The Writer Harald Kidde 1903

This is Jens Lund’s bust of The Writer Harald Kidde, around 52 cm tall, sitting here at the Statens Museum for Kunst. Imagine Lund in his studio, wrestling with the stone, trying to find Kidde within it. The pressure of the chisel, the dust, the slow reveal of a face. I think of all that physical effort, the back and forth between intention and accident. Did Lund have a clear picture of Kidde in his mind, or did he let the marble guide him? That expression - calm but intense. The way the light catches the curls of his hair, the set of his jaw. It's like Lund wasn’t just making a likeness, he was trying to capture something of Kidde's inner life. Every artist is in conversation with every other artist, even across time.