|
Philipsen, Theodor (Esbern)
(b Copenhagen, 10 June 1840; d Copenhagen, 3 March 1920). Danish painter, sculptor and draughtsman. He studied at the Kongelige Akademi for de Skønne Kunster, Copenhagen, in 1862–3 and 1865–9, and in Paris under Léon Bonnat in 1875–6. He was an important figure in the development and renewal of Danish naturalism, linking the Danish Golden Age tradition with new French ideas. Conscious of the importance of plein-air painting, he was first a great admirer of the Barbizon school; later he was influenced by the Impressionists, becoming the only truly Danish Impressionist. Frequent visits abroad helped him develop his outlook; he eagerly studied the Old Masters, and the strong light of the south—Italy, Spain, Tunisia—encouraged him to paint pictures full of atmosphere, movement and colour. In A Street in Tunis (1882; Copenhagen, Stat. Mus. Kst), for example, a group of camel riders gallop between whitewashed walls in a rosy-white cloud of dust. While in Italy in 1883 he heard of the current Impressionist theories from his travelling companion, the Belgian painter Rémy Cogghe (1854–1935). Back in Denmark Philipsen became a friend of Gauguin during the winter of 1884–5. He studied the Impressionist works on show in Copenhagen in 1888 (the French Art Exhibition) and 1889 (Art Society) with enthusiasm. The results of these new influences are apparent in a series of landscapes from the early 1890s, such as From the Road to Kastrup (1890; Copenhagen, Hirschsprungske Saml.). By 1890 he had moved to the village of Kastrup near Copenhagen. From there he often visited the small, uninhabited island of Saltholm in the Sound where cattle grazed in summer; Dutchmen’s Well: Afternoon Sunlight (1886; Copenhagen, Ordrupgaardsaml.) is one of his many paintings of its flat, treeless landscape. In Milking-place at Dyrehavegaard (1895; Copenhagen, Stat. Mus. Kst) impressions of Théodore Rousseau’s landscape art, which he had seen at the World Exhibition in Paris (1889), are translated into the specifically Danish environment. Always a keen cattle-painter in the tradition of Paulus Potter and Johan Thomas Lundbye, he continued to paint his vividly characterized animal pictures until afflicted by an eye disease in 1906. He completely stopped painting in 1917. His pen drawings, with their personal, lively touch, are especially notable (e.g. Cattle under Passing Showers on the Isle of Saltholm, c. 1890; Copenhagen, Stat. Mus. Kst). His sculptures are all comparatively small; most of them are naturalistic ceramic animals, although he also worked in bronze (e.g. Roman Bull, 1892; Copenhagen, Stat. Mus. Kst).
|
