This also applied to “Aarhuspigen”, for which Kai Nielsen used his muse, Harriet Wiegandt, as the model. Originally commissioned by Frede Skaarup, the director of Scala, an entertainment venue in Copenhagen, the striking life-sized sculpture depicts a woman struggling to awaken from her sleep, but she also symbolises the transition from girlhood to womanhood. Emerging as if from the earth itself, she is the embodiment of youthful vitality. In 1921, the sculpture was placed alongside several others at the entrance of the newly built Aarhus Stadium. These works drew inspiration from classic Greek athletic ideals that cultivated the era’s celebration of natural physicality and favoured bodily freedom and expression through sport. The sculpture portrays the human body in harmony with the surrounding, life-giving nature. Subsequent reproductions of the figure were created in bronze, stone and concrete. The version of “Aarhuspigen” up for auction was acquired in around 1930 to be placed on Bergsjöholm Estate, located near Ystad in Sweden. The sculpture has since remained in the ownership of the same family, and, standing indoors, it has maintained its original golden patina.

There are several masterpieces to bid on at the auction, including the highly unusual sculpture “Jockey springer over en hest” (Jockey Jumping Over a Horse) by Jean René Gauguin, one of his very first works to be exhibited at Grønningen in Copenhagen in 1915. The sculpture caused a furore, because, in his attempt to exploit the nascent possibilities of snapshot photography, the artist had created a sculptural work that eschewed immobile monolithic stature in favour of pure movement and vitality. Gauguin was the son of the French artist Paul Gauguin.

Movement also enlivens Adam Fischer’s elegant and distinctive “Fodboldspiller” (Footballer), a patinated bronze sculpture created and signed by the artist in Rome in 1916. In subsequent years, Fischer shifted towards a more naturalistic style, focusing on figures of women walking or standing with pots, and it is for this somewhat more restrained sculptural expression that he is best known. His later statuettes and busts are some of the earliest Cubist sculptures in Danish art.