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Fountain

undated
 
 

 

Built into the museum's south facade. Size 148 x 77 x 57,5 cm. Inv. no. 193. Taken over from Vejen Municipality.

 

Drinking fountain

Niels Hansen Jacobsen created an unusual drinking fountain in front of the railway station in Vejen, flanked by benches. The group was unfortunately demolished. The mask and the basin were erected outside Vejen Art Museum, but no longer provide drinking water.

Full size, 42K

 

An interplay between sculpture and architecture

The period's interest in the decorative aspects of art was reflected in a fascination with linking architecture and decoration. The ideal was for a building's furnishings or sculptural decorations to be created together with its architecture so that the end result was a sterling Gesamtkunstwerk. The most prominent Danish example of this trend is Martin Nyrop's Copenhagen City Hall (1892-1905). One of Niels Hansen Jacobsen's colleagues from the Free Sculptors' Exhibition, Anders Bundgaard, created its highly integrated sculptural decoration. Niels Hansen Jacobsen's fountain was conceived in the same spirit, though on a smaller scale.

 

The masks

A ceramic mask from the end of the 19th century hangs in the Sculpture Hall above the entrance to the kiosk and Niels Hansen Jacobsen's private rooms. It has a symmetrical structure and a character very similar to that of the mask on the fountain.

Photo: Pernille Klemp

A number of masks, ranging from naturalistic to almost abstract, hang throughout the museum. Most were made during Niels Hansen Jacobsen's decade-long stay in Paris during the 1890s. An important source of inspiration was the work of the famous French sculptor and ceramist Jean Carries, who was Niels Hansen Jacobsen's neighbor at Boulevard Arago 65 until Carries's death in 1894. The Danish sculptor must have seen Carries's pioneering ceramics, and it was their mutual acquaintance, Eugène Grasset, who wrote Niels Hansen Jacobsen's letter of introduction to the period's absolute master, Auguste Rodin.

Niels Hansen Jacobsen did so well that for many years in a row he exhibited "a showcase with ceramics" at the salon in Paris, and was even mentioned on an equal footing with French masters such as Taxile Doat, Aug. Delaherche, and Alexandre Bigot.