The Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek in Copenhagen contains one of the earliest allegories of Denmark . It depicts the country as a young girl whose figure, framed up to her knees, fills almost the entire picture field. The woman, with her face turned in profile to the right, holds a sword in one hand and the Danish flag of Danneborg over her shoulder in the other. She is dressed in traditional folk costume : a long black skirt, a red blouse, a tight kaftan with black and gold stripes and red edging, and a greenish cap covering her blonde hair. The entire outfit is completed with gold jewellery: a torquesse (circular hoop necklace) around the neck, a diadem on the forehead and a bracelet on the hand holding the banner. These ornaments are inspired by authentic archaeological excavations discovered in ancient Viking settlements.

The girl is depicted in the midst of a grain field, against the sky and with the seashore on the horizon . The static pose and statuesque shapes of the woman, as well as the synthetic composition, give the painting a power of expression that gives it an almost iconic power. Indeed, the allegory of Denmark has become one of the most important patriotic images of the country.

Can a representation so important to the iconography of Denmark be a polisher? Is this image, reproduced in mass culture and perceived as the quintessence of 'Danishness', linked to the history and heritage of the Republic?

Elżbieta from Warsaw

The answer may lie in the person of the painting's author, and that is the Varsovian Elizabeth (Elizabeth) Jerichau-Baumann ( 1818-1881) . She was born into a German Evangelical family. Her father, Filip Adolf Baumann (1776-1863), came from Brandenburg and was co-owner of the "Gotti & Baumann" National Card Factory in Warsaw, which published, among other things, the famous deck of "national cards" with drawings by Jan Feliks Piwarski (1794-1859). As a child, Elisabeth moved to Gdansk, where she took her first painting lessons from K. Gröhl ( Groell; 1770-1852) . Then, in 1838, she enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts in Düsseldorf, where she studied with Carl Ferdinand Sohn ( 1805-1867) and Friedrich Wilhelm von Schadow (1788-1862).

Although she grew up and was educated in German culture, she dedicated some of her first paintings to the November Uprising . These were works exhibited at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Berlin in 1844: "Polish family on the ruins of a burnt house " and " Polish peasant woman fleeing with her children " . The paintings echoed her experiences when, as a twelve-year-old Warsaw girl, she was an eyewitness to the uprising. Years later, in her memoirs (published in Danish), she described the remembered scenes from that time: "ranks [...] of soldiers in rags, without weapons, staring at the ground. [...]. Weeping women with bundles and children in arms walked at the end of this sad procession. They mourned the loss of a free Poland, the loss of freedom cutting them off from their homeland and condemning them to exile. [...] Suddenly memories of the homeland came and cried out at me [...]. I saw a poor peasant woman I had once met fleeing across the fields [...]. It was just after the Rising. The image was revived in my heart" (E. Baumann, 'Ungdomserindringer', pp. 8, 19-20, 93, translated by J. Miśkowiak). These works were widely described by Polish critics, including such renowned figures as Wincenty Smokowski (1797-1876) and Bolesław Podczaszyński (1822-1876).

Rome and Copenhagen

The next stage of Baumann's artistic education was a trip to Rome in 1845, where she became associated with the circle of Northern artists . In the Eternal City, on the Capitoline Hill, at the beginning of 1846, she married the Danish sculptor Jens Adolf Jerichau (1816-1883) , with whom she lived in via dei Greci. The couple stayed on the Tiber until the end of June 1848. The artist then returned to Rome several times (1849, 1855, 1859, 1866 and 1867), where she periodically ran not only her studio but also her salon. Her stays on the Italian peninsula resulted in numerous paintings depicting Italian women in folk costumes , often at a well or with a quaver in hand, against idyllic southern landscapes.

