Frants Peter Diderik Henningsen (22 June 1850, Copenhagen

Copenhagen

Copenhagen is the capital and largest city of Denmark, with an urban population of 1,199,224 and a metropolitan population of 1,930,260 . With the completion of the transnational Øresund Bridge in 2000, Copenhagen has become the centre of the increasingly integrating Øresund Region...

 – 20 March 1908, Copenhagen) was a Danish

Denmark

Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...

 painter, illustrator and professor. Erik Henningsen

Erik Henningsen

Erik Ludvig Henningsen was a Danish painter and illustrator. He is best known for his Social Realist paintings of poor and exposed groups in the 1880s and 1890s...

, also an artist, was his younger brother.

Biography

After graduating from Borgerdyd School in Christianshavn

Christianshavn

Christianshavn is an artificial island neighbourhood located in Copenhagen, Denmark. It was founded in the early 17th century by Christian IV as part of his extension of the fortifications of Copenhagen. Originally it was laid out as an independent privileged merchant's town with inspiration from...

, Henningsen attended C.V. Nielsen's drawing school and then attended the Danish Academy where he successfully completed his studies in 1875. From 1877 to 1878, he studied at Léon Bonnat

Léon Bonnat

Léon Joseph Florentin Bonnat was a French painter.He was born in Bayonne, but from 1846 to 1853 he lived in Madrid, where his father owned a bookshop. While tending his father's shop, he copied engravings of works by the Old Masters, developing a passion for drawing...

's school in Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

. In 1878, he travelled to Spain together with Peder Severin Krøyer

Peder Severin Krøyer

Peder Severin Krøyer , known as P.S. Krøyer, was a Norwegian-Danish painter. He is one of the best known and beloved, and undeniably the most colorful of the Skagen Painters, a community of Danish and Nordic artists who lived, gathered or worked in Skagen, Denmark, especially during the final...

, Frans Schwartz and Julius Lange.

Artistic style

The first painting he exhibited was a portrait of the actress Julie Sødring in 1874, after which he exhibited virtually every year at the Charlottenborg

Charlottenborg Palace

Charlottenborg Palace is a large town mansion located on the corner of Kongens Nytorv and Nyhavn in Copenhagen, Denmark. Originally built as a residence for Ulrik Frederik Gyldenløve, it has served as the base of the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts since its foundation in 1754...

 spring exhibitions. Despite his studies under Bonnat, he remained a rather traditional, though diligent and careful artist, portraying everything from portraits, genre works, and landscapes to animal paintings and illustrations. His painting of En Begravelse (A Funeral) (1883) shows how he had mastered the use of colour from the Spanish school, for example Diego Velázquez

Diego Velázquez

Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez was a Spanish painter who was the leading artist in the court of King Philip IV. He was an individualistic artist of the contemporary Baroque period, important as a portrait artist...

. His dark tones and a deep, dull black are not unlike Édouard Manet

Édouard Manet

Édouard Manet was a French painter. One of the first 19th-century artists to approach modern-life subjects, he was a pivotal figure in the transition from Realism to Impressionism....

 and the early works of Krøyer. In his development of style, he is half way between Georg Brandes

Georg Brandes

Georg Morris Cohen Brandes was a Danish critic and scholar who had great influence on Scandinavian and European literature from the 1870s through the turn of the 20th century. He is seen as the theorist behind the "Modern Breakthrough" of Scandinavian culture...

 and Julius Lange. His interest in compassion rather than beautification can be seen in his masterpiece of an abandoned mother in Forladt. Dog ej af Venner i Nøden (Deserted. But Not by Friends in Need). Many of his paintings depict unfortunate occurrences in the lives of middle-class people living in Copenhagen during difficult times. His connections with Denmark's more traditional, realist school encouraged criticism from many of his more reactionary contempories, especially Karl Madsen

Karl Madsen

Carl Johan Wilhelm Madsen, commonly known as Karl Madsen, was a Danish painter and art historian who after close connections with the Skagen Painters joined the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts where he was museum director from 1911–1925....

who objected to his appointment as a professor at the Academy in 1887.

Selected works

• På fodtur (1877)
• Tørvepige (1878)
• Strandparti, Hornbæk (1883)
• En begravelse (1883)
• Sommerdag ved Hornbæk strand (1884)
• Aftenstemning, sæden køres ind (1886)
• Forladt, dog ej af venner i nøden (1888)
• Vandrebogen efterses (1890)
• Hos pantelåneren (1893)
• Ved sygelejet (1896)
• En helt fra 1864 (1901)
• Portræt af skuespilleren Olaf Poulsen