Prøvetryk til illustration til P. M. Møller: "En dansk students eventyr" 1884 - 1897

Henrik Sørensen created this print as a trial illustration for P.M. Møller’s "A Danish Student's Adventures." Here we see a fiddler, smartly dressed in a military-style jacket, playing for some geese as children look on, next to a thatched cottage. Made in Denmark, likely around the turn of the 20th century, this image speaks to the cultural project of defining a Danish national character. Artists and writers looked to the countryside for authenticity and a sense of the ‘folk’. Sørensen worked as an illustrator for books and magazines and his work gives us a window onto the imagery that shaped middle-class Danes’ sense of themselves and their nation. The presence of the geese might remind us of Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales, where animals often represent human characters and foibles. To learn more about the visual culture of the time, you might consult illustrated magazines and books from the period, held in libraries and archives. These resources help us understand the social life of images and the institutions that give them meaning.