skougaard's family home.[3][2] Clark's son, born in 1870, bears the middle name of Severin. When in New York City, Skougaard lived in Clark's flat at 64 West 22nd Street.[5] The apartment was a favorite evening resort for music lovers, attracted by Skougaard's very companionable qualities, and the house for years was known as "Severini Hall".[3][6] According to Nicholas Fox Weber's biographer of the Clark family (The Clarks of Cooperstown, 2007), Clark led a double life, in the United States a family man, in Europe a gay aesthete. For 19 years his closest companion was Skougaard.[3][7][8]

On 14 February 1885, in New York City, Skougaard died of typhoid fever.[2][3]

Legacy

Clark eulogized him in a privately published biographical sketch, Lorentz Severin Skougaard : a sketch, mainly autobiographic[9] and created a $64,000 endowment in his memory for Manhattan's Norwegian Hospital, 4th Avenue & 46th Street.[10]

Clark also commissioned Brotherly Love (1886–87) to American sculptor George Grey Barnard to adorn his friend's grave in Langesund, Norway.[11] The homoerotic sculpture depicts two nude male figures blindly reaching out to each other through the block of marble that separates them.[12] Later Clark moved Barnard to New York City and maintained him.[13]

References
  1. Haandlexikon, Norsk. "Skougaard, Lorentz Severin , Norsk Haandlexikon (1881-1888)". Retrieved 7 January 2018.
  2. Harold E. Dickson, "Barnard and Norway," The Art Bulletin, vol. 44, no. 1 (March 1962), pp. 55-59.(JSTOR) $
  3. "L. Skougaard Severini - 15 Feb 1885, Sun • Page 2". The New York Times: 2. 1885. Retrieved 7 January 2018.
  4. "Charitable Concert - 17 Jan 1874, Sat • Page 4". The New York Times: 4. 1874. Retrieved 7 January 2018.
  5. Applegate, Debby (20 May 2007). "The Clarks of Cooperstown - Nicholas Fox Weber - Books - Review". The New York Times. Retrieved 11 December 2019.
  6. Nicholas Fox Weber, The Clarks of Cooperstown: Their Singer Sewing Machine Fortune, Their Great and Influential Art Collections, Their Forty-year Feud. Alfred A. Knopf, 2007. ISBN 0307263479, pg. 76
  7. Debby Applegate, "Outrageous Fortune," The New York Times Book Review, May 20, 2007.
  8. Buckman, Jack (2016). Unraveling The Threads: The Life, Death and Resurrection of the Singer Sewing Machine Company, America's First Multi-National Corporation. Dog Ear Publishing. p. 102. ISBN 9781457546617. Retrieved 7 January 2018.
  9. Alfred Corning Clark, Lorentz Severin Skougaard: a sketch, mainly autobiographic, (privately published, 1885), from WorldCat.
  10. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, January 26, 1911, p. 1.
  11. Glenn C. Altschuler, "Meet 3 Generations of American Originals," The Baltimore Sun, June 17, 2007.
  12. "George Grey Barnard (1863 – 1938)," in Lauretta Dimmick and Donna J. Hassler. American Sculpture in the Metropolitan Museum of Art: A catalogue of works by artists born before 1865. Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1999. pp. 421-27.
  13. Applegate, Debby (18 May 2007). "Book Review: The Clarks of Cooperstown". The New York Times. Retrieved 11 December 2019.
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