The Painter Wilhelm Marstrand 1858

Curator: This arresting marble bust by H.W. Bissen, created in 1858, portrays the painter Wilhelm Marstrand. It's held at the SMK, Statens Museum for Kunst. Editor: The cool smoothness is immediately striking. So cold, yet with that elegantly curled beard, he also comes across as quite stately. Curator: Marble as a medium… Bissen chose it perfectly, don’t you think? Capturing Marstrand’s status within the Danish Golden Age but also echoing classical ideas of representation. I wonder how long the sittings took – quite a feat to hold a pose that long, even just from the point of a model's perspective. Editor: Exactly, marble lends a sense of permanence and authority. There is something powerful in how an artist transforms raw material, laborious extraction of this marble block and slowly giving form to likeness through repetitive cutting and chiseling. We are used to fast work and quicker routes in artistic rendering these days! Curator: He appears contemplative, almost melancholy, doesn't he? I feel a strong sense of the inner life there. Did Marstrand approve, I wonder, of his own likeness being captured with such severity. What dialogue must have occurred between Bissen and Marstrand? I have some sense that artists of the Golden Age struggled, too, with that tension between worldly recognition and their own creative path. Editor: And thinking of the context of production—who quarried the marble? Who were Bissen’s assistants? Their labor is invisible but essential to the making of this sculpture. Curator: So true! Those hidden histories. I always find that looking at the raw material can deepen your appreciation of the artistry— and all who contribute to such a monumental feat! Thank you for that insight. Editor: The piece brings together ideas that often clash these days. Bissen's craftsmanship merges the commercialism of the Golden Age artist. Thinking of both keeps us a little closer to reality.