39 of 44

 

 

 

  

Mermaids Creating a Maelstrom

1928
 
Full size, 32K  

 

Plaster, 1928. Size 202 x 150 x 140 cm. Inv. no. 169. Donated to the museum by Niels Hansen Jacobsen. Bronze version at Mølledammen, Svendborg.

 

Exhibitions

The Free Exhibition, 1930.

 

A fountain for Svendborg

The sculpture "Mermaids Creating a Maelstrom" was created together with a brick basin as a fountain for the square in Svendborg.

 

 

 

Niels Hansen Jacobsen received the commission in 1928. Since Svendborg is a harbor town, it wanted a fountain with mermaids. Niels Hansen Jacobsen accommodated the town with these four mermaids frolicking in the water, closely entwined. Three form a circle around the fourth, who rises in the center, and we must envision that this frolic is creating a maelstrom on the surface of the sea. The group was placed in the center of the polygonal pool, from whose corners six lizards sprayed the mermaids with water. The mermaid fountain was unveiled on November 19, 1929, but met with a cruel fate. It had to make way for a parking lot and today stands, without its basin, in Svendborg's Mølledammen pond.

From the inauguration in 1929

 

 

 

 

 

A sketch made as early as 1901?

It is possible that Niels Hansen Jacobsen had a sketch ready when he received the commission in 1928. The catalogue for his one-man show in 1901 lists as no. 52 "Maelstrom. Ceramic sketch."

Photo: Pernille Klemp.

 

Niels Hansen Jacobsen and the mermaid motif

Niels Hansen Jacobsen's ceramic model for the sculpture stands in his private rooms at the museum. He worked with a number of sea creatures throughout his career. Two of them were based on Hans Christian Andersen's story The Little Mermaid: the mermaid herself (no. 15) and the evil "Sea Witch," a metal statuette, whose location today is unfortunately unknown.

The most sensual of Niels Hansen Jacobsen's mermaids might be a little ceramic piece, which can be seen at the museum. It depicts a little mermaid reclining enticingly on a colorful sea bed like a femme fatale on her divan, while she coquettishly holds her tail fin.

Photo: Pernille Klemp

 

The mermaid fountain in Bække

Some 10 kilometers northeast of Vejen is a completely different mermaid fountain. The center figure, the mermaid with her two children, is one of Niels Hansen Jacobsen's finest works in granite (carved from an enormous field stone).

One of the sculptor's patrons, a lawyer by the name of Olesen from Nørre Sundby, is said to have seen it in his studio while Niels Hansen Jacobsen was working on the commission for Svendborg. When the town did not like it, Olesen commissioned it for his new building in Vodskov. Later the fountain was removed, and not until many years later was it erected in the park in Bække.