Artists - Part 14

Kristian Zahrtmann

Kristian Zahrtmann (1843-1917) was a Danish painter.  He was known for historical paintings, especially those depicting legendary Danish women.  Above is a 1916 self-portrait.  He was not openly gay, but he never married, he produced a large number of homoerotic paintings, and rumors about him were rife.

His paintings depicting nude men were generally on Biblical, mythological, or historical subjects.  The painting above is Kain (Cain), 1873.

Adam and Eve in Paradise, 1892, is unusual because it does not use fig leaves or other artistic props to conceal frontal nudity as other artists almost always did.

Two later paintings of Adam in Paradise, 1916, have a vine to conceal the nudity, but are actually more erotic.  The vine only partially conceals, and unlike the stiff figure in the previous work, Adam looks much more relaxed and inviting. 

The second 1916 version of Adam in Paradise is even more sensuous-looking.  There's no snake, and Adam's hand is on his chest, possibly stroking his nipple.

A historical subject is Nero Dancing, 1903.

This is the mythological subject Prometheus, 1906.  Other artists generally chose poses that concealed frontal nudity, but not Zahrtmann.

Another Biblical subject: The Prodigal Son, 1909.  The story of the prodigal son (Luke 15) makes no reference to the son being naked on his return (in fact, it's very unlikely from the context), but that didn't stop Zahrtmann from using the subject as a pretext to paint another naked male.

Even in the painting St. Catherine of Siena, 1913, Zahrtmann manages to make Christ frontally naked in St. Catherine's vision of him.  By the way, St. Catherine, in addition to having had visions of Christ, claimed that she had undergone a "mystic marriage" to Christ in which she had received Christ's foreskin as a wedding ring (I am not making this up).  She said the ring was invisible.  So, maybe Christ appearing to her naked is appropriate.

We end with this 1899 painting by Poul S. Christiansen of Zahrtmann's Malerskole (Zahrtmann's Painting School).  Zahrtmann taught from 1885 to 1908 at the Kunstnernes Frie Studieskoler, a new art school in Copenhagen that had been established as an alternative to the more conservative Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts.  He became so prominent as a teacher, teaching over 200 Scandinavian artists, that the school was simply referred to as "Zahrtmann's school."  Not surprisingly, the students here are learning to paint a male nude.