New presentation of Lars Rastrup’s art works of the collection

Still today, the artist Lars Rastrup (1862-1949) is one of the less illustrated artists in history of art with. Some of Lars Rastrup’s art works can be seen at Johannes Larsen’s museum own collection. Those pieces of art are represented at the exhibiton ´Lars Rastrup – The Unknown Painter and Photographer from Munkebo.` The exhibition represents photographies, oil sketches and oil paintings with focus on local motifs.

Childhood environment in the art

Lars Rastrup grew up under poor conditions as son of a single mother. Their home was the hospital of Munkebo and the local poorhouse. Lars Rastrup worked especially with motifs he already knew from his childhood. Besides that, it was very unusual to potray poor and working people. The exhibitions  shows therefore motifs of fishermen from Munkebo and Bregnør.
For the creation of his portrait art, Lars Rastrup worked with different methods. In the 1880ies he began to work with photography as an independant medium, but also as preliminary studies and documentations.

Painting & Photography

Oil painting has been Lars Rastrup’s primary discipline for many years. During 1882-1883 he joined painting classes of the artist Holger Grønvold (1850-1923) at The Technical Society’s School. In 1887 Lars Rastrup gratuated from The Royal Academy of Art after three years of education. At that time it was not unusual that artists also worked with photography as a more or less independent medium. Very often photography was used as sketch work. It is quite unique for Lars Rastrup to show the same motifs in photographs and in paintings. At the exhibitions you’ll find two almost identical self-portraits of the artist – respectively in oil on canvas and as a photography.