Transition from paintings of an elderly couple struggling to survive a harsh winter, to well-dressed girls sewing in the sun.
Denmark
A remarkable series showing skilled workers at their workplaces, then a visit to Italy, where he painted 3 mummified corpses in the catacombs. Also his finest landscape.
Social realism in the stony fields of Denmark, a wonderful view of Jerusalem, and his friend LA Ring facing a passing critic – and more.
His breakthrough came in 1884, with the first of a series of social realist paintings. It was a hard life in the Danish countryside, and death is never far away.
Brought up in a poor country family, he trained as a sculptor first, then switched to painting. A selection of his early social realist works, comparable with those of Jules Bastien-Lepage.
Had he been French or British, he would probably have been rated as one of the greatest painters of the 1800s.
Their works are rich in light and colour, strongly evocative of one of the most successful artists colonies of the nineteenth century, and include some of the most lyrical paintings of the whole century.
The Eclectic Light Company 