Today's piece is from the National Gallery of Denmark. The mountains, light, and (wo)man as body and gender are central elements in all of J.F. Willumsen’s work, but nowhere are they visualised as dramatically as in A Mountain Climber. The woman, Willumsen’s second wife Edith Wessel, beholds the immense mountainous landscape stretching below and before her. As a depiction of the “new,” and, in the Nietzschean sense, “great human being” in nature, this painting is a powerful expression of man’s command of and union with nature. A Mountain Climber echoes the themes of Danish writer Johannes V. Jensen, who wrote a series of novels, The Long Journey, from 1908 to 1922. Their work rebukes Symbolism’s metaphysical explorations of the soul, replacing it with a much more extroverted celebration of the body and a vitalistic philosophy of life.
A Mountain Climber
oil on canvas • 210 x 170,5 cm
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J.F. Willumsen