Sophus Vermehren (b. Copenhagen 1866, d. Frederiksberg 1950)
A young student fresh from high school shows a young girl the antique collection at the National Gallery of Denmark. Signed and dated S. Vermehren 1906–1909. Oil on canvas. 65×72 cm.
Literature: “Weilbach. Dansk Kunstnerleksikon”, ed. Sys Hartmann, vol. IX, Cph. 2000, mentioned p. 36.
Provenance: Bruun Rasmussen auction 695, 2001 no. 1033. Bruun Rasmussen auction 703, 2001 no. 29. Bruun Rasmussen auction 886, 2019 no. 118.
Sophus Vermehren was the son of the painter Frederik Vermehren (1823–1910), and he was taught by his father before he entered the Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen in 1883.
Plaster casts of antique sculptures were a great source of inspiration for artists right back from the Renaissance through the Baroque, the Neo-classical period and into the early twentieth century, and the reproductions were valued almost as highly as the originals. The art academies around Europe owned copies of the most important ancient works, and they were included as an essential part of the teaching when, after a few years, the students went from copying after drawings or engravings to learning to draw after three-dimensional models. Drawing after casts was thus an essential artistic training before the students could move on to drawing after live models. The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts also had a large collection of casts, which are known from several paintings from the Danish Golden Age depicting the artists in the act of copying a cast - one of the best known is Christen Købke's “Parti af Afstøbningssamlingen på Charlottenborg” (View from the plaster cast collection at Charlottenborg) from 1839 (The Hirschsprung Collection).
The Royal Cast Collection, which was partly made up of the collection from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, was established in 1895 as part of the National Gallery of Denmark where it was also housed until it moved to the old historic West Indian Warehouse (Vestindisk Pakhus) by Copenhagen Harbor in 1995. It is one of the world's largest and finest collections of casts.
Erik Mortensen writes about the painting in Weilbach's Kunstnerleksikon: "Vermehren’s painting is a typical and, in many ways, sympathetic depiction of the newly refurnished National Gallery of Denmark, where a recently graduated student shows the collection of antiquities to a young girl [...] The lighting effects are skilfully done, the drawing of the figures confident and the anecdotal adequately discreet.” (see the literature reference above).
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