Plaster, 1902. Size 59,5 x 47,5 x 39,5 cm. Inv. no. 146. Donated to the museum by Niels Hansen Jacobsen.

Exhibitions

Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, Paris, 1902.
Charlottenborg, Copenhagen, 1903.

Georg Brandes

Georg Brandes (1842-1927) was the most influential cultural personality in Denmark from 1870 to the First World War. With lectures entitled "Main Currents in 19th-century Literature" in the 1870s, he was responsible for the breakthrough of Naturalism in Denmark.

His lectures on Friedrich Nietzsche at the end of the 1880s had a special influence on symbolist trends. In them, he presented Nietzsche's concept that modern society had become nihilistic because a belief in God no longer played a central role in people's lives. Brandes became a proponent of the concept of the "superman" instead of religion. "The superman" is elevated above the common crowd, his being or creative force making him a source of culture. This concept was of great significance for the symbolists, who viewed the artist as a very special person, a visionary. Art was obliged to step forward in the absence of a divinity by giving material form to the world's spiritual dimension, and by providing modern man with space for introspection and self-awareness.

George Brandes's preoccupation with history's great loners or geniuses was also expressed in his biographies of men such as Michelangelo and Shakespeare, men who also interested Niels Hansen Jacobsen and his circle.

The bust's location

A second plaster cast is found at Nørresundby Library, not far from Niels Hansen Jacobsen's summer house in Hammer Bakker. The portrait was also executed in brown-glazed stoneware. The latter stood in Georg Brandes's study (now at the National Museum). Likewise, Jeppe Aakjær had a couple of versions of Niels Hansen Jacobsen's portraitbust of himself.

Georg Brandes as a model

Georg Brandes posed for numerous artists. The portraits of him painted by P. S. Krøyer and Harald Slott-Møller are especially famous, but sculptors were also kept busy. Niels Hansen Jacobsen modeled his features twice. This is the earlier of the two efforts.

Nearly 10 years later, Niels Hansen Jacobsen presented a ceramic mask at the Free Sculptors' exhibition; today the mask is found at Vejen Art Museum. The glaze is poison green, perhaps an illusion to the vitriolic intrigues in which Georg Brandes was involved. The clear emphasis on the unruly bangs - horns of a kind - might explain the use of the pseudonym "Lucifer."