Established | 1896 |
---|---|
Location | Sølvgade 48 Copenhagen, Denmark |
Coordinates | 55°41′20.004″N12°34′42.996″E / 55.68889000°N 12.57861000°E |
Type | National gallery |
Visitors | 424,710 (2007) [1] |
Director | Astrid la Cour |
Public transit access | Bus stop: 'Georg Brandes Plads, Parkmuseerne' Bus lines: 6A, 14, 26, 40, 42, 43, 184, 185, 150S, 173 E ContentsMetro: Nørreport station |
Website | www |
The National Gallery of Denmark (Danish : Statens Museum for Kunst, also known as "SMK", literally State Museum for Art) is the Danish national gallery, located in the centre of Copenhagen. [2]
The museum collects, registers, maintains, researches and handles Danish and foreign art dating from the 14th century to the present day.
The museum's collections constitute almost 9,000 paintings and sculptures, approximately 240,000 works of art on paper as well as more than 2,600 plaster casts of figures from ancient times, the middle-ages and the Renaissance. Most of the older objects come from the Danish royal collection. Approximately 40,000 pieces from the collections are expected to be made available online by 2020. [3]
The display of European Art from 1300–1800 is a comprehensive collection of art over the 500-year period, featuring works by Mantegna, Cranach, Titian, Rubens and Rembrandt. The art is spread over thirteen rooms, and is the oldest art collection in Denmark, with a particular emphasis on Danish, Dutch, Flemish, Italian, French, Spanish and German pieces. [4]
Danish and Nordic Art 1750–1900 charts Scandinavian art from the beginnings of Danish painting through the 'Golden Age' to the birth of Modernism. It displays over 400 works through 24 galleries. It features work by Abildgaard, Eckersberg, Købke, Ring, and Hammershøi. [5]
SMK gained its modern French art collection in 1928 when it was donated by the late collector Johannes Rump. This collection features some of the museum's most famous pieces from artists such as Matisse, Picasso, Derain and Braque. The collection was first offered to the SMK by Rump in 1923, but was rejected by the director Karl Madsen, as he did not believe it to be of a high enough quality. [6]
Housed in the museum's 1993 extension, this 20th and 21st century collection is predominantly focused on the most important examples of modern Danish art. A long corridor of paintings looking onto Østre Anlæg park works as a chronological overview of the work from this period, whilst the smaller galleries focus on specific artists or movements. [7]
The Royal Collection of Graphic Art contains more than 240,000 works: copper prints, drawings, etchings, watercolours, lithographic works and other kinds of art on paper, dating from the 15th century to the present day. The beginnings of this collection were made around the time of Christian II. In his diary from 1521 the German painter Albrecht Dürer says he has given the King "the best pieces of all my prints". [8]
In 1843 the various works, which had so far been the king's private collection, were displayed to the public. It was then moved into the Statens Museum for Kunst when the first building was completed in 1896, along with The Royal Collection of Paintings and The Royal Cast Collection. [9]
Although the papers contain a great number of foreign works, Danish art constitutes the main part of the collection. This collection is open to the public through the Print Room, access to which must be booked in advance of arrival. [10]
The Royal Cast Collection is held at the West India Warehouse, Toldbodgade 40, between The Little Mermaid and Nyhavn in Copenhagen. It consists of over 2,000 naked plaster casts of statues and reliefs from collections, museums, temples, churches, and public places throughout the world, from antiquity to the Renaissance. The Royal Cast Collection is only open for special events. The art was first put on display in 1895 with the intention of edifying visitors about the progression of representations of the human form over time in parallel with growing social, political and aesthetic awareness in the Western world. [11]
At the start of the Second World War, the art of antiquity became increasingly unfashionable, associated with an archaic artistic tradition. In 1966, as abstract art became more popular, the Royal Cast Collection was removed to a barn outside Copenhagen for storage and only revived in 1984 when it was removed to the West India Warehouse. [12]
The collections of the Danish National Gallery originate in the Art Chamber (Danish : Kunstkammeret) of the Danish monarchs. When the German Gerhard Morell became Keeper of Frederick V's Art Chamber about 1750, he suggested that the king create a separate collection of paintings. To ensure that the collection was not inferior to those of other European royal houses and local counts, the king made large-scale purchases of Italian, Netherlandish and German paintings. The collection became particularly well provided with Flemish and Dutch art. The most important purchase during Morell's term as keeper was Christ as the Suffering Redeemer by Andrea Mantegna. 'Det Kongelige Billedgalleri' (Royal Art Gallery) was housed in Christiansborg Palace until 1884 when the castle burnt down. [13] It was not until the opening of the museum in 1896 that the art had a new home. [14]
Since then a great variety of purchases have been made. During the 19th century, the works were almost exclusively by Danish artists, and for this reason, the museum has an unrivalled collection of paintings from the so-called Danish Golden Age. That the country was able to produce pictures of high artistic quality was something new, and a consequence of the establishment of the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in 1754.
