Axel P. Jensen

Axel Peder Jensen (28 September 1885 – 12 June 1972) was a Danish painter who is remembered above all for his landscapes which added new subjects and stronger colouring to earlier works by the Funen Painters.

Early life The son of a farmer, he was born in Kerteminde on the island of Funen. After training as a house painter (1900–1904), he attended the Technical School in Aalborg (1903–1907) before studying art at Kristian Zahrtmann's Kunstnernes Studieskoler in Copenhagen (1907–1908). From 1908 to 1910, he was a student with Johan Rohde. He travelled to Paris in 1911 with William Scharff and Olaf Rude.

Career As a pupil of Zahrtmann and a friend of Olaf Rude, Jais Nielsen and William Scharff, he was one of a small group of Danish modernists who exhibited with De Tretten and later at the Grønningen. Despite numerous portraits in his early years, he was primarily a landscape painter, deeply attached to the countryside where he spent most of his life. He had an acute sense of the changing seasons, the wind and the weather. He spent most of his time in Blokhus in Vendsyssel in the north of Jutland, painting fields, marshes and sand dunes, sometimes with a few figures and perhaps houses, trees or telephone poles to enhance the composition. Like Fritz Syberg before him, he was one of the few Danes who not only painted summer scenes but also the ploughed fields of the autumn and the cold and wet of winter. Any sense of sadness was however usually dispelled by the bright, colourful texture of his works.

Style Despite Zahrtmann's influence, Jensen had a much freer approach to colour. His colourful brushstrokes, even in the shady areas of his paintings, are close to Impressionism. Unlike Rude and Scharff, he was not attracted to Cubism. Inspired by Van Gogh, he later developed tightly knit, rhythmical brushstrokes, producing a distinctly decorative effect. This can be seen above all in his work from 1916 to 1921.

Notable works Tørvegravere i Store Vildmose, 1908 Graa Vinterdag i Vendsyssel, 1910 Moder og Barn Pariserinde med Hunde, 1911 Gammel Port ved Meudon Italiensk Foraar, San Gimignano, 1921 Vestjysk Landskab Sigurd Næsgaard, 1924 Uvejr over Klitten, 1928 Pirupshvarre, 1928 Udkanten af en Klitplantage, 1929 Klitlandskab med forblæste Graner, 1931 Vinterdag, Vestrupgaard, 1937 Vinter ved Vestrupgaard, 1942 Landskab med Skyer, Store Vildmose, 1957 Landskab med blomstrende Frugttræer, 1958 Foraarsdag, Virum

Awards Jensen was awarded the Eckersberg Medal in 1926 and the Thorvaldsen Medal in 1946.