Photo: Lars Bay
Full size, 19K

Plaster, 1927. Size 104 x 50 x 70 cm. Inv. no. 173. Donated to the museum by Niels Hansen Jacobsen.

Exhibitions

One-man show at the Fine Arts Society, Copenhagen, 1927
- Under the title "Seated Young Woman".
The Free Exhibition, 1929.

The motif

Melancholy is personified here by a young woman sunk onto her knees, one hand open in her lap, and the other along her side. She is the image of resignation and hopelessness.

The model for the sculpture

Niels Hansen Jacobsen's maid, Dagny Brande, served as the model for the sculpture. It was she who took a number of photographs at the exhibition in 1927.

A popular motif in Europe

The motif of the kneeling, nude young woman was very popular in Europe in Niels Hansen Jacobsen's day. The figure can be interpreted in many different ways. Niels Hansen Jacobsen probably had not decided what the figure was to represent before it was given its name for the Free Exhibition in 1929.