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Carl Budtz-Møller was born in 1882 in Rødby on the island of Lolland in southern Denmark, the son of photographer Christian Møller and Benedicte Gertrudline Natalie Rasmussen. He began his formal art education at a technical school in Copenhagen in 1897 prior to joining the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Art in 1900 at the age of eighteen. While attending the Academy, he studied under artists August Jerndorff, Otto Bache and Franz Henningsen, as well as working on the restoration of church frescoes for the National Museum. He completed many early decorative and restoration projects before he became an art teacher in 1908. In 1914 he was named headmaster of the Kunsthaandvaerk art school, where he continued to teach until 1930.
Danish painter Kristian Zahrtmann was a major influence on the young artist in both the use of colour and subject matter. Zahrtmann painted many scenes in Italy, and this possibly inspired Budtz-Møller to travel throughout southern Europe. He became especially known for his sunlit landscapes and figural scenes of Italy and Paris, where he stayed for long periods of time between 1907 and 1937. Budtz-Møller also painted in Germany, Austria, London, Belgium, The Netherlands, Norway and Sweden.
Mood pictures of the Danish landscape and nature were a specialty of the artist, especially from Jutland and the island of Bornholm. These works have a more subdued colour palette, and often highlighted the “Blue Hour” – the natural stage of twilight at nautical dawn or dusk when the sun is below the horizon (between 6 and 12 degrees) and the sun’s blue wavelengths dominate. This is a time when sailors cannot navigate at sea as the human eye finds it difficult to determine the horizon. He often depicted Melsted which is located on the north shore of Bornholm, an island south east of Copenhagen below Sweden. These paintings from Bornholm are excellent examples of the artist’s rendering of the strong Nordic sun playing and reflecting on the light and shadows.
Carl Budtz- Møller exhibited widely including at the Charlottenborg Spring exhibition in 1907, 1910, 1912-1918, and 1920-24; the Charlottenborg Autumn exhibition in 1908-12 and 1922; the Salons des Tullers in Paris 1910; Glass Palace in Munich 1911; and the Esposizioni Internazionali in Rome 1912.