Multimedia Mania/abacus-multimedia-mania.iso/dp/0015/00159.txt

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$Unique_ID{bob00159}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{Denmark
Danish Art Before 1945}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{H. E. Norregard-Nielsen}
$Affiliation{Press and Cultural Relations}
$Subject{art
danish
artists
denmark
eckersberg
works
own
painters
academy
kobke}
$Date{1988}
$Log{}
Title:       Denmark
Book:        Fact Sheets on Denmark
Author:      H. E. Norregard-Nielsen
Affiliation: Press and Cultural Relations
Date:        1988

Danish Art Before 1945

     Danish art has seldom attracted attention in other European countries.
Neither individually nor in schools have our artists achieved anything that
can compare with the greatest works that figure in the international history
of art. Nevertheless there is a perceptible line of development in the art of
this country that reaches its own zeniths. These deserve to be known in wider
circles; that they are not so is because Denmark is relatively remote from
the main European centres of culture.

     In Denmark as everywhere else, the concept of a national art form first
emerged in the years that followed 1815 when each country began to cultivate
its own characteristic landscape, history and folklore. After the chauvinism
of the Napoleonic wars a patriotic consciousness developed internationally
which demanded that its artists should depict everything held dear in the
familiar environment.

     Although dependent on local tradition and leading exponents this trend
took varying forms in the European countries. In Denmark the fact that an
Academy of Art was instituted in 1754 that provided painters and sculptors
with their initial basic training was an important influence. Furthermore,
Danish artists had received a boost to their self-confidence when their fellow
academician, the sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen (1770-1844) had achieved an
international breakthrough in Rome, where the whole of the beau monde queued
up to secure themselves one of his works. Sculptures such as "Jason"
(1820-28), earned Thorvaldsen the nickname "Disciple of the Greeks", but even
after he had come to be acclaimed as the most renowned sculptor of his day he
always gave his unknown countrymen a kindly welcome and associated with them
on equal terms.

Eckersberg

     The painter C. W. Eckersberg (1783-1853) was one of those who profited
most from this. After attending the Academy of Art in Copenhagen he made the
obligatory study tour to Rome via Paris, where in 1811 he became a pupil of
the painter Jacques Louis David. The French artist had taken part in the great
revolution of 1789 and had later become a follower of Napoleon, but he did not
make a point of forcing his ideological views on his pupils. He concentrated
on impressing on them the importance of making a thorough study of nature,
above all young artists must learn to see with their own eyes. Voir beau et
juste, repeated David over and over again, and in this way Eckersberg learned
to see the beautiful and the true as two sides of the same subject. From David
and later from Thorvaldsen Eckersberg learned composition, and his eyes were
opened to the clear and beautiful colours of daylight. In Rome he assimilated
his new knowledge in a series of spontaneous and directly perceived prospects
of the sights of the city. "View from the Colosseum" (1815) was painted from
in front of the subject, large and small details are gathered and ordered into
a unity in the small painting, where the viewer looks from the wild flowers
and grass of the foreground on past the ruins of antiquity to the ochre walls
and red roofs in the background.

     After Eckersberg had returned to Denmark in 1816 and had been appointed a
professor at the Academy of Art it was expected that he would paint historic
pictures for the adornment of the royal palace of Christiansborg. This he did,
but it is neither for these paintings nor his many altarpieces that he is
remembered and generally spoken of as the father of Danish painting.

     Eckersberg spent his leisure hours painting nature themes for his own
pleasure, he did a series of wonderful marine paintings, and there are little
studies of woodlands and portraits of prominent bourgeois citizens of
Copenhagen in the Biedermeier period. The city had no more than 80,000
inhabitants, the country had been stricken by a series of disasters, but in
the midst of the political and social misery there was a cultural flowering of
which painting was only one aspect. The poet-philosopher Soren Kierkegaard,
the hymnist N. F. S. Grundtvig, the composer C. E. F. Weyse, the choreographer
August Bournonville, were all walking the streets of the little capital city;
and a group of scholars at Copenhagen University were achieving international
repute.

Eckersberg's pupils

     Not only did Eckersberg contribute to this flowering with his own works,
as a teacher at the Academy of Art he also assisted a whole generation of
artists to realise themselves. The Professor invited his best pupils to go and
paint with him, in 1822 Wilhelm Bendz set up his easel in Eckersberg's private
studio, in 1823 Martinus Rorbye, in 1826 Wilhelm Marstrand, in 1828 Jorgen
Roed. Constantin Hansen and Christen Kobke. These, with the painters C. A.
Jensen, J. Th. Lundbye, Danqvart Dreyer and P. C. Skovgaard, who were less
closely connected with Eckersberg, form the nucleus of the art of the Danish
Golden Age.

