Edvard Petersen

Edvard Petersen is known for designing the Stork Fountain on Amagertorv, a recognisable public monument in Copenhagen. He also had a painting career, focused on light-filled rural views and scenes of craftsmen and workers.

Edvard Petersen's practice involved a range of techniques and materials, varying depending on the medium. For sculpture, Petersen worked with bronze, zinc, and terracotta. He was known to adopt new techniques quickly, including sand casting, which became a standard method for producing zinc sculpture, especially when only a few items were needed. This method eventually supplanted the lost-wax casting of bronze in some areas, though the latter never disappeared completely. In printmaking, Petersen would have used etching techniques. This involved applying an acid-resistant ground to a metal plate, scratching a design into it with a needle to expose the metal, and then bathing the plate in acid. The acid would eat away at the exposed metal, leaving an intaglio design, which could then be printed.

Edvard Petersen's works can be viewed in several museums. These include institutions in the United States, such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, the Wolfsonian at Florida International University, and the Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of American Art. In the UK, you might find his art at the Brighton Museum & Art Gallery, the Geffrye Museum, the Manchester Art Gallery, the National Museums of Scotland Royal Museum in Edinburgh, and the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. Other museums that hold his work are the Aarhus Kunstmuseum in Denmark, the Amos Andersonin Taidemuseo in Helsinki, the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm, and the Stavanger Faste Galleri in Norway.

Edvard Petersen was Danish. He was born in Copenhagen on 15 June 1841. His parents were Peter Petersen, a turner, and Johanne Christine Petersen (née Møller). Petersen's early artistic training was at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts (Det Kongelige Danske Kunstakademi) in Copenhagen. He began his studies there in 1854. He initially studied modelling, but switched to painting in 1856. Petersen's teachers at the Academy included Wilhelm Marstrand, Jørgen Roed, and Carl Bloch, all significant figures in Danish art during the period. Petersen remained closely associated with Copenhagen throughout his life. He lived there, trained there, and exhibited there regularly. He died in Copenhagen on 5 December 1911. He is buried in the Assistens Cemetery in the Nørrebro section of the city. His career is closely linked to the artistic and cultural environment of 19th-century Copenhagen.

Edvard Petersen's influences included the Gothic revivalism of Petrus Josephus Hubertus Cuypers, who connected the rationalism of Viollet-le-Duc with the cultural aims of Gothic revivalism. Cuypers's many pupils and assistants included J. L. M. Lauweriks, K. P. C. de Bazel, and H. J. M. Walenkamp. Cuypers met Viollet-le-Duc in Paris in the mid-1850s, and invited him to Roermond to advise on the restoration of the minster. He combined Viollet-le-Duc's admiration for the rationalism of Gothic structure with the more dogmatic ethical imperatives of the English Gothic revival, creating an eclectic design that he proposed as a national style. Another influence was Gottfried Semper, whose continuing influence was exercised through his successors in the design studio, Julius Stadler and Georg Lasius, and through the physical surroundings of the Polytechnikum building itself, built to Semper's design in 1858-1864.

It is difficult to assess why Edvard Petersen's works are important today. Some believe that Pettersen pursues in his painting a fascination with the heritage of Munch and Krohg, and the painters of the thirties. He does it in an overheated, love-hate atmosphere where he only sometimes manages to get some distance and put his tongue in his cheek. He is attacking what he calls "the Norwegian variation of French late Impressionism" with an emotional engagement and an intellectual frenzy that contains a lot of irony. His version of "the return to painting" of the last years is proceeding on a tangential course and he is sailing in hard wind. Others believe that leading Icelandic artists have often chosen to live in the centre of Europe (at least for part of the time). Some have become so integrated in the art life of other cities that they are not always recognised as Icelandic, as is the case with the painter Erro, now living in Paris and Bangkok.

Edvard Petersen was born in 1841 in Denmark. Edvard Petersen died in 1911, aged 70.

Edvard Petersen died in 1911 at the age of 70.