Gerde Wegener – The Little Bride (La petite mariée)

“In solitude I question myself and read my soul. I dread that shroud which imprisons me, which moves me to see all things through the vaporous clouds of dreams and imaginings. I seek to look upon the face of reality. It awes me. I place my fingers upon the throbbing pulse of actual life, repeating to myself: Hugo is coming. We may be married soon… married, married… Oh, I have lived too long in a world of my own making and I have suffered by the destruction of it. Do I know the truth of things now? Do I know love, and wedded love? Am I true woman?”

(The Early Diary of Anais Nin, 1920-23)

Gerda Wegener, The Bridal Recessional or The Little Bride (La petite mariée), 1927

Gerda Wegener was a female Danish painter who loved to paint women, often in a very eroticised manner, but her painting “The Bridal Recessional – La petite mariée” shows a more delicate side to her work, and indeed, eroticism and delicacy are intertwined in her paintings and always coexist in a beautiful and harmonius way. The painting shows a bride and a groom, leaving the church probably, followed by their entourage. The bride, holding onto her husband’s arm, is dressed all in white, as is usual, but Wegener really does paint white clothing beautifully. Even her tights are white and her long veil, decorate with a headband, is held by a little girl in a yellow gown. The wedding guests are all showing different emotions, some smiling and some holding handkerchief to wipe off poignant tears. In the background, only a few trees, houses and towers can be seen. The most interesting thing in this painting, besides the lovely bride, is how artificial in a deligtful way everyone looks, truly, doll-like I might say.

There is not much depth and poignancy about this wedding scene, as there perhaps is in some other paintings in art history. It is very decorative, as most of Wegener’s paintings are anyway, but that doesn’t lessen its beauty in my eyes nor does it make it any less interesting. Still, despite the bride’s doll-like face – with those big blue eyes and bright rosy cheeks – there is an emotion hiding behind the mask-like stillness, a certain dynamic going on between her and her husband; while he is gazing down at her attentively, she seems to be gazing out into the distance, delicate and fawn-like, with a look of wistfulness perhaps, a slight worry, in her eyes, which is perhaps natural on the ocassion, but still made me think of something from Anais Nin’s diary entry, written just prior to her marrige to Hugo in 1923, around the same time that Wegener’s paintings was painted; “I place my fingers upon the throbbing pulse of actual life, repeating to myself: Hugo is coming. We may be married soon… married, married… Oh, I have lived too long in a world of my own making and I have suffered by the destruction of it. Do I know the truth of things now? Do I know love, and wedded love? Am I true woman?”

“Sad-veiled bride please be happy, handsome groom give her room…”

(The Smiths, I Know It’s Over)

Something about Wegener’s paintings, about the way she paints female figures, makes me think about the paintings of Marie Laurencin and also Boris Grigoriev’s painting “The Model”, all of which were painted in the 1920s, so the same time as Wegener’s paintings. Considering to which extend Wegener devoted herself to painting women and the world through a feminine lense, something that the aforementioned painter Marie Laurencin said can be equally applied to Wegener’s art, Laurencin said: “Why should I paint dead fish, onions and beer glasses? Girls are so much prettier.” I am sure Gerda Wegener would have agreed!

The world that she has created in her paintings is a very feminine one; very delicate, and sweet, and pink, and doll-like and spring-like and fragrant. The sweetness, rosyness and idealisation were, at times, a far cry from the actual life that Wegener was leading. After an exciting youth and a prolific career, she went through the ‘loss’, followed by divorce, of her first husband because he started living as a woman, a life in Marocco with her second husband, a second divorce, financial instability and alcoholism, and a death in relative obscurity. She died in in late July 1940 in Fredericksberg, Denmark, shortly after the Nazis invaded the country. Perhaps for the best that she did not see what was to come.

Peter Ilsted and Hamsun’s Hunger: Ylajali Looking Out the Window

I recently wrote about the turn of the century Danish painter Peter Ilsted and his delightful, sunny and cozy interior scenes with girls playing or reading books and I mentioned Knut Hamsun’s novel “Hunger”, well today I want to focus exclusively on Hamsun’s novel and the painting which reminds me of one scene from the novel.

