Lorentz Severin Skougaard (11 May 1837 - 14 February 1885) was a Norwegian tenor.
Early life 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. He later studied music in Paris and Italy.
Career
In 1864, Lorentz Severin Skougaard sang in Stockholm, Berlin, and Christiania. He met Alfred Corning Clark in Paris in 1866.Harold E. Dickson, "Barnard and Norway," The Art Bulletin, vol. 44, no. 1 (March 1962), pp. 55-59.(JSTOR) $
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. In 1874 he gave 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.
Personal life
Lorentz Severin Skougaard moved to the United States in 1866. Clark began making annual summer visits to Norway with Skougaard in 1869, the same year that Clark married. The American eventually built a house on an island near Skougaard's family home. Clark's eldest son, born in 1870, was given the middle name of Severin. When in New York City, Skougaard stayed in Clark's flat at 64 West 22nd Street. The apartment was a favorite spot for evening musicales, attracted by Skougaard's companionable qualities, and the house for years was known as "Severini Hall".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. , pg. 76 According to Nicholas Fox Weber's biography 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.Debby Applegate, "Outrageous Fortune," The New York Times Book Review, 20 May 2007.
On 14 February 1885, in New York City, Skougaard died of typhoid fever.
Legacy Clark eulogized his friend in a privately published biographical sketch, Lorentz Severin Skougaard: a sketch, mainly autobiographic,Alfred Corning Clark, Lorentz Severin Skougaard: a sketch, mainly autobiographic, (privately published, 1885), from WorldCat. and created a $64,000 endowment in his memory for Manhattan's Norwegian Hospital, at 4th Avenue & 46th Street.The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 26 January 1911, p. 1.
Clark also commissioned Brotherly Love (1886–87), by American sculptor George Grey Barnard, to adorn his friend's grave in Langesund, Norway.Glenn C. Altschuler, "Meet 3 Generations of American Originals," The Baltimore Sun, 17 June 2007. The homoerotic sculpture depicts two nude male figures blindly reaching out to each other through the block of marble that separates them."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.
Later, Barnard moved to New York City and Clark helped to maintain him.
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