     Another man who was an inspiration to the younger generation as well as
Eckersberg was the art historian N. L. Hoyen (1798-1870), who came to teach
at the Academy of Art. He was the first art historian to qualify in his
subject in Denmark. During his long journeys through Europe he resolved to
work for an independent Danish national art form, and he advised young artists
against going abroad. In his opinion they would do better to remain in
Denmark, undergo training and become independent before exposing themselves to
foreign influences. Hoyen encouraged them to paint Danish landscapes and
Danish monuments to the illustrious past, and he also urged them to paint
people of humble origin. Hoyen persevered so persuasively and convincingly
with his advice that the artists followed it, as may be seen, for instance, in
a small picture, "View of the Interior of Arhus Cathedral", painted by the
greatest colourist of his generation, Christen Kobke, at the age of twenty.

Kobke and Lundbye

     Kobke (1810-1848) had learned his painting with Eckersberg, he uses the
master' limpid colours and linear perspective, while taking his
subject-matter from Hoyen. It was he who had drawn attention to Denmark's
ancient churches, and Kobke shows us the interior space where it is highest
while at the same time indicating the breadth. There are three men in the
church engrossed in studying a tombstone, and we notice a peasant deep in
thought before some object of interest that is being pointed out to him by his
son who gestures eagerly towards the inner recesses of the building. Kobke
took many things into account, his art is an almost demonstrative contribution
to a national movement, but all is subordinated to the artist's incomparable
colouristic intuition. The huge space with its massive columns is seen as
surrounding the diminutive human figures, there is both eternity and
momentariness in the picture, the white walls reflect the daylight in shades
of rose, ochre and green, while the peasant's red coat beats like a heart in
the centre of the composition.

     Kobke preferred to paint the environs of Copenhagen where town and
country met. Many of his best works exhibit the character of sketches, the
colours are applied with spontaneous directness, a painterly sensitivity and
a feeling for light that anticipates the art with which a couple of decades
later the impressionists would delight the world. The same qualities appear in
the work of Constantin Hansen (1804-1880), who despite Hoyen's advice
accomplished some of his best work in Rome.

     J. Th. Lundbye (1818-1848) was, like Dreyer (1816-1852) and Skovgaard
(1817-1875) younger than the other painters of the Golden Age, they followed
a different line of development and their art contained elements more highly
charged with romance. In Lundbye, who died at the early age of thirty, the
artist's melancholy disposition makes itself felt in the paintings, and this
gave his art a specific character that is reflected in the contemporary
writings of Soren Kierkegaard. Lundbye was a man of wide reading, among his
peers he was the artist who liked to reflect on the past of Denmark and allow
himself to be influenced by what he found there. He would go off on long
walking tours with his friends when they would draw what they saw, and Lundbye
found a plenitude of artistic material in the antiquities of Denmark.

The churches

     All Western art can be classified into historical styles and designated
Classical, Romanesque or Gothic. But these labels are less interesting than
the powerfactors that are thrown into relief by the art of the various
periods. In Denmark minute works of art from the Stone Age represent the
animals the hunter liked best to catch; by forming an image of them he
already, as it were, held them in his hand. To this almost magical application
of art were added the actions that today are interpreted as an artistic
manifestation. The Vikings could hit upon the idea of setting a huge stone
upright upon a beach from which a boat had once sailed but to which it had
never returned. The monolith was not subjected to any artistic process,
merely placed upright in a way that conflicts with the nature of the stone
and produces artistic tension.

     The Vikings learned things on their long voyages, they noticed how in
other countries people carved pictures in stone, and when they returned home
they began to cut strange ornamental animals to adorn the prows of their
ships. They decorated their weapons with figures and designs, and their art
influenced the first Christian images in Denmark.

     The church has played an extremely significant role in Danish art most of
whose branches evolved their prototypes from its exemplary, but the Danish
artists did not have such good or valuable materials to work with as the
richer countries of the south. The marble works they had seen had to be
reproduced in granite, and they had to represent huge mosaic ornamentations as
best they could in the modest environs of the Danish churches with the aid of
some few colours.

     A stone-mason in Ribe made a descent from the Cross in granite in 1250.
The hard stone resisted him, the artist had to spend innumerable hours before
his chisel uncovered the figures. The resistance of the material can be
sensed, the representation exhibits a certain stiffness, there is a
particular solemnity and reverence in the style. The central figure of Christ
is larger than those around him. His enormous body is lifeless and stiff, yet
at the same time the whole composition rests so naturally in place in its
semicircular stone. Other sculptors of the period carved lions and made fonts
with fantastic decorations with themes from the peripheral areas of
Christianity.

     This and later periods saw the execution of mural paintings of biblical
history depicted in simple fashion to edify the people and enjoin them to a
life of constant virtue on earth that would gain them admittance to heaven
hereafter. The wealthier churches were furnished with gilded altars, of which
only one or two have been preserved, that show the attempts to imitate the
precious materials of other countries by the use of copper-sheeting and glass
beads.

