Offered by Galerie de Frise
REQUEST INFORMATION
Hans Ole BRASEN
(Hilerod 1849 - Copenhagen 1930)
The magpie
Oil on canvas
H. 29 cm; L. 33.5 cm
Signed and dated: 18 HB 74
Exhibition: 1874, Charlottenborg Salon
At the age of fourteen, Hans Brasen began his artistic apprenticeship in his hometown of Hilerod. Encouraged by his teacher Ernst Schmiegelow, who noticed his talent, he left for the Royal Danish School of Fine Arts in Copenhagen, where he was a student from 1867 to 1874. Two years later, he discovered Italy with his master Rasmussen, pushing the luminosity of his canvases towards the freshness sought today in his work, unusual for the time in Denmark.
Brasen's painting is mainly composed of scenes of popular daily life, from shepherds with their sheep and water carriers on sunny paths, to children dozing after a snack in the sun.
It was during his last year of study at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts that Hans Brasen created our luminous canvas. The central subject, a magpie resting on farming implements on a misty morning, reminds us of Claude Monet's famous composition, painted a few years earlier in Etretat. Did Hansen have the opportunity to see this work and draw inspiration from it? Not every artist can let a detail of the composition become the main subject, let alone the atmosphere of the work.
