The Musée d’Orsay Shows Jens Ferdinand Willumsen

Monday, 14 August 2006 10:41

PARIS, FRANCE - The Musée d’Orsay presents the exhibit From Symbolism to Expressionism.  Willumsen (1863-1958), a Danish artist through September.  Jens Ferdinand Willumsen was born in Copenhagen in 1863 but lived much of his life in France.  After initial training in art at the Royal Academy of the Fine Arts in Copenhagen (1881-1885) and in architecture at the Copenhagen Technical College (1879-1882), he completed his education in 1885 in the Free Studios directed by the artist P.S. Krøyer (1851-1909).  He also spent several sojourns in Paris: in 1888-1890, 1893-1894 and 1903-1904.  His works were exhibited in the Salon, the Salon de la Société nationale des Beaux-Arts, the Salon des Artistes Indépendants, in the gallery run by Le Barc de Boutteville and at the Universal Exhibition of 1900.

After a stay in Copenhagen, where he was employed from 1897 to 1900 as the Art Director of the porcelain factory Bing & Grøndhal, then extensive travel to the United States, Italy, Switzerland, Norway, Spain, and North Africa, he settled in the South of France in 1916 (Villefranche, Nice, Cannes, Le Cannet).  He returned only episodically to Denmark.  Yet he continued to exhibit his works there regularly and he received a stream of private and official commissions from Denmark, including the Grand Relief (The Great Relief), a huge symbolic synthesis of life and mankind, produced between 1923 and 1928, but constantly in his mind since the late 1890s.  He died at Le Cannet in 1958.

Exhibiting Willumsen is no easy task. For one thing, his long career exceeds by several decades the time span allocated to the Musée d’Orsay.  For another, his intellectual faculties and robust constitution enabled him to work simultaneously in very different fields with equally sustained interest.  Apart from painting, he practised sculpture, architecture and ceramics and was an accomplished engraver and photographer.  His energetic temperament, deeply individualistic, mercurial and receptive, makes an approach to his work complex and full of surprises, such as the disconcerting Joueurs de boules (The Bowls Players), 1939-1946 (Frederikssund, Willumsens Museum).

Initially attracted by Raffaëlli’s Naturalism, as is shown by a number of canvases painted in Paris in 1889, La vie du lavoir (Life in the Wash House) (Göteborg, Kunstmuseum) and Jour d'hiver à Montmartre (A Winter’s Day in Montmartre) (Copenhagen, Statens Museum for Kunst), Willumsen came in contact with Parisian avant-garde circles in the 1890s and his painting, influenced by Gauguin and the Nabis – especially Vallotton (Scène des quais de Paris (Life on the Quays of Paris), 1890, Frederikssund, Willumsens Museum) – tended towards Cloisonnism and Synthetism.

In the 1910s, Willumsen developed a vision based on the luminous power of color.  During several stays in Spain, in 1910, 1911 and 1912, he discovered El Greco and wrote a book about him which was published in France in 1927.  In Sophus Claussen lisant son poème "Imperia" à Helge Rode et à Willumsen (Sophus Claussen reading his poem “Imperia” to Helge Rode and Willumsen) (1915, Aarhus, Kunstmuseum) and La soupe du soir (The Evening Soup) (1918, Frederikssund, Willumsens Museum), the tense atmosphere comes from the intensity of the colors and the expressionist distortion of the figures, revealing a new stylistic direction.

This ardent temperament, although not devoid of sarcastic humor, spoke ironically of creativity thwarted by the weight of the soul and failing inspiration, as is shown by the two paintings against a bright red background Le peintre et sa famille (The Painter and his Family) (1912, Stockholm, National Museum) and Autoportrait en blouse de peintre (Self-Portrait in an Artist’s Smock), executed in Nice in 1933 (Frederikssund, Willumsens Museum).

The exhibition From Symbolism to Expressionnism, Willumsen (1863-1958), A Danish artist, brings together some thirty paintings, ten prints, as many pieces of ceramics and forty photographs.  On display through September.

Visit The Musée d’Orsay at : www.musee-orsay.fr/