Niels Simonsen

Niels Simonsen (10 December 1807 – 11 December 1885) was a Danish painter, lithographer and sculptor.

Biography

Simonsen was born in Copenhagen, Denmark. He was the son of Simnon Rasmusson and Bolette Nielsdatter. His parents were shopkeepers. At the age of fourteen, he was apprenticed to a master decorative painter and began to take drawing lessons at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. Later, he took private lessons from Johan Ludwig Lund.

After a successful showing at the Charlottenborg Spring Exhibition in 1827, he turned to sculpture and received some orders, including one for reliefs in a hall at Christiansborg. In 1830, he was awarded a gold medal for his relief of Christ healing the sick, which is now displayed at Kongens Nytorv public square in Copenhagen.

By 1834, having failed to reproduce this initial success, he requested a loan from Privy Councilor Nicolai Abraham Holten, who had recently bought an altarpiece Simonsen had been unable to sell after those who ordered it changed their minds. The loan was given and it enabled him to spend two years in Munich, where he came under the influence of the Academy of Fine Arts.

He soon found buyers for his work; landowners and businessmen as well as foreign art collectors. By 1837, he was sufficiently well-off to send home for his fiancée, Anne Marie Petersen, and get married. Over the next few years, he traveled to Tyrol, Northern Italy and Algiers.

Return to Denmark In 1842, he became a member of the Munich Academy and was offered a professorship, but chose to take a similar offer from King Christian VIII and returned home; teaching military history painting at the Royal Academy.

From 1848 to 1851, during the First Schleswig War, he concentrated on large canvases of military scenes, several of which were acquired for the Royal Collection. After that, he went back to genre scenes, took a trip to Sweden and created a major work, Trolovelse i Skaane (1862), symbolizing the reconciliation of Denmark and Sweden after years of bitter contention for Scania.