Fritz Syberg (1862 – 1939)

Although Fritz Syberg came from a German noble family, he grew up in Faaborg under extremely poor conditions. When he was two years old, his father died, and his mother supported herself and her two young children as a seamstress. At one point, she was placed in the Faaborg poorhouse, where she died at just 47 years old. The harsh upbringing left deep marks on the boy, which were also reflected in his art.

Fritz got his first job at the age of nine, rolling twist tobacco at a factory to help support his family. At thirteen, he worked as a swineherd on a manor estate. It was a cousin of his father who removed the boy from the family’s desperate circumstances and, the following year, secured him an apprenticeship with a master painter in Faaborg.

The meeting with the Hansen family
At the Technical School, Fritz Syberg had a drawing teacher who recognized his talent. This was Peter Syrak Hansen, a master painter and decorative painter, who employed the newly trained Fritz Syberg journeyman in his workshop, Mesterhuset, in Faaborg.

Mesterhuset was a place out of the ordinary. The master Peter Syrak Hansen, was a trained decorative painter from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, and a large part of the firm’s work consisted of decorative commissions on the manor houses of Funen. The master had an eye for young talent, employed them, and encouraged them to develop their abilities. 

There were five children in the master’s family: Marie, Anna, Peter, Syrak jr. and Poul, all artistically gifted, and Fritz Syberg soon formed close bonds with Syrak jr. and Peter, who also had a great interest in painting.

The early years
Through strict frugality, Fritz Syberg managed to afford a trip to Copenhagen in the winter of 1882/83 to attend a drawing course with the aim of being admitted to the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts.

For a couple of years, Fritz Syberg alternated between working for Syrak Hansen during the summer months and attending school in Copenhagen in the winter, until in 1885 he was admitted to the Free Study Schools (De Frie Studieskoler) under Kristian Zahrtmann. Here, he became acquainted with Johannes Larsen from Kerteminde. Peter Hansen from Faaborg also attended Zahrtmann’s school.

Fritz Syberg was recognized as an artist at an early age. At 23 (1885), he submitted three paintings to Charlottenborg, and all three were accepted. Together with Johannes Larsen and Peter Hansen, Fritz Syberg joined Den Frie Udstilling in 1892.

In 1891, Fritz Syberg became engaged to one of the sisters from Mesterhuset, Anna, and in 1894 they were married. The Syberg couple settled in Svanninge, just north of Faaborg. Here, the rent was low, there were opportunities to teach both privately and at Faaborg Technical School, and there was land to cultivate as well as opportunities for hunting and fishing. Their finances were still highly uncertain, and soon their first child was on the way.

The 1890s were the age of the ”isms”, when Symbolism in particular came to characterize Den Frie Udstilling. Although Fritz Syberg did produce some paintings in this style, his life as a husband and father often led him to choose more intimate subjects: Anna and the children, family life, and his immediate surroundings. He often preferred pen and watercolor for these works. The fact that watercolors were easier to sell than large oil paintings may also have played a role: the family had to be supported.

The Funen Painters
Towards the end of the 1890s, Fritz Syberg’s works were generally received with praise and enthusiasm, and he became the natural focal point of the circle that came to stand out as the “Funen Painters”. He sold well, including to the art patron Wilhelm Hansen (the Ordrupgård collection), the Art Association in Copenhagen, and the National Gallery of Denmark.

After eight years in Svanninge, the Syberg family – now with three children – moved diagonally across Funen and settled near their friends Alhed and Johannes Larsen in Kerteminde. The year was 1902, and beyond the friendship, it was largely the wild landscape of Fyns Hoved that drew Fritz Syberg. In the following years, he and his family spent each summer living in small huts on the beach, enjoying the free life at Fyns Hoved. For the rest of the year, they stayed at Pilegården just outside Kerteminde. 

The summers at Fyns Hoved provided Fritz Syberg with inspiration for vitalist paintings of landscapes on land and sea, playing children, and changing weather. The group of children grew to six, who lived a delightful “Stone Age life” on the beach.

Travels and inspiration
In 1908, Fritz Syberg travelled from Kerteminde to Ribe and down along the Wadden Sea to Holland, where he absorbed inspiration – from tiles to Rembrandt. Anna joined him in Amsterdam, and they continued on to Paris and the Impressionists. Monet, Manet, Sisley and, not least, Renoir greatly inspired Fritz Syberg, who brought the dazzling sunlight of their paintings back home and surprised audiences with a new style and a new approach to color that developed in the years that followed. 

In 1910 the Zahrtmann’s School celebrated its 25th anniversary with a jubilee exhibition, at which Fritz Syberg was the undisputed star. Overall, the year was a success in terms of sales, and the Syberg couple began planning the realization of a long-held dream: to live in italy for a few years.

1910 was also the year when the initial steps toward the establishment of the Faaborg Museum were taken, and that same summer the friendship with the writer Johannes V. Jensen cemented during a shared stay at Fyns Hoved. Fritz Syberg held a position in Danish art that led new generations of artists to seek him out, including Olaf Rude, Jens Adolf Jerichau, and Sigurd Swane.

In November 1910, the entire Syberg family travelled to Italy, where they stayed in Pisa for the next two years or so. Here, both Anna and Fritz had greater freedom to pursue their artistic ambitions, and their eldest son, Hans, began training as a sculptor. Their time in Italy was a happy period, in which art, music, and family life came together in harmony. In fact, the plan had been to remain in Italy for several years, but Anna became pregnant again, and they therefore returned home in the spring of 1913. In October, their youngest son Rabbe was born – a late addition to the family. 

Pilegården as a motif
In the spring of 1914, Anna fell ill. She died on 4 July that same year from complications following gallstone surgery. She was only 44 years old and left behind a devastated Fritz Syberg and seven children between 19 years and nine months. The year after Anna’s death, Fritz Syberg married again, this time to Anna’s sister Marie, who a few years earlier had divorced her husband, the painter Karl Schou.

Inspired by, among others, Sigurd Swane and his son-in-law Harald Giersing, Syberg experimented throughout the 1920s with modernist techniques within his own universe: Pilegården, the family, and the fields, with a focus on the changing colors of the seasons and the weather. Many of the large canvases from this period took several years to complete, as he waited for the right crop in the field, the right weather, and the right light.

In his final years, Syberg immersed himself in Pilegården and its immediate surroundings. He painted almost constantly, often working on several pieces at once. His paintings were sold for staggering prices; he had become wealthy, yet lived very modesty.

Fritz Syberg was not entirely out of step with the times, however: in 1938, at the age of 76, he obtained a driver’s license, and that same year he boarded an airplane for the first time in his life, flying to Stockholm to arrange the hanging of a retrospective exhibition featuring 150 of his own works. 
On 20 December 1939, Fritz Syberg passed away peacefully, surrounded by his family. He painted almost until the very end.