More recently, the collection has been influenced by generous donations and long-term loans. In 1928 Johannes Rump's large collection of early French Modernist paintings was donated to the museum. This was followed by purchases of paintings and sculpture in the French tradition. [15]
The original museum building was designed by Vilhelm Dahlerup and G. E. W. Møller and built 1889–1896 in a Historicist Italian Renaissance revival style. [16]
Towards the back of the museum is a large modern extension designed by the architects Anna Maria Indrio and Mads Møller from Arkitektfirmaet C. F. Møller. The extension was erected in 1998 to house the extensive modern art collection. The two buildings are connected by a glass panelled 'Street of Sculptures' walkway and theatre which stretches the entire length of the museum and looks out onto the Østre Anlæg park. [17] Talks, concerts and installations are all held in this area.
Henri Émile Benoît Matisse was a French visual artist, known for both his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. He was a draughtsman, printmaker, and sculptor, but is known primarily as a painter.
The Green Stripe is an oil painting from 1905 by French artist Henri Matisse of his wife, Amélie Noellie Matisse-Parayre. The title stems from the vertical green stripe down the middle of Madame Matisse's face, an artistic decision consistent with the techniques and values of Fauvism. The painting features a bust-length view of Madame Matisse in blocks of bold and vibrant colors. It is associated with the Fauvist Movement due to this unnatural and experimental use of color. The portrait has received both praise and criticism due to this technique as well as the artistic representation of the model. The Green Stripe is currently displayed in the Staten Museum for Kunst in Copenhagen, Denmark.
The Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Dresden, Germany, displays around 750 paintings from the 15th to the 18th centuries. It includes major Italian Renaissance works as well as Dutch and Flemish paintings. Outstanding works by German, French, and Spanish painters of the period are also among the gallery's attractions.
Laurits Andersen Ring was one of the foremost Danish painters of the turn of the 20th century, who pioneered both symbolism and social realism in Denmark. Considered one of the masterpieces of Danish culture, his painting Summer Day by Roskilde Fjord was included in the 2006 Danish Culture Canon.
Vilhelm Hammershøi, often anglicised as Vilhelm Hammershoi, was a Danish painter. He is known for his poetic, subdued portraits and interiors. In 1905, Rainer Maria Rilke wrote of the artist, "Hammershøi is not one of those about whom one can speak quickly. His work is wide-ranging and slow, and at whatever moment one comprehends it, it will always provide an opportunity to talk about what is important and essential in art".
Cornelis Norbertus Gijsbrechts or Gysbrechts was a Flemish painter who was active in the Spanish Netherlands, Germany, Denmark and Sweden in the second half of the seventeenth century. He was a court painter to the Danish royal family. He specialised in trompe-l'œil still lifes, an artistic genre which uses visual tricks to give viewers the illusion that they are not looking at a painting but rather at real three-dimensional objects. He also created many vanitas still lifes.
Self-Portrait in a Striped T-shirt (1906) is an oil on canvas painting by Henri Matisse from his Fauvism period, in the collection of Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen, Denmark.
