1 of 44

 

 

Ane Kirstine Jacobsen, née Hansen, the Artist's Mother

1886/1887

 
Full size, 31K

 

Plaster, 1886/1887. Size 39 x 32 x 20 cm. Bronze cast's data uknown. Inv. no. 130. Donated to the museum by Niels Hansen Jacobsen.

 

Student project

Niels Hansen Jacobsen's earliest dated sculpture is this bust of his mother, Ane Kirstine Jacobsen. The bust is signed on the back "NHJ 1886 or 1887," as if he himself could not quite remember the exact date. In any case, he must have made the bust when he was studying at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen, where he was enrolled from 1884 to 1888.

 

Ane Kirstine Jacobsen, née Hansen (1822-1891)

Anna Kirstine was the only daughter of a parish clerk from Egtved. She married Carl Peter Jacobsen, a hired hand on her father's farm, on April 16, 1842. Niels Hansen Jacobsen's private rooms at the museum contain the couple's finely embellished nuptial poem. Niels Hansen Jacobsen's parents ran the Holsted Inn for a number of years before they bought a new farm in Vejen at the end of the 1850s. Anna Kirstine had five children, of which Niels Hansen Jacobsen was the youngest. The bust shows her at the age of 64. She died seven years later.

 

A mother's support for her son's career

Niels Hansen Jacobsen's mother supported him when he decided to concentrate on a career as an artist at the age of 22 and apply to the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen. This was very much against the wishes of his father, who wanted him to carry on the family farm. Niels Hansen Jacobsen's mother sent him money and food regularly during his studies.

 

A grandchild tells this story:

Niels Th. Mortensen, Niels Hansen Jacobsen's biographer, quotes Ane Kirstine's granddaughter for the following description:

...she was mildness incarnate, but there was something determined and just about her that enabled her to command respect. And I never heard Grandfather dominate Grandmother; I'm sure it never occurred to him.

 

The Farm and The Hut


Niels Hansen
Jacobsen giving a tour of the field in front of the Hut.

 

The farm owned by Niels Hansen Jacobsen's parents was one of the finest made by a local builder, Peder Holden Hansen. It was originally protected by law but had to make room for the Rosengården nursing home, which has since been turned into a residential building on the northern outskirts of Vejen. A painting and photographs of the house, built around a quadrangle, hang in Niels Hansen Jacobsen's private rooms.

One building, called the Hut, can still be found at Skolegade 12, Vejen. Originally built to house the oldest generation, this is where Niels Hansen Jacobsen lived from the time he returned to Vejen around 1902 until he moved into the museum in 1924. The Hut was surrounded by a large field - a storageplace for stones from which customers could choose raw materials for monuments; his workshop, where he carved tombstones, etc., and a bit farther away, a building with a kiln for firing ceramics.