The peasant painter controversy of 1907

The Funen Painter’s motifs from barns and farmhouses did not always appeal to contemporary taste in the Copenhagen salons. In 1907, when painters such as Johannes Larsen and Fritz Syberg were generally celebrated and sold well, a group of Symbolist painters launched an attack on what they mockingly called “clog art”. 

The controversy broke out in the pages of Politiken on 14 april 1907 and lasted for about four months.

The painter Gudmund Hentze opened up by writing that the Funen Painters’ art, “now that it has aged, is nothing but desolate, poor, coarse, ugly, and envious”. He also claimed that the Funen Painters were “broad-bottomed country bumpkins” who took up space at the expense of new art. In short: they took up too much space. 

Hentze was supported by Harald and Agnes Slott-Møller. They were also symbolists and had – together with, among others, the Funen Painters – been involved in founding Den Frie Udstilling. After some years, they felt pushed out of the community and now returned with a demand for greater room to operate: the peasant painters were not “the only ones who matter in Danish art”.

The art historian Karl Madsen, who was a curator at the National Gallery of Denmark, responded in defense of the Funen Painters, and soon the writer Johannes V. Jensen joined the debate on their side: the Jutlandic writers – Jensen himself, Jeppe Aakjær, Johan Skjoldborg and Thøger Larsen – and the Funen Painters had to stand together against the Symbolists’ attack.

The Funen Painters themselves remained largely silent; only Peter Hansen wrote a single reply, which concluded: ”Naturalness is a prerequisite for all spring. Artificial flowers do not bloom.” 

After four months of polemics, the controversy died down, with the Symbolists as the clear losers.

However, the uproar created connections between Jutlandia writers such as Johannes V. Jensen, Jeppe Aakjær, and Thøger Larsen and the Funen Painters. Out of the peasant painter controversy grew a close friendship, especially between Johannes V. Jensen, Peter Hansen, Fritz Syberg and Johannes Larsen.