Jens Vilhelm Dahlerup was a Danish architect who specialized in the Historicist style. One of the most productive and noted Danish architects of the 19th century, he is behind many of the most known buildings and landmarks of his time and has more than any other single architect contributed to the way Copenhagen appears today.
The Bucerius Kunst Forum is an international exhibition centre in Hamburg, Germany, founded in 2002 through the ZEIT-Stiftung Ebelin und Gerd Bucerius foundation. It is named after Gerd Bucerius and his wife, and located directly beside the Hamburg Rathaus. The exhibition centre shows 3 - 4 exhibitions per year, in co-operation with other museums and collections. The exhibition centre participates in the Long Night of Museums.
Fauvism is a style of painting and an art movement that emerged in France at the beginning of the 20th century. It was the style of les Fauves, a group of modern artists whose works emphasized painterly qualities and strong colour over the representational or realistic values retained by Impressionism. While Fauvism as a style began around 1904 and continued beyond 1910, the movement as such lasted only a few years, 1905–1908, and had three exhibitions. The leaders of the movement were André Derain and Henri Matisse.
The National Museum in Wrocław, established 28 March 1947 and officially inaugurated on 11 July 1948, is one of Poland's main branches of the National Museum system. It holds one of the largest collections of contemporary art in the country.
Randers Museum of Art is a Danish art museum in Randers in northeastern Jutland, Denmark. The museum is located in the cultural centre of Kulturhuset in the town centre and displays many of the major works of Danish painters, especially those of the 19th and 20th centuries.
Anna Sophie Petersen was a Danish painter. Although she showed some promise as an artist, specifically in genre painting, she struggled to find a place in the male-dominated Danish art world of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Her work fell out of fashion and she was largely forgotten until the end of the 20th century when the Hirschsprung Collection and Statens Museum for Kunst acquired some of her more important works.
Lene Adler Petersen is a Danish artist. Her artistic practice is characterized through a continuous collecting, sorting and mixing process of media and techniques and includes happenings and performance art as well as painting, ceramics, drawings, printmaking and installations, film and photography.
A Nude Woman Doing her Hair before a Mirror is an oil painting from 1841 by the Danish Golden Age painter CW Eckersberg. The painting is in the Hirschsprung Collection in Copenhagen. The relatively small image is regarded as one of the masterpieces of the Danish Golden Age, and is also one of the Hirschsprung Collection's 20 most important works.
Alice is a c.1918 oil on canvas painting by Amedeo Modigliani. It now hangs in the National Gallery of Denmark, in Copenhagen, to which it was donated in 1928.
The Reverse of a Framed Painting is a still life trompe-l'œil painting by Flemish painter Cornelius Norbertus Gysbrechts, made in 1670, when the artist was working as the official painter of the Danish royal court. The painting is commonly considered a masterpiece of trompe-l'œil painting for its deceptively sculptural representation of the back of a framed painting in a canvas.
Hanne Finsen was a Danish art historian and museum director who had a special interest in French art. While at the National Gallery of Denmark, in 1970 she arranged the internationally acclaimed Henri Matisse retrospective. In 1978, she was appointed director of both the Hirschsprung Collection and the Ordrupgaard Collection. At Ordrupgaard, she presented a number of exhibitions, including those on Vilhelm Hammershoi and Édouard Manet. In 2005, in collaboration with the Musée du Luxembourg, Finsen presented "Matisse – A Second Life" at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, an exhibition focusing on the painter's later works.
Viggo Christian Frederik Vilhelm Pedersen was a Danish landscape painter who also explored religious, portrait, and domestic art. Known for his vibrant style and rich color palette, Pedersen's works reflect a profound connection to nature and tradition, while embracing modern techniques. He was the son of Vilhelm Pedersen and the brother of Thorolf Pedersen.
Portrait of Martin Luther may refer to any oil painting from a series of portrayals of Martin Luther by Lucas Cranach the Elder. That artist and his studio produced countless painted and printed portraits of Luther and it is often difficult to determine to what extent the paintings are autograph works. They often formed a diptych with a portrait of Luther's wife Katharina von Bora or his close associate Philipp Melanchthon.