A Danish Golden Age

I'll be catching up with things over the next few days, what with the tornado on Friday evening. Internet coverage has been spotty the last couple of days. Today I have the last of these posts from the exhibition.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir painted this 1877 oil painting Portrait Of A Romanian Lady (Madame Iscovesco). Nothing is known of her aside from her name.

Berthe Morisot took on plein air painting early in her career. This 1885 oil on canvas is titled Young Girl On The Grass, The Red Bodice. The portrait is of Isabelle Lambert, seventeen at the time.

Alfred Sisley painted this 1865 oil on canvas. Line Of Chestnut Trees At La Celle-Saint-Cloud dates to early in his career, and like the Monet The Chailly Road, which I showed you yesterday, shows the legacy of the Barbizon School of landscape artists, a generation before Monet and Sisley. In fact, the setting for both paintings is close to the village of Barbizon. Sisley uses dense, dark brushstrokes that are quite different from his later, brighter Impressionist works.

Such as the case with this 1877 oil painting by Sisley. Unloading Barges At Baillancourt depicts a harbour town on the Seine between Paris and Le Havre, with particular emphasis on the sky.

The Seine also features into this Sisley oil painting from 1873. The Flood, Banks Of The Seine, Bougival shows us the river at high tide. The building in the background was the home of the sluice keeper. Sisley frequently painted the Seine upon settling in the area in 1871, and while flooding might be a concern, the effect of this painting is tranquility.

Paul Gaugain painted Landscape At Pont-Aven in 1888. Gaugain started out in the Impressionist style and took it in new directions. This woodland scene reflects his style.

I paused here before moving on, thinking of photographing some of the other visitors to the exhibition.

The Hansens had built their collection with Impressionist and Romantic era artists from France, but they didn't ignore artists closer to home, and so the last section of the exhibition concerned itself with Danish artists and the period called Denmark's Golden Age. Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg toured Italy from 1813-16 as part of his studies, and this oil painting dates from that period. View Of The Colonnade, St. Peter's Square, Rome gives a different perspective, not going for the obvious facade of the basilica but instead focusing on the square.

View From Frederiksborg Castle is an 1842 canvas by Peter Christian Thamsen Skovgaard.  

Johan Thomas Lundbye, a friend of Skovgaard, painted this 1838 work. A Meadow Near Lake Arreso depicts a spot in Zealand, north of Copenhagen; the lake is the largest in the country.

Lundbye painted this oil canvas in 1841. Landscape, Sorup Vang shows a scene in Zealand, a frequent subject for the artist.

Johannes Larsen took inspiration from the Impressionists in terms of painting outdoors and letting the weather influence him. This 1899 painting demonstrates that. Summer, Sun And Wind, Kerteminde shows a harbour town on the island of Funen on a pleasant, breezy day.

I end this visit with two paintings by the same artist. Vilhelm Hammershoi is another Danish artist whose work was represented here as part of the exhibition. The National Gallery bought a Hammershoi in the last year that was included in the exhibition, the only such example that I noticed from a source different than the Ordrupgaard. I had photographed that one on a previous visit, and found it interesting to see it displayed alongside the Ordrupgaard's paintings by the artist. Hammershoi painted this 1913 oil on canvas. The Tall Windows, Interior From The Artist's Home, Strandgade 25 is its title, and features a woman with her back to us, a common motif in his works. 

That shows itself again in the 1901 oil painting Interior With Piano And Woman In Black, From The Artist's Home At Strandgade 30. Hammershoi tended to paint the rooms of his homes repeatedly, but never the same way twice. When there was a person involved in the painting, it was generally his wife Ida, dressed in black, facing away. Until the Hammershoi painting Sunshine In The Drawing Room entered the Gallery's collection last year, he was an artist I wasn't familiar with, but I do like his moody style.

I hope you've enjoyed this look at this exhibition. For those of you in Europe, the Ordrupgaard is close at hand, and well worth a visit when its renovation work is finished.