Chapter 18
The Art of Denmark, an Epistolary Preface by Carl Madsen, Director of the Royal Gallery at Copenhagen, from Exhibition of Contemporary Scandinavian Art Under the Auspices of the American Scandinavian Society. Reading by Bologna Times. This is a LibriVox recording.
All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. The Art of Denmark by Carl Madsen. My dear Christian Brenton, surely you still remember the pavilion on Langelening where two or three times we lunched so congenially together. Through the great windows of the restaurant we had an outlook eastward over the sound
the ships westward over the tranquil moat to the green trees of the citadel where we heard at times a blackbird's whistle. In the restaurant near the entrance sat loyal German tourists with beer mugs and souvenir postcards. At other tables my countrymen were laughing at their own jokes.
We Danes are, as you correctly observed, a people who are fond of amusing ourselves and who do not think very much about the morrow. Indeed, altogether too little. Sometimes, however, on beautiful summer evenings you will meet people here who, silent and dreaming, gaze out over the sea.
This also is perhaps characteristic of our nation. We have grown up with Anderson's fairy tales and have had other good authors with whom you are doubtless familiar. When from Langelening I see the beautiful clouds floating over a gently rocking sea, I often find myself recalling an artist who, near a hundred years ago, long before the
pavilion was built and souvenir postcards were invented, went modestly on his evening walks from his professor's quarters in the Academy of Konjins-Neitorf out to the spot. He was neither poet nor dreamer. His sharp eyes made purely scientific observations upon the formation of clouds. He examined the construction of ships with the eye of a professional and sought to explain
the laws governing the perspective of these shifting waves. The artistic ambition of this upright soul was to give the most precise picture possible of nature, as true as a mirror. His canvases are old-fashioned. All objects present themselves as though seen through a strong field glass, but the tones
are fine and clear as day. When I now look from Langelening out across the sea, Danish painting in later years does not seem to have produced works that in striking fidelity to nature surpass those of Ekersberg. And over there in the citadel behind the tranquil moat, his pupil, Kopke, had his home. Even today, both in fact and in the art of Kopke, these old fortifications are an idyllic
spot. His sister's pink dress against the green trees of the rampart, the sunshine on an empty wagon in the citadel bakery yard, the Dannebrog flying over a boat landing, or a pair of poplars in the twilight were for Kopke motives sufficiently rich in interest. You, dear Mr. Brinton, at once understood how to value his pictures from these realms
of peace, his portraits of relatives, friends, and plain townsfolk. They are as modest and unpretentious as the violets on the citadel terrace. When Marstrand, Kopke's contemporary and fellow pupil, Imdur Ekersberg, walked here on Langelening, he looked, I fancy, with greater interest upon the promenaders than on the sea and the citadel.
Here he must have met young girls whose graceful necks, blushing cheeks, and bright eyes reminded him of the beautiful women of Rome, unforgettable memories of his youthful student days. Here too he met droll Copenhagen types, who served as capital models for his character figures from Holberg's comedies, and perhaps also the tall gaunt officers he may have used for his representations of Don Quixote.
Marstrand, the most richly endowed and many-sided of our older painters, had himself the noble knight's thirst for lofty deeds. His sketches and drawings show a vast range of happy inspiration, but when he had to carry out his work according to the demands of the time, evil and invincible forces paralyzed his hand.
The coloring became crude, the form characterless, the features rigid, and life itself had departed. During this entire period, exact execution was regarded as the hallmark of respectable painting. In all of our art, from Ekersberg down, this was held in highest honor. It was the flowering time of the so-called national art.
Painters had sung the praises of the fatherland, and an eloquent critic pointed out the importance of purely native themes. Landscape painters sought to epitomize the peculiar beauty of Danish nature. Genre painters glorified the Danish peasantry. Art they held should be Danish in form as well as content, and borrow nothing from other
nations. In our separation from the world, many virtues flourished, but also many vices. For of course men ought to strive to be themselves, yet as Henrik Ibsen says, only the devil is self-sufficient. And so, when Danish painting came to be exhibited at the World's Exposition at Paris in 1878,
it made such a sorry showing that an old Danish artist seriously believed that the canvases were covered with dust, which had been overlooked in cleaning. It stuck so tight and so thick that they seemed lustreless, poor in color, and strangely antiquated. For this reason, several young Danish painters went to school in Paris and in due course brought home new conceptions of the aim of painting.
Later, other Danish artists, when they had opportunity, have looked about in the world, though it cannot be said that they have learned over much from foreign art. We are a little nation, and our national independence is for us the most precious quality we possess. A local newspaper has recently given some solid advice regarding the forthcoming exhibition of Danish art in America.
Regardless of the purely artistic merit of the canvases ought, as a matter of principle, to be subordinated. It is far more important that the pictures bear the familiar national stamp. As yet, I do not definitely know how the exhibition, which is shortly to be placed before the Tribunal of America, will be constituted.
But I know that you, dear Mr. Brinton, have wished that it might be free from banalities. You have preferred the characteristic to the commonplace, the fresh to the dusty, the vigorous to the vapid. You have sought to combine that which in your opinion is good art with that which recommends itself as national.
And in any event, the exhibition would not have lacked the national impress. This factor does not depend upon a peculiar manner of treatment or style of painting. Tiepolo is just as Italian as Botticelli. Nor does the national note depend upon subject. Every good artist expresses his nationality in new forms.
The invited painters are all legitimate children of their land, and many of them have inherited some of their best qualities from those same artists who, beside the sound and in the citadel, founded the Danish School of Painting. Truthfulness is quite as precious to Ring as to Bekersberg, and Wilhelm Hammersheim has seen, just as Koepke, that the most unobtrusive lives and the simplest scenes and incidents
can contain a world of marvelous poetry. But the individual characterization of these painters, I resign to you, my dear Mr. Brinton. You have studied our art with a sympathetic interest and understanding for which I offer you my heartfelt thanks. Yours sincerely, Carl Madsen.
End of The Art of Denmark, an epistolary preface by Carl Madsen.
