Plaster, 1932-34. Size 202 x 505 x 192 cm. Inv. no. 174. Donated to the museum by Niels Hansen Jacobsen.

Exhibitions

The Free Exhibition, 1934.

Niels Hansen Jacobsen's last fervent wish

"Playing to the Tune of Life" was Niels Hansen Jacobsen's last major sculptural project, and it was exceedingly important for him. He worked on it for several years, and during this time, only a few people, such as his model and his friend the sculptor Rudolph Tegner, had access to his studio at Skibelund Krat. The sculpture was not a commission; it was the artist's last major goal in life.

In an interview in Vestkysten on October 7, 1931, in conjunction with his 70th birthday, Niels Hansen Jacobsen said :

I hope that I will still be fortunate enough to create some good pieces. Artists sometimes do some of their best work right up to a ripe old age... I do not think that I can have a more fervent wish than for this to happen to me. See what Skovgaard did as an old man. Most artists regress when they reach an advanced age; it must be all the more beautiful when one still - despite old age - has the ability to do something, create something good, something still vibrant. This is my wish for the future, but I understand that it is a big wish, and very few have it granted.

"Playing to the Tune of Life"

Niels Hansen Jacobsen's sculpture group deals with fate - life's successes and failures. His work lies between an observation of the immediate surroundings, where he found his models, and their universalization. In this piece, he elevated the figures to symbols of life's many vicissitudes - motherhood, sorrow, disease.

The sculpture's reception

"Playing to the Tune of Life" was called the sensation of the year when it was shown at the Free Exhibition in 1934. But there were considerable differences of opinion. Some people thought it was a delightful, optimistic work, others that it was far too dark and pessimistic. Some interpreted the musician as an expression of the music of art, which leads man towards a brighter future. Others interpreted him as death's musician, whom we must all follow into our grave

"Sorrow"

Niels Hansen Jacobsen originally made one of the elements, the young woman with the wreath, as a single figure entitled "Sorrow." It was erected in bronze at Gram Cemetery as a monument to the parish's war dead in 1925 and was shown at the Free Exhibition in 1926. A verse written by Niels Hansen Jacobsen himself is carved on the sculpture's plinth.

Ah, Sorrow she wanders so far and wide
entering thousands of homes.
Now she returns to find
in distant lands the graves
with crosses raised for Danish men.

"The Burghers of Calais"

The models for the sculpture

Niels Hansen Jacobsen used local residents of Vejen to serve as models for the sculpture: the mother holding the child was Sigrid Pedersen (although it is also claimed that a Miss la Cour was the model) and the little girl beside her is her daughter Kaja Tidemann Pedersen. At the time, the family lived at Skolegade 12 in Vejen, the building on Niels Hansen Jacobsen's family farm that housed the older generation. The model for the fiddler was the librarian Hans Drewsen, Vejen, who wrote the following about the experience:

He worked on a figure that was playing a violin, and he wanted to see how I held the bow, and how I put my fingers so that it could be as correct as possible. He did know of cases in which the bow was left out entirely, but he did not think that was very good... When I had taken out my violin, and stood up on the platform beside the enormous violinist, we found that nothing much had to be changed. Now Niels Hansen Jacobsen had also taken violin lessons in his youth, and had not completely forgotten the positions. His violin incidentally hung on the wall and he assured me that if he had not become a sculptor, he would have become a musician.