The Studio 

 Photo: Ard Johnson

The simple, but distinctive studio building was built in 1916-17 by the recognized and classically inspired architect, Carl Petersen, who previously had designed Faaborg Museum. Johannes Larsen called the studio “the workshop” out of respect for the solid handicraft’s importance in art.

In all its simplicity, the building seems unostentatious, but actually, it isn’t. It had central heating early on, which also made sure the climate in the large winter garden and the greenhouse behind the workshop was stable, and it had a fireproof storage room for the valuable paintings. A shared dream for the artist couple, the new studio contained, first and foremost, a big, simple and beautifully proportioned room for Johannes Larsen, with indirect light from a large, north-facing window, and at the same time, a smaller studio for Alhed, who preferred the warm southern exposure and the winter garden’s motifs close by.

Alhed had a personal style, used quick sketches or pastels and usually she painted in smaller formats, while the large workshop room gave Johannes new possibilities for painting the large pictures he sometimes worked on. The rooms are seen today with much of the original furnishings and inventory from Møllebakken. Johannes Larsen’s studio functioned as a show room as well, and was used then as a temporary exhibition of current works, and could thereby give visiting customers an overview and the impression of the strong connection between life and art at Møllebakken. Several of the larger works had their regular spots in the room, for example, the stork painting on the ceiling.

Johannes Larsen often worked with woodcuts. He drew his motif on a block of wood and cut it out afterward. After the motif was covered with printer’s ink, he put a piece of Japanese rice paper over it and rubbed carefully on the block with a flat whalebone.

The Winter Garden

The winter garden and greenhouse are a fully integrated part of the studio Workshop building’s architecture and its functions. In the greenhouse, tomatoes, grapes and a cornucopia of vegetables and fruit were planted, that needed warmth to grow. The winter garden was created as an ornamental garden with a profusion of flowers, centered around the goldfish pool with its fountain.

Two symmetrically placed doors led from the winter garden to Johannes’ workshop on the one side, and to Alhed’s on the other; if there was a difference in the size of their studios and their earning capacities, these entrances from the winter garden proclaimed the equality between the two artists. The winter garden was also the place where Alhed found her motifs. Though both garden enthusiasts, plants and flowers remained Alhed’s domain, while Johannes mostly painted animals and landscapes. With the winter garden and the pools and pens for animals outside the workshop, both artists had easy access to their favorite motifs. The winter garden’s back wall is covered with coral stone. These porous stones hold the heat and the humidity, so they help to regulate the indoor climate in the winter garden, while at the same time giving a decorative foothold to Alhed’s orchids.

It was a magical world, especially when the couple held parties in the workshop, and the winter garden, even in winter, could be humid and tropically warm, while icicles hung outdoors, thanks to the then quite modern central heating!

The gardens, the animals, and the kitchen garden at Møllebakken

Alhed and Johannes Larsen’s garden is big, and was even bigger when they lived here. The central gazebo, called the Vinhuset (The Wine House) was built in the middle of the 19the century by a wealthy Kerteminde resident, who also established a garden, then outside Kerteminde. This little house was therefore already on the building site when Alhed and Johannes built their home in the beginning of the 20the century. Many rare trees, for example the ginkgo and the mulberry tree, grace the garden, but it was especially the animals that made it special. It was a veritable deer park (except for the deers) with its pools, plantings and pens that set the scene for a varied collection of animals that created liveliness and beauty in the garden, but also kept Johannes Larsen’s models close at hand for his nature studies.

‘The bird painter’, as Johannes Larsen was nicknamed, especially loved to work with ducks as motifs, and over time, one could see all sorts of ducks in the garden’s ponds. Of course, there were also geese and at least two swans, two Bewick’s swans that lived in the big swan pond were used several times as motifs.

But there were also tame animals: a fox, a ferret, a seal, and the dearly loved otter, Jokum, who followed Johannes Larsen around like a dog and even was allowed indoors. Of course, things went wrong sometimes, as when the ferret and the fox attacked the ducks, but everything had its right place in this fairy-tale garden, where wild birds also were cared for. Starlings could settle down in a whole village of nesting boxes on the gable end of the villa.

In the artists’ home, there was a great, if informal, respect for good produce and a solid culinary heritage. There was always an eagerness to taste something new, but they also appreciated the traditional, simple dishes, prepared with care from the best, fresh ingredients.

For the same reason, there was a large orchard and a kitchen garden almost the size of a field, placed just to the south of the old windmill, Svanemøllen (in English: the Swan Mill), which the artist couple owned.  Here they grew all sorts of vegetables, from kale to radishes, and even more exotic things like blue potatoes. Later, the kitchen garden was moved to a smaller space near the wash house, today’s museum café Kaffehuset (the Coffee House), and today it is again placed close to Svanemøllen. Both the mill and the kitchen garden are cared for by volunteers, and they deliver a wealth of flowers and a supplement of flowers and vegetables for use in the villa and in the café, in keeping with the original spirit of the artists’ home. The old fruit trees in the garden naturally die with age, but with the help of grafting, new “descendants” are planted near the old trees.