Malergården

Facts

The artists' home

By Louise Straarup-Hansen, Mag.art. i kunsthistorie (5 stories)

Malergården, or painters' farm, has been the setting for the Swane family's artistic talents since 1934. In 2004, Gerda Swane willed Malergården to Odsherred Art Museum as a gift. The Swane family consisted of Sigurd Swane (1879-1973), his wife Agnete (1893-1994) and their children Hanne, Henrik and Gerda. Sigurd Swane and fellow artist Harald Giersing (1881-1927) helped introduce colourful, modernistic, and expressive art to Denmark. They were inspired by the French impressionists and Fauvist painters' techniques and use of colours.

Public place

Selected entry

The happy season

Story written by Louise Straarup-Hansen

Time / Periode 1934 2004

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Gerda Swane described harvest time at the farm in her memoirs. It was the highlight of the year – everyone giving a hand while Sigurd Swane lost himself in his painting: Now a very large canvas came out horizontally, carried by a small man in white. Father stopped on the hill, lay the canvas on the ground and put the heavy paint box and easel with the long strings down and looked around – at once both dreamily in love but with a practised eye... Now it was father's happy season, now when the vertical lines in the landscape were just as he longed for... Father painted and when he came home, the long nails on the strings he used to tether the easel were ringing like cheerful little bells in time to his firm, brisk strides." "