Hans Holmen

Hans Holmen (January 8, 1878 – August 16, 1958) was a Norwegian painter and sculptor.

Hans Holmen was born at the Holmen farm in Hedrum, Norway, the son of the farmer Iver Holmen (1839–1915) and Anne Marie Svartsrød (1835–1916). He debuted at the National Art Exhibition in 1902 with a painting of log driving. He found his motifs largely in his hometown's forestry and agriculture, and he eventually acquired a good reputation as a portrait painter.

A portrait assignment took him to England and France, where he studied sculpture at the museums. He moved increasingly toward this form of expression while continuing to paint. After the First World War, he settled in Sandefjord, where his sculpture of the priest and hymn writer Magnus Brostrup Landstad was installed in 1928. This was the first time a public statue had been carved from Norwegian hardstein (a blue-gray schist). Together with Myllarguten (1940) at the Nordagutu train station, the Ulabrand monument in Ula (1933), and the bust of Harald Sohlberg in Røros, it is considered his main work. He also created memorials for those that fell in the Second World War at Bommestad in Hedrum and in Stokke.