Peter Vilhelm Ilsted (Danish artist, 1861-1933), Looking Out the Window, 1908

In “Looking Out of the Window”, a pretty young girl in a black dress and two long braids is looking out of the window. As usual with these Northern painter such as Hammershoi and Ilsted, the girl’s face is not seen, but still I know that she is pretty because she must be and I want her to be because I see her as the Ylajali from Knut Hamsun’s novel “Hunger”; the sweet-scented, pretty and mysterious girl that the narrator meets one day by chance in the street and later he has a very interesting conversation with her one night. In this painting Ilsted offers a somewhat voyeuristic view of the girl looking out of the window because she is in the other room, and she left the doors behind her open and that’s why we see her through the corridor. If the white doors were closed, the girl would be a mystery and all that would remain on the canvas would be the little table, a painting with shadowy figures and the door. The interior would seem cold and uninviting, but the girl with the braids adds a mysterious touch to it.

What is she looking at? Or should I say, on what strange gentleman are her eyes set? The answer lies in Hamsun novel “Hunger”; written in the first person in the stream of consciousness style, the unnamed narrator is a young aspiring journalist who, poor and hungry, wanders the streets and encounters many things on his way. This is how the novel begins: “It was during the time I wandered about and starved in Christiania: Christiania, this singular city, from which no man departs without carrying away the traces of his sojourn there.” Hungry, half-desperate and half-hopeful in a mad way, with frail nerves, empty stomach and a thin coat, he leaves his attic room in search of….something to fill his day. While on a walk in the beginning of the novel, he sees two ladies walking with their parasols, and accidentally brushes one, turning around to apologise, he sees her pale face and cheeks blushing and she is instantly lovely to him; “I feel myself seized with an odd desire to make this lady afraid; to follow her, and annoy her in some way. I overtake her again, pass her by, turn quickly round, and meet her face-to-face in order to observe her well. I stand and gaze into her eyes, and hit, on the spur of the moment, on a name which I have never heard before–a name with a gliding, nervous sound–Ylajali!”

The mysterious girl whose pale face hidden under the veil cannot leave his mind is named Ylajali and he follows her to the bookstore and then to the house where she apparently lives and here is that part of the novel which reminds me of Ilsted’s painting:

“Outside No. 2, a large four-storeyed house, they turned again before going in. I leant against a lamp-post near the fountain and listened for their footsteps on the stairs. They died away on the second floor.

I advanced from the lamp-post and looked up at the house. Then something odd happened. The curtains above were stirred, and a second after a window opened, a head popped out, and two singular-looking eyes dwelt on me. “Ylajali!” I muttered, half-aloud, and I felt I grew red.

Why does she not call for help, or push over one of these flower-pots and strike me on the head, or send some one down to drive me away? We stand and look into one another’s eyes without moving; it lasts a minute. Thoughts dart between the window and the street, and not a word is spoken. She turns round, I feel a wrench in me, a delicate shock through my senses; I see a shoulder that turns, a back that disappears across the floor. That reluctant turning from the window, the accentuation in that movement of the shoulders was like a nod to me. My blood was sensible of all the delicate, dainty greeting, and I felt all at once rarely glad. Then I wheeled round and went down the street.

I dared not look back, and knew not if she had returned to the window. The more I considered this question the more nervous and restless I became. Probably at this very moment she was standing watching closely all my movements. It is by no means comfortable to know that you are being watched from behind your back. I pulled myself together as well as I could and proceeded on my way; my legs began to jerk under me, my gait became unsteady just because I purposely tried to make it look well. In order to appear at ease and indifferent, I flung my arms about, spat out, and threw my head well back–all without avail, for I continually felt the pursuing eyes on my neck, and a cold shiver ran down my back. At length I escaped down a side street, from which I took the road to Pyle Street to get my pencil.”

Ylajali, what a beautiful and exotic name to my ears! This scene from “Hunger” lingered in my mind for some time after finishing the novel.

Vilhelm Hammershoi, Interior, Strandgade 30, 1901

And just for comparison, here is Vilhelm Hammershoi’s painting with a similar theme, again a lady is looking out the window, her back turned against us, her face hidden, but this version of the same scene doesn’t speak to me as much as Ilsted’s version does. Hammershoi does have a mystery and a certain magic, but this strictness of elements, minimalism, and the palette of greys is painfully oppressive and I just wanna die when I gaze it for a long time.

