PAINTINGS

Vilhelm KYHN

Seascape at Sunset

Oil on canvas

21 x 51 cm
42 x 71 x 5 cm (with the frame)

Signed lower left: VK.

Vilhelm Kyhn (1819-1903) was a Danish painter best known for his romantic naturalistic landscapes. His career developed in a period of transition between Romanticism and early Realism, with a clear adherence to the 19^th-century Danish pictorial tradition.

Kyhn studied at the Kunstakademiet in Copenhagen, where he was a pupil of such artists as Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg, the father of the so-called “Golden Age of Danish painting” – an affirmation of detailed realism and luminist sensibility. However, Kyhn drifted away from the hyper-rational style of the Eckersberg school, moving towards a more lyrical naturalism, influenced by the great tradition of Nordic landscape painting.

Vilhelm Kyhn is considered one of the opponents of the Skagen school, the group of painters who in the 1870s and ’80s renewed Danish painting through Impressionist influences and the use of light en plein air. But Kyhn favoured a more classical, carefully composed approach.

His paintings are marked by a lyrical romantic atmosphere (although far from the excesses of Romanticism, Kyhn sought an idealized and harmonious representation of nature); typically Nordic light and colours (soft hues, vast bright skies, particular atmospheric reflections); unspoiled landscapes (he often depicted the Danish countryside with particular attention to the play of light at dusk and dawn).

A fundamental figure in keeping the tradition of the Danish landscape alive even when academic painting began to decline in favour of such new trends as Realism and Impressionism.

This romantic Seascape at Sunset, with its play of light and warm colour is a superb example of this. The composition focuses on the atmospheric rendering, much of the canvas is in fact occupied by the sky, which delicately fades into warm tones, from yellow to orange. The low clouds bring a sensation of calm vastness and contemplation.

Kyhn is a figure of great interest in Danish painting, appreciated for his ability to immortalize Nordic nature with sensitivity and great technical mastery.

His works are present in the collections of prestigious international museums such as:

the Statens Museum for Kunst in Copenhagen; Kunstmuseum (Kunsthalle) Bremen, Germany, Arken Museum of Modern Art, Ishøj, Denmark; Museum of National History, Frederiksborg Castle, Hillerød, Denmark.

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