Arvid Aae (Swedish, 1877-1913) was a painter and draughtsman who trained at Gustaf Vermehren’s Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen, Denmark. In 1901, he graduated from the Royal Academy in Copenhagen, the leading art academy in Scandinavia at that time. He moved to Denmark as a young boy and became a Danish citizen in 1903.
Aae married fellow artist Olga Harriet Rasmussen in 1905.
His surviving work consists mainly of portraits and genre paintings, which were exhibited at Castle Charlottenborg, the former royal residence in Copenhagen, between 1900 and 1914. He is best-known for his portraits of children, including Knabe im Matrosenanzug (Boy in the Sailor Suit) and Laesende piger i Solskinnet ved et havet (Laesende girls in the sunshine in a house by the sea), which display his uncanny ability to capture the fleeting innocence of youth.
Aae left Denmark in 1905 and traveled through Paris and Italy, where he completed a number of landscape paintings. These visually distinctive scenes were often executed en plein air during his travels along the Tuscan hillside. Sadly, his promising career was cut short due to his untimely death in 1913. He is represented in the permanent collection at the Koldinghus Museum, as well as several private collections.