Fire illustrationsudkast til H.C. Andersen, Skrubtudsen 1870 - 1874

Lorenz Frølich made this pencil drawing, "Fire illustrationsudkast til H.C. Andersen, Skrubtudsen," the fairy tale "The Toad" by Hans Christian Andersen, sometime in the 19th century. The drawing illustrates a story meant for children, and we can assume it would have been commissioned by a publisher of children's books in Denmark. During this time, art institutions were trying to promote national art and literature in line with a burgeoning nationalist movement. Andersen was already well-known, so the drawing would have been of great interest to a Danish audience. Frohlich uses a light and whimsical style and depicts elements from the story like frogs, chickens, and a stork. In one scene, a stork has caught a frog; in another, frogs are sitting in a circle engaged in dialogue. This suggests that the artist was playing with cultural notions of power and society. To understand Frohlich's work better, we can turn to publications of the time as well as the correspondence between the artist and his contemporaries. What we discover there might challenge our initial assumptions. Art always exists in a specific time and place, and the work of the art historian is to bring that context to light.