Peter Ilsted – Two girls playing

Out of the three leading Danish painters in the early twentieth century; Peter Ilsted (1861-1933), Carl Holsøe (1863-1935) and Vilhelm Hammershøi (1864-1916), it was Peter Ilsted who brought the warmth, the yellow rays of sunlight, coziness and quiet cheerfulness in his interior scenes, while imbuing them with the little bit of the mystery, the kind that haunts Hammershoi’s well-known interiors. Ilsted was the oldest of the three painters, born on Valentine’s day in 1861, and his sister Ida later became Hammershoi’s wife and appears often in his interior scenes, as a mysterious figure in black.

Peter Vilhelm Ilsted (Danish artist, 1861-1933), Two girls playing, c. 1900

Ilsted’s painting “Two girls playing” exudes loveliness and warmth. Sunlight is streaming into the room, pale, peachy-orange and yellowish, and suddenly the same minimalist Northern interior which would appear cold and distant in the paintings of Holsoe or Hammershoi, is filled with quiet sweetness and hopes. Two girls, perhaps sisters are playing with something. They turned their backs on us, they don’t care about us because whatever they are playing with is far more amusing. Their appearance is matching; dark dresses under white aprons, little black boots, hair in a single plait follows the line of the neck and ends in a little bow. While the lighter haired girl is kneeling on the chair, the other seems to be standing on the tips of her toes to see better that secretive toy which seems to provide them both with so much amusement. I can imagine them chatting quietly, even giggling, but all in moderation, for the children ought to be seen but not heard. An interesting detail to notice are the paintings on the wall, little paintings in a painting, figures on them are shadowy and dreamy.

Peter Vilhelm Ilsted, Interior with girl reading, 1910

The painting “Interior with girl reading” from 1910, is again filled with the same Ilsted-esque sunshine, silence and tranquility. Sweet moments at home, the coziness and the safety. The future, its trials, tribulations and uncertainties are miles away from this little girl reading a book in her drawing room. How sweet and shy and modest she appears, in a simple grey dress, hair tied in a braid, completely absorbed in the book she is reading. What thoughts occupy her sweet and innocent mind? The bookshelf, the mirror and the drawer are the only pieces of furniture in this simple room, but again there is something warm and cozy about it which doesn’t appear in the paintings of Ilsted’s contemporaries Holsoe and Hammershoi. I love how Ilsted continually achieves this delightful warmth and coziness in his interiors with little girls playing, reading or chatting, without allowing his canvases to fall into the abyss of sentimentality. Far from it, these paintings are equally thrilling and mysterious as any interior painted by Hammershoi. This delicate, gentle portrayal of the home life and childhood resonated with me, the warm orange-yellowish light that colours the space in his interiors almost fills me with nostalgia. Just take a look at that golden sunlight on the floor, how yellow and tangible it appears! It makes me wanna lie there and take a nap like a cat.

It being winter; cold and dreary, and I am weary, weary of it, my thoughts go to “Northern” painters and writers. I recently read Knut Hamsun’s novel “Hunger” originally published in 1890, and while he isn’t a Danish but a Norwegian writer, some interior scenes by Hammershoi and Ilsted came to my mind because these cozy, quiet and sunny interiors are a stark contrast to the cold and unwelcoming outside world. “Hunger” is written in the first person by an unnamed narrator who is struggling to get his writing published, his extreme poverty brought him to the state of perpetual hunger and this hunger makes his nerves frail and his behavior somewhat eccentric. In one scene from the novel, he keeps staring at a window until a girl’s face appears, they stare at each other for a while, but then her lovely countenance disappears behind the thick white curtains, the borders between the outside world and the indoor coziness, the narrator continues staring at the window, feeling curious and slightly embarrassed.

I wonder, if the girls from Ilsted’s painting would leave their books and their toys, and if they looked through the window and saw a thin, hungry man in a tattered suit, with wild untamed hair and crazy eyes, how would they feel about him? A mix of pity and fear. Would they stare for some time, until their mother or the servant chased them away from the window because it’s inappropriate to stare at the outside world. This simple and sober middle class interior is a safe cage for the girls-birds; they are too shy, too innocent and too sweet to see the reality out there, on the other side of the curtains and windows which serve are protectors. Whatever crazy stuff is going on outside, none of it can harm them.

Peter Vilhelm Ilsted, Interior, 1897

Peter Vilhelm Ilsted, Interior with two girls, 1904

Laurits Andersen Ring – Young Girl Looking Out a Window

“City of swarming, city full of dreams
Where ghosts in daylight tug the stroller’s sleeve!
Mysteries everywhere run like the sap
That fills this great colossus’ conduits.

