Hugo Larsen: The Salute for the Danish King Christian IX at his last
Birthday in 1905.
Pastel on paper, appr. 54 x 75 cm. Dated 1946. Private collection.
The motive is from the battery in front of Fort Christian in St. Thomas.
With this pastel, we get a remarkable insight into the development of one of the artist's motives. Hugo Larsen used one of his own oil paintings of the same event and a photo made by the photographer H. Petersen in 1916 as sketches for the pastel. Even the pastel above shows signs of having been made as a sketch for a larger oil painting which was never completed.
See the original pastel and some fifteen other original works by Hugo Larsen at the exhibition "Overdragelse" at Overgaden (Institute of Contemporary Art) in Copenhagen from 30 Aug to 26 Oct 2008.
