Danish nationalism exhibited at Loeb

Marcella Veneziale Arts Editor

For the first time at the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center (FLLAC), an exhibit dedicated entirely to Danish art will be on display throughout the semester. The small country is often overshadowed by the much more widely known French Impressionists, but it was greatly influenced by the same movement. Danish Paintings of the Nineteenth Century from the Collection of Ambassador John L. Loeb, Jr. is a treasure trove of 34 carefully selected works which represent different shifts in the artistic climate of the time.

From 1981 to 1983, Loeb served as Ambassador to Denmark under former President Ronald Reagan and soon thereafter began collecting his first Danish paintings. Curator James Mundy said, “He didn’t own a single work of Danish art until he got there.” All of the paintings appearing in the exhibit have been lent solely from his collection.

Denmark had undergone considerable shifts in political and economic power during the time that the exhibit documents, and the art of the time directly responds to these changes. The country had been wealthy and had access to natural resources from their Norwegian and northern German colonies, but because they had supported France during the Napoleonic wars, these were appropriated by the French. Economic depression set in, and artists began looking domestically for inspiration. This pride and nationalism is best represented by Otto Bache’s “Flag Day in Copenhagen on a Summer Day in Vimmelskaftet,” which is a street scene dominated by Danish flags.

Tranquil indoor scenes by Vilhelm Hammershøi show anonymous, solid, and unapproachable women in a monochromatic palette. Mundy comments that Hammershøi’s women are “contemplative, archetypal, hard to know, and almost heroic.” “Interior, Strangade 30” is dominated by a black, white and gray color scheme, and an ashen-faced maid removes a teacup from a table. The room is orderly and spare, but well-appointed, and Mundy says that the “interiors are a metaphor [of]…the virtues of Danish life.”
French Impressionism had a great impact on Danish painting style at the time, and this translated into a looser style of painting, especially in the domestic works of Carl Holsøe and Ludvig Find.

Holsøe’s “Artist’s Wife Setting the Table” shows a bourgeoisie interior dining room surrounded by flowers, metal candlesticks, and china display plates. Find’s “The New Hat” shows definite Impressionistic influences, and even evokes Mary Cassatt’s “Lydia at the Tapestry Loom.” The scene is unabashedly feminine and domestic, with the woman’s cheeks, lips, bow and dress dominated by a dusty pink palette.

Peder Severin Krøyer depicts himself, as do several of the artists exhibited, in his “Self-Portrait Sitting by His Easel at Skagen Beach.” In what Mundy terms the “Golden Age” of Danish painting, Krøyer was one of the most influential artists who led a group of painters to the northernmost reaches of Denmark at Skagen to observe and paint the local fishing scene, and Mundy calls him the “epicenter” of the group. An impossibly blue ocean is dazzling against the all-white outfit that Krøyer wears, and a diamond ring glints on his finger.

Landscape scenes are unique because the “light is vibrant in the North,” and also due to Denmark’s “peculiar location,” according to Mundy. These phenomena are seen in several paintings, including the light-dappled “Woodland Scene with Pond Near Vejle” by Peder Mønsted, the cooler pastel “On the Way to Church” by Anna Ancher, and “The Parsonage in Greve” by Vilhelm Kyhn. These scenes also display a general trend of French influences.

Danish Paintings of the Nineteenth Century touches on major themes in Danish painting at the time, and brings a novel subject to the FLLAC. The paintings embody a critical turning point, not only in the history of Danish art, but in all of European art as well. Docents will lead tours of the exhibit throughout its run, which ends on Dec. 18.