     Christian art would never have come into being in Denmark without its
foreign prototypes, but the Gospel received an independent interpretation here
which resulted in a great number of churches being adorned with art that
diverged to an astonishing degree from that of other countries. Some of it was
created by local artists, some must be assumed to have been carried out by
foreign artists familiar with the great building projects and wealthy cities
of Europe. Before the Reformation in 1536 the sculptors Claus Berg and Hans
Bruggemann each produced their great carved altarpieces in Odense and Slesvig
cathedrals respectively. It was they who brought the Renaissance in its German
guise to Denmark, Bruggemann's carved images are borrowed from Albrecht
Durer's corresponding compositions in wood.

Skagen and Funen

     As in other places under absolutist rule, Danish artists were expected to
put themselves at the service of the crown. In order to ensure a regular
supply of talent the Academy of Art was instituted in 1754 and foreign artists
such as, for instance, the Swedish Carl Gustav Pilo and the French sculptor
Jacques Saly were called upon both to compose monumental works of art and to
instruct young Danish artists. It was Saly who created the equestrian statue
of Frederik V in the palace square at Amalienborg, one of the finest works of
its kind in Europe.

     The following generation produced artists like Jens Juel (1745-1802) and
Nicolai Abildgaard (1743-1809) and after them Thorvaldsen and Eckersberg.
Danish art had developed an independent form that was built up to an equal
extent on native tradition and on influence from abroad. But with Hoyen's
repeated warnings against contact with foreign art a crisis gradually arose,
instead of Kobke's colouristic grace or J. Th. Lundbye's seriousness the next
generation preferred to paint either more finickingly or with a careless
showiness. Both styles were seized upon when they were exhibited at the World
Exhibition in Paris in 1878. The critics declared that although Danish artists
were represented, Danish art was not.

     A group of painters who included P.S. Kroyer (1851-1909) and Anna Ancher
(1859-1935) distanced themselves from the academic tradition and settled at
Skagen on the northern tip of Jutland in order to paint subjects offered by
the natural surroundings and people of the region. Their achievements, during
the years centring on 1875, were paralleled a little later by a number of
painters on Funen, among them Johannes Larsen (1867-1961). Both of these
groups depicted their own environment through the cycle of the seasons, with
light as a dominating factor.

To each his own stamp

     The Funen artists were trained at a college run by the painter Kristian
Zahrtmann, which like so many other private schools of painting at that time
had been founded in protest at the antiquated teaching methods of the Academy.
Individuality had become a desirable aim, and in the years preceding 1900 a
great many painters emerged, each with his own idiosyncrasy. There was Theodor
Philipsen (1840-1920), who had come to know Paul Gauguin during the latter's
stay in Denmark in 1885 and through him became acquainted with impressionism.
There was Vilhelm Hammershoi (1864-1916), L. A. Ring (1854-1933) and Niels
Larsen Stevns (1864-1941), who were in close touch with the Grundtvigian High
School circle, that had such an influence on cultural life at the turn of the
century.

     Painters like the Swedish-born Karl Isakson (1878-1922), Edvard Weie
(1879-1943), Sigurd Swane (1879-1973) and Harald Giersing (1881-1927), studied
French art in the years prior to the First World War and learned to use clear
colours in musical contrast to each other. The sculptor Kai Nielsen
(1882-1924) took his inspiration from the works of Auguste Rodin, while his
contemporary Gerhard Henning (1880-1967) was more influenced by Maillol.
Danish art owed much to France during this period, the painter J.F. Willumsen
(1863-1958) stayed for a time in Brittany with Gauguin, but later turned to a
more German-Scandinavian form of expression.

     The sculptor Astrid Noack (1888-1954) spent a considerable part of her
life in Paris, the painter Vilhelm Lundstrom (1893-1950) paid more sporadic
visits there, although each time he stayed long enough to acquire fresh
impressions from Pablo Picasso to take home with him. In 1918 he exhibited a
group of non-conceptual collages created under the influence of Picasso's
cubist period and they stand - although they form only a parenthetic part of
this artist's oeuvre - as a kind of disruption in Danish art. They expressed a
farewell to the epoch of the Golden Age, in the same way that the First War
was a farewell to a world of yesterday. When ten years or so later the
abstract breakthrough had become an established phenomenon, the young painters
invited Vilhelm Lundstr|om to exhibit his work with theirs.

Some museums

     There are important collections of early Danish art in the Copenhagen
area at Ordrupgaard, Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, the Hirschsprung Collection and
in particular at The State Museum of Art. It is also well represented in the
provinces, for example at Odense, Soro, Randers, Arhus and Ribe.

Bibliography

     Dansk Kunsthistorie (History of Danish Art), vols. 1-5, published by
Politikens Forlag, Copenhagen, 1972-75, describes the various periods; there
are also various monographs on the most important earlier Danish artists.