Blaafarveværket

[1] The company was founded as the Royal Blue Colour Works by King Christian VII in 1776 and was one of the few companies with lasting significance from the age of mercantilism, played an important role in Norwegian trade with Denmark, the Netherlands and the Far East and had a decisive impact on the Norwegian economy in the period around 1814.

The establishment of the company represented an enormous investment on the part of the King, equivalent to the tax revenues for all of Denmark-Norway for a whole year.

[2] During the Napoleonic Wars the royal company was pledged by the king as security for a loan, and when the state could not redeem the pledge after the Napoleonic Wars, it was taken over by the bankruptcy estate of the Swedish businessman Peter Wilhelm Berg, and sold at a public auction to a group of investors led by the prominent Berlin banker Wilhelm Christian Benecke (since ennobled as Baron Benecke).

The purchase, officially in the name of a Christiania-based merchant who acted as a strawman, was orchestrated by Benecke's young associate Benjamin Wegner, who came to Norway to evaluate the company and buy it if he saw fit.

The economic crisis resulting from the revolutions of 1848, in addition to the competition from the new and cheaper synthetic blue dye, ultramarine, led to the bankruptcy of Blaafarveværket in 1849.

Blaafarveværket has since become one of the most important art galleries in Scandinavia, and has over the years exhibited the works of many major Norwegian and foreign artists.