Researching Otto Lange

Lange was born in Jevnaker, but moved to Arendal. He worked as a school teacher, and helped found the local library and museum in 1832. In 1833 he was elected to the Norwegian Parliament for the first time. He then changed his civil job to that of surveyor of customs and excise. He was elected to the Norwegian Parliament in 1836, 1839, 1842, 1845, 1848, 1851 and 1854, representing the constituency of Arendal og Grimstad.

In October 1854 he was appointed Minister of Church and Education, succeeding Jørgen Herman Vogt. In September 1855 he left that succeeded Vogt again, this time as Minister of Finance and Customs. He held this position periodically until June 1863, interrupted by spells as member of the Council of State Division in Stockholm from 1 June 1856 to 31 July 1857, 1 September 1858 to 30 September 1859 and 1 September 1861 to 31 August 1862.

Otto Vincent Lange was married to Anne Nicoline Aall (1800–1886), daughter of businessperson, politician and historian Jacob Aall. The Aall family was a notable one; Anne Nicoline Aall's grandfather was businessman Nicolai Benjamin Aall (died 1798) and her uncles were politicians Niels and Jørgen Aall. Also, Otto Vincent Lange had a brother Ulrik Frederik Lange who was an educator and five-term member of Parliament. Otto Vincent's sister Barbara Abigael married Even Hanssen, whose son Johan Jørgen Lange Hanssen married Otto Vincent's daughter Lovise Jacobine.

Otto Vincent Lange was proclaimed Knight of the Order of St. Olav 1847, promoted to Commander in 1857, and in 1863 was awarded the Grand Cross in 1863. He was awarded two Swedish orders: the Grand Cross of the Order of the Polar Star and Knight of the Order of Vasa. Lange also held the first class (equivalent to Grand Cross) of the Ottoman Mecidi Order.

He died in 1870 in Kristiania and was buried at Vår Frelsers gravlund.

After an apprenticeship as a decorator, he became a pupil of the Kunstgewerbeschule in Dresden and then studied at the Otto Gussmann Academy of art. From 1919 he lived in Dresden, where, alongside Otto Dix, Conrad Felixmueller, Otto Schubert and Lasar Segall, he co-founded the Dresdner Sezession group, a short-lived collaboration of German Expressionism. The works of this new generation of disillusioned artists placed a much greater emphasis on political and social reformation through pacifistic means, rather than adopting the nihilistic social criticism and cynicism of their Die Brücke predecessors. From 1921 he was a member of the Academic Council of Saxony and in 1925 he was appointed professor of the State Art School for Textile Industry, Plauen by Karl Hanusch. In 1926 he painted the Lutheran church in Ellefeld, Vogtland.

Lange was arrested by the National Socialists in 1933, and lost his professorship. He then worked as a freelance artist in Dresden. In 1938, two of his paintings were shown at the Munich Degenerate Art Exhibition.

Lange produced an extensive body of printed graphic work; his subjects ranged from religious representations to still lifes to book illustrations. His woodcuts differed from those of other expressionists, as Lange mainly used an elaborate technique of colour printing. Most of the time he did not print his work with a press or use a brayer, but instead made hand rubbings after he had inked the printing block directly with a brush.