From 1849 onwards, the artists settled in Copenhagen , where Jens Jerichau became professor and later director of the Academy of Fine Arts. Shortly thereafter, in 1851, Jerichau-Baumann painted an allegory of her new homeland, which had just emerged victorious from the three-year war (1848-1851) with Prussia over the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein . Keeping with the allegorical theme, the artist also created similar depictions of Britain, as well as of Polonia . The latter painting, known from a sketch, shows a woman sitting on a rock, dressed in a red and white robe, one hand supporting her head in the pose of Melancholy and the other holding a scythe. Beneath her feet is a sheaf of grain and beside her is a white eagle. The figure is shown against a cloudy sky. The dark colour scheme, with the contrast of the red and white robe, the melancholic pose and the eagle without a crown place this representation in the iconographic type of 'finis Poloniae'. It is therefore another work in the painter's oeuvre, referring to the defeat of 1831.

The Danish Golden Age and the portraitist

Working in Denmark, Jerichau-Baumann became famous as a portraitist. Her models ranged from monarchs , led by Queen Louise of Denmark (1817-1898), who was portrayed several times, to representatives of the intellectual elite , including the writer and poet Hans Christian Andersen (1805-1875) , with whom she became friends during her first stay in Rome.

Ordinary people were the heroes of her numerous genre paintings , in which she depicted sentimental images of simple rural life. She also depicted fantastic characters from northern mythology, such as the Sirens , known for example from Andersen's fairy tales.

Jerichau-Baumann's paintings are part of the Danish Golden Age , which saw the development of a national art idiom based on local motifs and landscapes, often rendered with Biedermeier realism. In recognition of her merits, she was appointed a member of the Royal Danish Academy in Copenhagen in 1863 .

Travelling paintings

Denmark, however, was not the only venue for Jerichau-Baumann's artistic activities. Between 1869 and 1870 and 1874 and 1875, she also travelled to the east, including the Ottoman Empire, Greece, Turkey , including Constantinople, and even Egypt . The result was sensual images of the harem, of 'ordinary' Egyptian women seen through the spectacles of European Orientalism. She wrote down her travel experiences in 'Brogede Rejsebilleder' and published it in 1881 with illustrations - prints based on her own paintings.

The artist regularly visited England , where she successfully exhibited her works, one of which ' The Norwegian Widow' was acquired by the British Queen, Victoria (1819-1901) . The painter took part in world exhibitions in London (1862) , Paris (1855 and 1867) or Vienna (1873) . She exhibited her works in Munich, Dresden and Milan. Her international success and participation in the art market was mentioned by a correspondent of the Warsaw 'Kłosy', writing: "Paintings by the brush of our countrywoman are found in abundance in public and private galleries in both hemispheres", adding that even the National Gallery in London and the Louvre owned them ("Kłosy" 1882, no. 866, p. 67).

Polish iconography

Jerichau-Baumann never returned to Poland, but she did not abandon the Polish theme . It was at the Vienna exhibition in 1873 that she showed, among her 15 paintings, the work Dying Pole , dedicated to a participant in the January Uprising (1863). This work made a great impression on Jozef Ignacy Kraszewski (1812-1887), who recalled: "A young boy [...], a child of the streets of Warsaw with his temple bloodied, alone, somewhere on the edge of a forest is dying [...] the moment of the last struggle gives him a tragic beauty. Standing before him, one wants to weep or pray eternal rest" (J.I. Kraszewski, "Listy z zagranicy" ["Letters from abroad"], "Bluszcz" 1872, vol. 8, no. 37, p. 292).

Artistic internationalism

The artist died in 1881 in Copenhagen as an acclaimed painter and mother of nine children. Her extraordinary biography has increasingly become the canon of popular culture. There is even a fictionalized biography of her (B. Pouplier, Lisinka, Warsaw 2004) and film adaptations of her life. Elisabeth Jerichau-Baumann is thus an artist who successfully found her way on the international art market in the second half of the nineteenth century and whose work can be read both cosmopolitan and patriotic. She is an example of a painter with a cross-border artistic and national identity. The allegory of Denmark she painted can be the work of a Varsovian, a German by descent, a Pole by spiritual choice, as well as a Dane by life and professional practice, i.e. a European artist .