One morning, while along the sombre street
The houses, rendered taller by the mist….”

(Baudelaire, Seven Old Men)

Laurits Andersen Ring, Young Girl Looking Out a Window, 1885

A young girl is standing by the window and looking out at the urban grey cityscape; grey skies and old roofs gradually disappearing in the mist. Their brown and fading brick red shades are the only colour in this sea of greyness. Then there’s also the soft pink of the girl’s cheek, perhaps from the cold winter air, or perhaps thoughts of distant beloved someone have turned her cheek into a summer’s garden of pink roses. She is dressed in simple, somber attire, and we see so little of her face that it is hard to tell what she is feeling, but we can imagine. She’s clearly a poor, working class girl, yearning for more. Perhaps she moved from the countryside as many have at the time, including the painter himself, and now, looking out of her small attic window at the “swarming city, city full of dreams” she doesn’t see the things that were promised to her. Even though it isn’t shown on the painting, we can imagine the rest of the scene; a poorly furnished cold little room, with old wooden floor, a tattered worn-out wooden furniture, little comfort and little brightness and little warmth, a perfect background for a Joy Division song to play in the background and flood the space and the girl’s life with an even greater sea of misery. It must be a singularly dreary late autumn day, for if it was a winter day, the roofs of Copenhagen would have probably been covered in a layer of snow. These verses seem as if they were directed to this girl looking out of her window:

“Tell me, does your heart sometimes fly away, Agatha,
Far from the black ocean of the filthy city,
Toward another ocean where splendor glitters,
Blue, clear, profound, as is virginity?
Tell me, does your heart sometimes fly away, Agatha?“

(Baudelaire, The Flowers of Evil, translated by William Aggeler, 1954)

Born as Laurits Andersen in 1854 in a little village of Ring, as a carpenter’s son, the ambitious Danish painter added “Ring” to his name as a way to differentiate himself from a fellow painter Hans Andersen Brendekilde (who added Bredenkiled himself out of the same reason) because they both exhibited their paintings at a joint exhibition in 1881. Ring began his art journey as a painter’s apprentice in his village, took some private classes in painting while working in Copenhagen in 1873, until he was accepted as a student at the Danish Academy of Arts and for a while studied under Peder Severin Krøyer, but he never liked the discipline and themes promoted by the Academy. You know someone is a great painter if they rebel against the Academy. The painting “Young Girl Looking Out a Window” is a fairly early and a fairly unknown work, at least compared to his more famous paintings, such as his Northern landscapes and village scenes which tackle the difficult aspects of poor people’s lives. Ring was very interested in the social justice and portraying realism in art, real things and real people, and not mythological fantasy themes. He didn’t want to escape reality, he wanted to tame it and transform it into colours and forms on his canvases. And this painting of a sad-looking girl gazing out the window was painted at the time when Ring himself was struggling financially and artistically, and spent a winter in an attic room in Copenhagen, living more on his ambitions than on bread and butter. Also, the way she was painted, seen from the profile and crammed into the very corner of the canvas, is something he typically did.

Peder Severin Krøyer – Summer Evening on the Skagen Beach

“I’m the lonely voyager standing on deck, and she’s the sea. The sky is a blanket of gray, merging with the gray sea off on the horizon. It’s hard to tell the difference between sea and sky. Between voyager and sea. Between reality and the workings of the heart.” (Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore)

Peder Severin Krøyer, Summer Evening on the Skagen Southern Beach with Anna Ancher and Marie Krøyer, 1893

What I love about this painting is that it reminds me of music, an echo of soft fairy whispers mingled with fading notes of the piano… and then silence. It has a gentleness and stillness that sends our mind into a reverie, or inspires us to contemplate on eternity in a similar way that Caspar David Friedrich’s landscapes do. Here Krøyer painted the most melancholy and profound moment of the day: twilight with its endless dreamy blueness. The soft meandering line which separates the world of sea waves with the white sand of the coast is very dreamy because it suggest infinity and leads the viewer’s eye towards unknown distances. Two ladies are walking slowly right near that dreamy line, one can feel the water touching their dresses when the wave comes or see their footsteps appearing after each step in the wet sand. The colour palette is particularly dreamy as well, aerial, soft and gentle with plenty of white, grey, blue and hints of toned yellow in the sand and on the dresses. They are walking arm in arm, in intimate conversation, just two figures walking towards infinity. Without the figures, this painting would be yet another landscape, but with the figures added in, the painting gets an emotional depth, ironically, the inclusion of figures reminds us of the loneliness of the beach. Two lone figures, might as well be ghosts in white gowns, for their faces we cannot see, walking slowly and leaving barely a trace of their existence.

