PhD project on the artist Hans Smidth
In 2021, in collaboration with Aarhus University, Museum Salling has launched a three-year PhD project on the Danish artist Hans Smidth. The project is funded by the New Carlsberg Foundation.
About the project
Around 300 works by the artist Hans Smidth (1839-1917) can be found in the collections of Danish museums, and he was widely recognized in his time. Yet he remains a particularly enigmatic and unexplored figure in Danish art history. Why do we know so little about him? And how can an artist’s history and role in Danish art be secured for posterity if there is insufficient knowledge?
With an art historiographical and museological framework, the research project aims to explore how Hans Smidth can be reinterpreted and reactualized in a historical, art theoretical and aesthetic perspective.
Hans Smidth only lived in Skive for a short time, but the area in and around Skive remained a great source of inspiration for him. Motifs of the Jutland landscape, the moors, Tartars and the lives of farmers occupied him throughout his life. Smidth created his art in the midst of a period of change from the 1860s until his death in 1917, when national romanticism’s love of country and focus on genre painting was challenged by new European artistic styles, the dominant ones being naturalism, realism and impressionism.
The research project and PhD thesis are expected to result in a monograph, and the results are expected to be disseminated through an exhibition at Skive Museum in the future.
PhD fellow: Tilde Mønsted, cand.mag. tildemoensted@cc.au.dk / timk@museumsalling.dk
Main supervisor: Ane Hejlskov Larsen, Professor of Museology and Art History, Aarhus University.
Co-supervisor: Steen Bille Jørgensen, Professor of French Literature, Aarhus University.
Read more about Hans Smidth here:
Tilde Mønsted: “Uden årstal. Hans Smidth’s place in Danish art”, published in Perspective, Statens Museum for Kunst, 2020.
