THE FUNEN PAINTERS: ART ABOVE ALL!

‘Art above all!’ exclaimed the artist Alhed Larsen in a letter to her mother in 1893, apologising for not replying sooner: she needed to finish the painting she was working on first. By this point in time the young artist was still in her youthful, dream-filled years, and she would soon – like several other painters from Funen – be called upon to balance family life with an artistic career. In this respect, many artists of the time built a sense of fellowship with one another and with nature.

The Funen Painters. Art above all! presents three artist couples from Funen: Alhed and Johannes Larsen, Anna and Fritz Syberg and Christine and Sigurd Swane. Grounded in an extensive research project based on the couples’ correspondence, the exhibition was previously shown at Kunstmuseum Brandts in 2024 and now opens in an entirely new setting at The Hirschsprung Collection. Alongside a presentation of some of the artists’ most pivotal artworks, visitors will also find the artists speaking to them through selected letters and archival material. The exhibition takes us deep inside one of art history’s most relevant artist colonies, the Funen Painters, who lived and dreamed at a time when the world was ravaged by wars and economic disasters.

Issues concerning women’s labour in the home and the division of artistic work between the sexes were negotiated within each couple. The same themes also shaped the subject matter addressed in their art, which often depicts the immediacy of everyday life, the surrounding landscape and the many tableaux found around the home. The traditional, gendered allocation of household duties constrained the women’s opportunities for artistic expression, yet it also paved the way for a distinctive gaze onto the immediate and intimate textures of daily life. In an era marked by struggles for women’s emancipation and artistic creation, the three couples found one another and chose a life far from the city, underneath vaulted skies where you could breathe freely and art was close at hand. They inspired one another and discovered new ways of living in community with nature. Here, we find art embedded as a natural part of life.

The exhibition and its interpretation are curated by curator Rasmus Kjærboe, PhD, at The Hirschsprung Collection in collaboration with Søren Thorlak Madsen, PhD fellow and the curator behind the research and exhibition at Brandts 

Augustinus Fonden, Louis-Hansens Fond, Axel Muusfeldts Fond, Etatsraad Georg Bestles og Hustrus Mindelegat (Bestles Fond)