After training as a house painter (1900–1904), he attended the Technical School in Aalborg (1903–1907) before studying art at Kristian Zahrtmann's Kunstnernes Studieskoler in Copenhagen (1907–1908).
[2] As a pupil of Zahrtmann and a friend of Olaf Rude, Jais Nielsen and William Scharff, he was one of a small group of Danish modernists who exhibited with De Tretten and later at the Grønningen.
Despite numerous portraits in his early years, he was primarily a landscape painter, deeply attached to the countryside where he spent most of his life.
He spent most of his time in Blokhus in Vendsyssel in the north of Jutland, painting fields, marshes and sand dunes, sometimes with a few figures and perhaps houses, trees or telephone poles to enhance the composition.
Inspired by Van Gogh, he later developed tightly knit, rhythmical brushstrokes, producing a distinctly decorative effect.