My World – The Skagen Painter Viggo Johansen

 The Skagen painter Viggo Johansen (1851-1935) differed from the other Skagen painters. While the other painters in the artists' colony were gathering on the beach to paint the billowing sea, he was looking in the other direction –  at the desolate hinterland. He directed his gaze at what lay behind, the fringes and the deserted landscapes. He also found several of his motifs within his own four walls. He painted private pictures of his immediate family – including his wife Martha and their six children, who feature frequently in the artist's works. During his lifetime, he also became known as 'Painter of the Home.'

 

In the exhibition With Me – The Skagen Painter Viggo Johansen the Hirschsprung Collection pays tribute to an important, but for many people lesser-known artist who was part of the artist colony in Skagen.

No male artist painted scenes of domesticity and family life so closely and intimately as Viggo Johansen. Today, there is something particularly relevant and modern about his highly personal pictures and their depiction of private life. In his paintings, the invisible, domestic chores of a woman, bathing children and doing the housework, acquired a place they had never been granted before.

In addition to the 'Painter of the Home' moniker, Viggo Johansen was also known as the 'Lamplight Painter'. In the evening, the family's rooms formed a setting for parties, and the guests included important cultural figures of the time. His works provide us with a glimpse of everyday life, featuring images of his wife and the couple's children in the lamp-lit rooms. We also encounter the sociable side of Viggo Johansen in the pictures of the parties in his home. In the glow of the oil lamp or candles, we get a sense of friends conversing intensely and exchanging brilliant ideas. But the paintings are also pictures of the artist's network: artists, art historians and other influential figures in the world of culture came together in the artist's home. Far away from the public eye. The exhibition also features Viggo Johansen's painting Evening Chat (1886), today owned by the National Gallery of Denmark. In Johansen's day, it was exhibited in Paris under the title Chez moi (In My Home). In every single picture in the exhibition we are in the company of the artist. We are really close to him, viewing the world through his eyes.

Viggo Johansen earned a large part of his income from teaching. In the late 1880s, he taught at Kunstnernes Studieskoler, where he became a popular teacher. In 1888, he became the first teacher at the newly established School for Women at the Danish Academy of Fine Arts, later becoming its director. Viggo Johansen exhibited his works at major exhibitions in Denmark, Europe and the United States. As a painter, teacher, and head of one of Denmark's leading art institutions, he played a significant role in the world of art at a time of upheaval for Danish art. National Romanticism was being ousted by the Modern Breakthrough: Johansen played a major role in the development of modern painting.

 

The exhibition is a collaboration with Ribe Kunstmuseum and Art Museums of Skagen.
 
Exhibition designer: Luise Midtgaard 

The A.P. Møller and Wife Chastine Mc-Kinney Møller Foundation For General Purposes, the Augustinus Foundation, the Axel Muusfeldt Foundation, Aage an Johanne-Louis Hansens Foundation, the Knud Højgaard Foundation, Consul George Jorck and Wife Emma Jorck’s Foundation, the New Carlsberg Foundation, and the June 15 Foundation.