Kunstnernes Frie Studieskoler was an art school established in Copenhagen in 1882 as a protest against the policies of the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts and to provide an alternative to its educational program. It existed until 1912 and was a central institution of the Modern Breakthrough in Danish art.
From its foundation in 1754, the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts exercised a dominating role in the education of artists in Denmark. During the first half of the 19th century, with Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg as the central figure, the institution was the basis of what has become known as the Golden Age of Danish Painting. Another major influence at the academy was professor Niels Laurits Høyen who advocated a nationalistic approach to art.
Gradually the legacy from Eckersberg, who died in 1854, and Høyen's demand for nationalistic art became an obstacle deterring the assimilation of new trends from abroad and creating a vacuum in Danish art which lasted until the early 1880s.
Kunstnernes Frie Studieskoler was founded in 1882, at the initiative of a group of dissatisfied students from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, as a reaction to the outdated teachings at the Academy. Laurits Tuxen became the school's first director and Peder Severin Krøyer one of its teachers.
In 1884 a preparatory class was added. It was first led by Frans Schwartz but in 1885 Kristian Zahrtmann became the head and under him it developed into an independent department. [1]
While Tuxen og Krøyer's teachings were inspired by Léon Bonnat's school in Paris, where they had both been students, Zahrtmann encouraged his students to study classical art. In spite of this, Zahrtmann's school became even more avant garde and innovative, due to his calls for radical experiments and strong use of colours. [1]
Johan Rohde, who had himself attended the school and had been among the original founders, took over after Zahrtmann and led the school until its closure in 1912. [1]
Zahrtmann's school was of central importance to the group of painters who became known as Fynboerne due to their attachment to the island Funen. His students included Peter Hansen, Fritz Syberg, Poul S. Christiansen, Johannes Larsen and Oluf Hartmann; and modern painters Karl Isakson; Edvard Weie, Harald Giersing and Olaf Rude.
Peter Vilhelm Carl Kyhn was a Danish landscape painter who belonged to the generation of national romantic painters immediately after the Danish Golden Age and before the Modern Breakthrough. Even though he outlived many of his artistic peers by several decades, he remained a traditionalist and expressed strong criticism of many of the new trends in the painting of his day.
Exposition Universelle
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Laurits Regner Tuxen was a Danish painter and sculptor specialising in figure painting. He was also associated with the Skagen Painters. He was the first head of Kunstnernes Frie Studieskoler, an art school established in the 1880s to provide an alternative to the education offered by the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts.
The Skagen Painters were a group of Scandinavian artists who gathered in the village of Skagen, the northernmost part of Denmark, from the late 1870s until the turn of the century. Skagen was a summer destination whose scenic nature, local milieu and social community attracted northern artists to paint en plein air, emulating the French Impressionists—though members of the Skagen colony were also influenced by Realist movements such as the Barbizon school. They broke away from the rather rigid traditions of the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts and the Royal Swedish Academy of Arts, espousing the latest trends that they had learned in Paris. Among the group were Anna and Michael Ancher, Peder Severin Krøyer, Holger Drachmann, Karl Madsen, Laurits Tuxen, Marie Krøyer, Carl Locher, Viggo Johansen and Thorvald Niss from Denmark, Oscar Björck and Johan Krouthén from Sweden, and Christian Krohg and Eilif Peterssen from Norway. The group gathered together regularly at the Brøndums Inn.
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