1855 Room 22 Metropolitan Block, Chicago, Illinois.[1][2]
1856 6 Washington Avenue, Madison, Wisconsin.
Lund, Theodore. Miniaturist, working in New York City, 1836-43…
1856 April 26. Wisconsin Patriot. (Madison, Wisconsin.) April 26, 1856, Vol. 2, No. 47, P. 4.
Picture Gallery.—We have neglected to speak as we should, of the Picture Gallery of Messrs Fuller & Johnson, at Madison. Associated with them is Mr. Joslin, from Hesler’s celebrated establishment, at Chicago, an artist of the first class, and they have also Mr. Lund, who painted the State Banner, and who, in some departments of art, is excelled by no artist in the country. They take Daguerreotypes, Ambrotypes and Photographs, on paper or canvas, of all sizes; and among the curiosities to be seen there is a book containing the portraits of the pioneers of Wisconsin, which are faithful likenesses of the men who were the first to begin the work of converting the wilderness into fruitful fields and making the waste places bloom like the garden of Eden. Those you visit Madison, should not fail to see Fuller & Jackson’s Picture Gallery.—Free D. m.
1895 August 30. The Racine Times. (Racine, Wisconsin.) August 30, 1895, Vol. XXI, P. 8.
Obituary. Lund. T. Lund died at his home in the town of Raymond yesterday of dropsy, aged 85 years. The funeral will be held tomorrow afternoon at 10 o’clock.
Biography from the Archives of askART.com
The artist Theodore Lund was born Harold Emil Theodor Lund in Nykobing, Falster, Denmark on July 26, 1810. He studied at the Royal Academy of Art in Copenhagen from 1832 through 1834 and emigrated to New York about 1836. That year (as H. Lund) he is on record of exhibiting a miniature of a Rev. Mr. Sommers in the National Academy of Design. Similarly, in 1837 he exhibited several portrait miniatures, this time as F. Lund. However by his marriage to Caroline Matilda Handson 1839 at the First Moravian Church in New York, he had settled on the name Theodore Lund.
He soon turned from miniatures to full-size portraits, and is known to have also painted subjects from nature and some landscapes. He was commissioned to paint murals on the first Wisconsin State House, which he completed, but that building later burned to the ground.
While Lund first lived in America at 202 Broadway, New York, he purchased 160 acres of land in Racine County, Wisconsin in October 1842, and moved his family there the next spring. Soon thereafter, Theodore Lund became an itinerant artist, setting up portrait studios in cities like Chicago, Ill.; Cincinnati, Ohio; Lexington, Ky., and New Orleans, La., as well as making seven Atlantic crossings while painting commissioned portraits of passengers enroute.
He also wrote and illustrated a children’s book with pen and ink drawings, Children of the Frontier. That book was published by D. Appleton and Co. in New York in 1867, but authorship was awarded to the lady who assisted him with the English phrasing, Lizzie Baker Gow.
Theodore Lund’s art history was chronicled in 1982 by Joan M. Rausch of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in her master’s thesis: “An Account of the Life and Work of Theodore Lund, a Mid-Nineteenth Century Wisconsin Itinerant Artist and Portraitist and a Catalogue of Works by Theodore Lund.” (UMW Masters and Doctoral Dissertations – Art Education N 10000 R248.)
Many of his portraits remain in family collections.
He died on August 29, 1895 and is buried in Raymond Township, Racine Co., Wisconsin.
Information courtesy of Janet S. Boysen
[1] Chicago Photographers 1847 through 1900 As Listed In Chicago City Directory. (Address for Alexander Hesler) Theodore Lund is not listed in this directory.
[2] Craig’s Daguerreian Registry. List Theodore Lund as an operator for Alexander Hesler.
Pioneer American Photographers, 1839 - 1860 