DANISH ART.

Otago Witness, Volume 26, Issue 2419, 26 July 1900, Page 58

DANISH ART.

Mr William Sharp, in the Magazine of Arfe for May, writes pleasantly and instructively upon Danish art of to-day.

Even in Paris — where all modern art comes to be presented at court — one might inquire in vain aboui Danish art. "Danish— Danish. — why, is it not the .same as_ Swedish, Norwegian? Is it not Scandinavian?" In the~ studios, it is true, one might hear high praise of Peter Kroyer, perhaps evea of August Jerndorff; and many connected with the later _ developments in art, the New Salonists, would n respond to the mention of Ticrgo -Jbhansen's name, and even more likely to that of Julius Paulsen. Of .the re-birth and most interesting development of Danish art within tho la-st 25 years much might be said.

Denmark has produced no great art, no art of the highest. Her chief gloiy, Thorvaldsen. is a lesser glory in sculpture r a remarkable man, a man of convincing talent, but not, to us now, of convincing genius. Before the present century art simply did not c?:ist in the small country that once was so great a kingdom ; Danish art, in a word, began with tho sculptor Thorwaldsen and the painter Eekersberg. As ihe kingdom, shrank, the national life aroused. "When, less than. 50 yeard ago, Denmark became geographically simply a small sea-swept province, poets: and romancists and painters appeared, to save what was perishing, to keep alive the national spirit,. the national soul.

To-day there is no country in the world, where the many in a nation share so generally and amply with the few in the culture bora of lite^ture- and art. The whole of Denmark numbers a fewer people than a single region of London ; but this little nation lives, where a populace merely exists.