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WILHELM MARSTRAND
Danmark 1810-1873
Don Quixote i sin ateljé studerande en bok om ridderlighet
Signerad och daterad 'V. M. /1847'. Olja på duk, 47 x 37 cm.
I en förgylld dansk ram


Don Quixote in his studio studying a book on Chivalry
Signed and dated 'W. M / 1847'. Oil on canvas, 47 x 37 cm.
In a gilt and ornate period Danish frame

PROVENANCE
Wholeseller W. P. Heyman,
his deceased estate, sale, Bruun-Rasmussen, No. 39, 1953, lot 47, ill. p. 18

LITERATURE
G. Valentiner, Wilhelm Marstrand Scenebilleder, 1992, pp. 82-83, ill. p. 83


Wilhelm Marstrand is one of the most renowned artists belonging to the Golden Age of Danish Painting. To his contemporaries and a further few generations, Marstrand ranked among Denmark's greatest painters of all time, to some authorities perhaps as the very greatest. Certainly, he was vastly productive and mastered a remarkable variety of genres - his disinterest for landscape art being a notable exception. More relevant today is the rather striking number of his works which are now familiar signposts of Danish history and culture: scenes from drawing-rooms and streets of Copenhagen during his younger days, the festivity and public life captured in Rome, the many representative portraits of citizens and innovators, even the monumentalist commissions for university and monarchy and last, but not least, his large output as illustrator.

Marstrand was the only one amongst C.W. Eckersberg´s students who was interested in narrative and illustrative painting. In conjunction with the death of his mother in 1847, his output in this genre increased dramatically. Literature and the world of theatre became his consolation as well as means for self-reflection. Not since Abildgaard had a Danish painter drawn on a similarly wide body of reading. Marstrand was personally acquainted with several writers of the day, such as Hans Christian Andersen, H. P. Holst and J. L. Heiberg, but it was the writers of the previous centuries that appealed most directly to his imagination. He particularly chose the anti-heroes of literature as subject matter - especially tragicomic characters who fool only themselves. Cervantes Don Quixote of la Mancha, as well as plays by the Danish playwright and novelist Ludvig Holberg would provide Marstrand with an endless stream of inspiration for years to come.

It was particularly the overly optimistic and idealistic knight Don Quixote who was the object of Marstrand´s fascination. From the 1850s, the character would become a recurring guest in his ouvre in a wealth of drawings and paintings. The quintessence of Cervantes´ tragicomic tale about the confused hero with a mixture of irony and compassion is that he learnt everything he knew from books, which caused difficulties for him to differentiate between fiction and reality. Marstrand knew the value of learning from literature but he was always aware of its limitations. In a letter to his son Paul dated 5 July 1867, he wrote: "af Bøger lærer man meget men man lærer mere ved forstandig Selbetragtning." ("from books one learns a lot, but even more so through self-reflection") (op. cit., p. 85, note 154).

In literature on Danish art history, the Don Quixote scenes have been interpreted as an autobiographical metaphor for Marstrand´s own position and self-image: the misanthropic professor supposedly saw himself reflected in the broken dreamer whose flighty imaginary world must inevitably be crushed by a reality that reduces him to a tragic figure. While such an interpretation may seem somewhat speculative, it would not be unprecedented in the art of the time, one can find autobiographical elements in the use of literary motifs in many of Marstrand´s fellow artists, not least Eckersberg. Indeed, his exploration of the absurdities of the Don Quixote character also took place entirely parallel to his own ever-more pessimistic view of the Danish art scene and his own abilities.

The present work, executed in 1847, is one of Marstrand´s earliest treatments of a subject taken from Cervantes´s tale. It was followed by Don Quixote attacks the a flock of sheep (Fyns Artmuseum) and Don Quixote and Sancho Panza at a crossroad (Nivaagaards Malerisamling, Copenhagen), both undated but painted after 1847. Interestingly, the rendering of the figure of Don Quixote in the present work shows extraordinary likeness to Nicolai Abildgaard´s physical appearance (see fig).

A Danish translation of Don Quixote with illustrations by Wilhelm Marstrand was published in three volumes between 1865-69 (see fig.).

A major exhibition on Wilhelm Marstrand´s life and work - Wilhelm Marstrand. The Great Storyteller - is presently showing at Fuglsang Art Museum, The Nivaagaard Collection, Ribe Art Museum and The Skovgaard Museum. On the occasion of the exhibition a series of articles on Marstrand are being published, the first one by J. Svenningsen, "Wilhelm Marstrand - A cosmopolitan artist caught in a vortex of images". https://perspective.smk.dk/en/wilhelm-marstrand-cosmopolitan-artist-caught-vortex-images


J. T. Sergel, Abildgaard warming his feet by a stove, 1797 (SMK KKSgb8163)


För frågor och konditionsrapport kontakta pierre.olbers@auktionsverket.se

Auktionsnummer:

1613

Datum:

2020-12-09