From 29 September to 27 January 2019, the French masterpieces of the Ordrupgaard State Art Museum in Copenhagen arrive in Padua exclusively for Italy in an exhibition curated by Anne-Birgitte Fonsmark and in collaboration with the Bano Foundation and the Municipality of Padua.
At Palazzo Zabarella the most beautiful paintings from the Danish collection of Cézanne, Degas, Gauguin, Manet, Monet, Berthe Morisot, Renoir, Matisse can be admired in the exhibition entitled Gauguin and the Impressionists.
The Bano Foundation and the Municipality of Padua have returned, unique for Italy, among the four major world headquarters selected to house the famous Danish collection, exceptionally available for the complete renovation of the Museum dedicated to it in Copenhagen. In recent months the traveling exhibition Gauguin and the Impressionists is underway at the National Gallery of Canada, to then reach Italy, in Palazzo Zabarella and conclude with a stop in Switzerland, before returning definitively to the Ordrupgaard Museum in Denmark.
Gauguin and the Impressionists. Masterpieces from the Ordrupgaard Collection will allow the Italian public to admire an amazing selection of works, the flower of the Collection created in the early twentieth century by banker, insurer, State Councilor and philanthropist Wilhelm Hansen and his wife Henny. The collection is considered today one of the finest European collections of impressionist art and in the aftermath of the First World War it was considered "unrivaled in northern Europe".
Hansen, who until then had collected only Danish painting, became fascinated by the new Impressionist art during one of his business trips to Paris in 1893. This trip was followed by methodical visits to the Salon, galleries and museums. From these acquaintances, in 1915, he developed the project of creating a collection of French art worthy of his Danish collection.
The decision was not alien to the idea that French art was destined for a rapid increase in value and was therefore a perfect investment, provided that the truly most important works on the market were purchased. A choice that explains the presence in the collection of such a high concentration of masterpieces. In just two years, from 1916 to 1918, Hansen managed to create, thanks also to the shrewd advice of one of the most important art critics of the time, Théodore Duret, a collection that his fellow Swedish collector Klas Fåhræus would have described as the " best impressionist collection in the world”.
According to Studio ESSECI, to finance the purchase of works of art, Hansen created a consortium, in which he involved wealthy friends, interested in bringing the new French art to Denmark.
In the immediate post-war period, the Consortium seized the opportunities that the market offered, purchasing entire important collections and individual exceptional works.
For the collection, Hansen built a new Gallery where, once a week, the public could admire his 156 works – ranging from neoclassical and romantic canvases, with David and Delacroix, to realism and impressionism, to post-impressionism with Cézanne and Gauguin, and finally Matisse as the first of the Fauves.
In 22, the Landmandsbanken (the Danish farmers' bank), at that time the largest private bank in the country, went bankrupt and also dragged the financier and collector into bankruptcy who, to avoid collapse, decided to sell off his French paintings . Then the recovery and, with it, the decision to reconstitute the Collection.
Among the new acquisitions were the Portrait of George Sand by Delacroix, a Marina at Le Havre by Monet, The Wrestler by Daumier. Courbet's fabulous rendition of the Roe Deer in the Snow also joined Hansen's collection, where it would supersede him as one of his major works.
The last purchase was a small pastel by Degas, depicting a ballerina bending over to adjust her slipper. The pastel had previously been owned by Paul Gauguin, who was a great admirer of Degas, and he had incorporated the pastel into the background of one of his flower images. In 1931 Hansen had bought the pastel from the Danish politician and writer Edvard Brandes, who had gotten it from his sister-in-law, Mette Gauguin.
“I'm done with the shopping now,” Hansen said. The collection was complete, but it was no longer open to the public. Wilhelm Hansen felt bitter. It was his wife who conveyed the collection to the state of Denmark, thus making it public.
