Wilhelm Marstrand - Posthumous Reception

Posthumous Reception

To his contemporaries and a further few generations, Marstrand ranked among Denmark's great 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. Still, as the 20th Century progressed, his work had become less valued artistically and downright unfashionable; conversely, recent decades seem to have afforded new appreciation.