Negro Musicians in the Jungle 1921

Two naked figures – one blowing a flute, the other seated on the ground with a lyre – are depicted in a dark and exotic forest. The painting is a fantasy on a lost primeval state where mankind lived in harmony with nature and where music sprang from an instinctive vitality, unmarred by modern civilization. While travelling in Sierra Leone and Senegal on the West coast of Africa in 1914, Stæhr-Nielsen saw the local landscapes and population at first hand. The images he created on this journey are naturalistic in style, but upon his return to Denmark he would typically emphasise the exotic features and accentuate the African people’s special connection with nature – a widespread notion at the time. In paintings such as this, the artist also demonstrated his familiarity with “the characteristic anomalies of a Negro body” as a contemporary art critic put it.