Skagen is Denmark’s northernmost town and is closer to the coast of Sweden than to Copenhagen. In Krøyer’s time it was a remote fishers village whose understated beauty is revealed through the eyes of the group of painter appropriately called “The Skagen Artists”. Nowadays, Krøyer is the most well-known from this group, but they were all interested in similar themes; the beauty of the cold northern sea, fishers and harvests, and, in a manner similar to the Impressionists, they meticulously devoted themselves to portraying the effects of sunlight and people having fun, mostly their families and friends. Below we have a similar painting by Michael Archer, a fellow painter from the Skagen group of artists. Again, it has that gorgeous immeasurable lightness and a long clear diagonal line between the sandy beach and the sea, how romantically it stretches on and on. Lonely mood is toned down because of the five female figures in pastel coloured dresses, but a hint of melancholy is left in the face of the girl who treads the beach first, gazing down at the sand, lost in thoughts, following the shadow that falls in front of her.

Michael Ancher, A stroll on the beach, 1896

I imagine that the seaside looks exquisite this time of the year; I imagine the soft sand untainted by human footsteps, the sky clear and grey-blue, not even a seagull is flying by. Smell of salt hangs in the melancholy air. When I gaze at these paintings, I can almost hear the waves playing Debussy’s “La Mer”, soothing my soul with each passing note… And there in the distance, the sky and the sea are becoming one in a kiss.

Queen Alexandra – Life in photos

Queen Alexandra was born on 1. December 1844. – one hundred and seventy two years ago. Her full name was Alexandra Caroline Marie Charlotte Louise Julia and she was a daughter of  Christian IX. of Denmark and Louise of Hesse-Kassel.

Her close family knew her as ‘Alix’ and although she was of royal blood, she lived pretty modestly and shared her attic room with her sister Dagmar (later Maria Feodorovna, Tsarina of Russia.) As a child she was taught swimming and English, and she remain a devoted christian her entire life.

She married Edward VII. on 10. March 1863. They eventually had six children, but their youngest son died a day after he was born. Alexandra was a devoted mother who loved her children very much. Their children were:

– Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence and Avondale

– Prince George, Duke of York

– Princess Louise, Princess Royal

– Princess Victoria

– Princess Maud

I’ve chosen a title ‘Queen Alexandra – Life in photos’ because she was an amateur photographer herself and she took a lot of photos of her children and family. She was also interested in hunting (much to Queen’s disapproval) and dancing, ice-skating and horseback riding. Alexandra was extremely socially active and she attended balls, dances, dinners, meetings, visited hospitals and orphanages.

But the thing that I love the most about Queen Alexandra is her fashion style. She was a fashion icon of her time and photos of her are surely a proof. Enjoy!

1862. Alix and Minnie with their mother Queen Louise of Denmark

1862. Engagement of Albert Edward, Prince of Wales and Princess Alexandra of Denmark

1863. Princess Alexandra of Wales

1863. Princess Alexandra of Denmark and the Prince of Wales

1863. Princess-Grand Duchess Alice with Princess Alexandra of Wales and Grand Duke Ludwig with Prince of Wales

1865. Princess Alexandra of Wales.

1865. Princess Alexandra, Queen Victoria and Edward

1867. Princess Alexandra of Wales.

c. 1871. Princess Alexandra of Wales.

1871. Alix and Minnie with their sister Thyra

1873.  Queen Alexandra with her sister the Tsarina Marie Feodorovna, Piccadilly, London

1880s Sisters Princess Alexandra, the future Queen of the United Kingdom and Princess Dagmar of Denmark

1883. Princess Alexandra of Wales.

1884. Princess Alexandra in a seaside dress

1889. Princess Alexandra of Wales

Queen Alexandra with her daughter Princess Maud

1893. Alexandra of Wales with daughters Maud, Victoria and Louise, duchess of Fife at Prince George’s wedding

1894. Maria Feodorovna her two daughters Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna, Grand Duchess Xenia Alexandrovna and Queen Alexandra with her daughter Princess Maud.

1900s Queen Alexandra.

1900s Queen Alexandra with Princess Louise and Princess Victoria

1901. Queen Alexandra.