Playing Children, Enghave Square 1907 - 1908
peterhansen
statensmuseumforkunst
canvas
possibly oil pastel
handmade artwork painting
oil painting
canvas
acrylic on canvas
naive art
painting painterly
portrait art
watercolor
fine art portrait
warm toned green
"Playing Children, Enghave Square" is a painting by Danish artist Peter Hansen, depicting a group of children playing in a sunny square. Created in 1907-1908, the work showcases Hansen's skill in capturing the lively energy of childhood. The painting features a warm color palette and a loose, Impressionistic style, conveying a sense of movement and light. It's a charming portrayal of a common scene from early 20th-century Danish life, currently housed in the SMK - Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen.
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Girls come running, hand in hand, describing an undulating movement all through the painting. It is almost like a moment captured on film by a camera. The girls in the foreground and in the right-hand side of the painting have been cropped as if they are hurtled out of our angle of vision by their rapid, playful movement. The sunlight glistens in the girl's smock dresses, hair, and in the light green leaves. Peter Hansen had a predilection for depicting everyday scenes from his own neighbourhood. Here he showed children playing in the Enghave Plads square in the flickering sunlight. This is not an image of deprived, slaving working class children in a dingy backyard or in a factory; no, these children are engaged in light-filled games in their own neighbourhood - perhaps a delicate artistic prefiguring of the new opportunities available to the working class?
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With a keen sense of social awareness, an unfettered grip on colour, and a vein of Impressionism that is firmly anchored in reality Peter Hansen depicts children playing outside his home on Enghavevej in Copenhagen.Hand in hand, a chain of little girls surge ahead, trying to catch their friends. The dynamic movement is accentuated by abrupt cropping and flickering reflections in the girl’s faces and the new-leaved trees. The painting's motifThe scene is from Copenhagen, specifically Enghave Plads on Vesterbro. From 1905 onwards, Peter Hansen kept his winter dwelling on Enghavevej, and he found most of his urban scenes in his neighbourhood. Without any indignation, but with keen interest in social issues he depicted modern life. He treated the idyllic aspects such as children playing and men enjoying a Sunday beer, but the vagabonds on Christianshavns Vold were also included in his image of the world.The artist's association FynboerneAs a student at Zahrtmann’s School during the years around 1890, Peter Hansen met two other artists from Funen: Johannes Larsen (1867-1961) and Fritz Syberg (1862-1939). Their friendship came to be at the heart of the artist’s association Fynboerne, but Peter Hansen’s most important sources of artistic inspiration were Kristian Zahrtmann (1843-1917) and Theodor Philipsen (1840-1920). Inspired by Kristian Zahrtmann and Theodor PhilipsenZahrtmann’s free treatment of colour and Philipsen’s mimetic Impressionism are continued in Hansen’s art. In Playing Children this legacy is apparent in the strong intensification of colour and the flickering reflections. Peter Hansen did not, however, become quite as anti-naturalistic in his colour treatment as Zahrtmann, nor did he dissolve his motifs in bursts of light and colour like Philipsen. Instead he retained his down-to-earth grip on reality as it is perceived.
With his images of bathing boys, powerful ploughmen, and playing children Peter Hansen has created paintings that are easily inscribed into the Vitalistic art of the period. PLAYING CHILDREN in particular is no less ambitious than Willumsen’s A MOUNTAINEER. In this dynamic composition with its close croppings and flickering specks of light, an undulating chain of girls represent Hansen’s take on the hope for revival offered by the new century. In Willumsen, health, vitality, and youth became something visionary – here, they are treated rather closer to reality. The scene takes place in an area of Copenhagen where Hansen found most of his urban motifs. He depicted modern life with a commitment to social issues, and he had a keen eye for both the idyllic and for the injustices of life.
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