The present painting is a sketch for Peter Hansen's painting “Gødningssamlere i Pompeji”, 1904, which played a central role in the so-called “Bondemalerstriden” in 1907. In September 1903, Peter Hansen traveled to Pompeii, where he began sketches for the work “Gødningssamlere i Pompeji” on the main road to Scafati. The work can be seen as a direct break with the tradition from the Danish Golden Age, whose mission was to depict a warm, idyllic and harmonious Italy. Instead, Peter Hansen wants to show the real everyday life from Italy, where boys are collecting dung on the streets. It was exactly this kind of realism and naturalistic depiction that became the turning point in the art policy debate, where Gudmund Hentze called the Funen painters “Bondemalere” (Peasant painters), whose motifs were not suitable as subjects in the world of art, as these subjects were too realistic to be represented in the art. On the other side of the debate stood the art critic Karl Madsen and the author Johannes V. Jensen, defending the Funen painter’s “new” kind of naturalism, which could be seen as a breakthrough in the Danish art scene. “Bondemalerstriden” created a fundamental debate about where contemporary art should go and thereby had a major influence on the trends that emerged in the Danish art world in the decades after 1900. The debate ended up giving the Funen painters a distinctive position on the contemporary art scene. Peter Hansen's main work, “Manure Collectors on the Road to Pompeii”, is today part of the permanent collection at the Davids Samling.

Exhibited. Den Frie Udstilling, “Peter Hansen 1868–1928, Mindeudstilling”, 1930, no. 46.

Provenance: Arne Bruun Rasmussen auction 243, 1970 no. 8. Merchant I. H. Melchior, his auction Winkel & Magnussen 246, 1939 no. 72.

Literature: “Samleren” 1936, reproduced p. 67.