schilders 7

Johan Georg Frans Schwartz [1850-1917]... 

is the least known of the three artists featured in this exhibition. 

“He was independently wealthy, so even though he was extremely talented, he didn’t have to sell his work,” says curator Dawn Pheysey. “He did a lot of work for free, and rarely exhibited. We’re excited to introduce him to our audiences.”

Born into a Copenhagen family with a thriving wood- and ivory-turning business, Schwartz displayed creative talent early on. By 16 the budding [ontluikende, veelbelovende] artist had earned his way into the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, where he may have been a student of Carl Bloch. “We don’t know exactly how close the relationship was,” says MOA director Magleby. “We know that he did a portrait of Bloch for which Bloch would have sat.”

After six years of intensive study, Schwartz graduated from the Royal Academy, traveled to Spain to paint, and exhibited several paintings. 

After his father’s death, he inherited the family business and stepped away from painting for a time. Even though he was not painting for a living, the reclusive and eccentric artist continued to make ceramic decorations, and used his earnings to found a private art school.

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Despite his relatively small body of work... 

Schwartz is praised for the emotional power of his paintings, especially in the figures’ faces. Schwartz’s style is more modern, and captures the feeling of his scenes with a more painterly loose stroke, than the academic styles of Bloch and Hofmann.

Generous and deeply religious, Schwartz donated some of his greatest works to churches. He also bequeathed [nalaten] his entire fortune to the artistic enhancement of Copenhagen’s public buildings.

Agony in the Garden

“This painting to me is the most powerful of the exhibition,” says Pheysey. “We wanted to start the exhibition with a little-known artist and something our patrons hadn’t seen before. It’s such a tender, powerful image of the angel’s wings holding back the darkness, even just for a moment.”

Magleby appreciates Schwartz’s cool colors here, very different from the deep reds of Bloch. According to Magleby, they “represent the loneliness of fulfilling the demands of the Atonement, and are true to the inconsolable expression on His face.”

Rather than replace the loaned altarpiece with a print, “the Nørresundby congregation has left its place in their church vacant to remind them that their absent angel has a duty elsewhere, but will return to them soon,” says Pheysey...

[bron]