Julius Paulsen: En sommerdag på landet (A summer day in the country). Signed Jul. Paulsen 1914. Oil on canvas. 46 x 61. Estimate: DKK 6,000–8,000.

Know Your Artist – Julius Paulsen

Follow our series of articles entitled “Know your artist”, where we focus on a number of Danish and international artists on the auction market. This time you can learn more about the artist Julius Paulsen and his intimate figure studies and evocative interiors. Be inspired by the artist’s universe and bid on one of his works at Online Auction right now.

Julius Paulsen (1860–1940) achieved great recognition during his lifetime. He was part of the circle surrounding the Skagen painters and a professor at the Academy for many years. He was a prolific artist and exhibited frequently. Yet it is generally his more famous peers, P.S. Krøyer, L.A. Ring, J.F. Willumsen and Vilhelm Hammershøi who stand in the spotlight of posterity.

Dramatic Landscapes, Contrastful Interiors and Intimate Figure Studies

As an artist, Julius Paulsen is difficult to pigeonhole. He absorbed everything around him and was both influenced and inspired by the many different currents and styles that prevailed in his day, and at times also by the art of the old masters, especially Rembrandt. There are therefore traces of Impressionism, Symbolism and Realism in his works, as well as elements of Renaissance and Baroque art. His depictions of models are characterised by an intimate, almost inward-looking atmosphere, often executed in loose brushstrokes. Some of his interiors contain marked contrasts between light and shadow, and in his landscapes, Paulsen played with the effect of light on the surrounding nature, be it the blinding backlight, the subtle evening light or the moonlight. The areas around Tisvilde and Gilleleje were some of his favourite motifs.

Julius Paulsen: Et interiør med levende lys (A candlelit interior). Signed Jul. P. 09. Oil on canvas. 54 x 65. Unframed. Estimate: DKK 4,000–6,000.

“Julius Paulsen was so good at capturing the quiet, private moment in his figure studies, whereas his landscapes can be violent and intoxicating with threatening clouds, pink light and glittering seas. We often find some really great works by him at auction.”
Camilla Bruun Stoltze
Specialist in Fine Art at Bruun Rasmussen

Studies and Travel-minded Friends

Julius Paulsen studied at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen. He did not graduate but made friends here with several of the artists who would make up the artists’ colony in Skagen. In the following years, he quit his studies in favour of several trips abroad, which left a significant mark on his style.

Julius Paulsen: Halvnøgen kvinde (Semi nude woman). Signed J. P. 1929. Oil on canvas. 87 x 68. Estimate: DKK 12,000–15,000.

In 1885, Paulsen went on his first trip abroad together with P.S. Krøyer, Anna and Michael Ancher and Viggo Johansen. They visited Belgium, the Netherlands and France, where Paulsen exhibited at the Paris Exposition in 1889 and was awarded a gold medal in 1900. In 1912–1913, he also travelled in Spain with the painter J.F. Willumsen.

After his death in 1940, Julius Paulsen gradually slipped into the shadow of his contemporaries. Nowadays, he is recognised as a master in the depiction of nudity.