Venice

Venice is a starting point and end station for Willumsen. He returns to the city regularly throughout his life, participates in the biennale in 1920, and is drawn to its art, history and mysterious dreamlike places in the city. Willumsen is a tourist who comes to Venice with a Scandinavian mentality and gaze. He sketches everything he sees energetically, before returning to his atelier to portray the enchantment of the Venetian lagoon and life on the streets of the sinking city.

A series of paintings from the 1930s shows palaces reflected in the water, bridges, boats, and gondoliers and lovers sailing silently through the night. The paintings are often transformations of specific places rendered strange and fantastic, such as the painting of two naked gondoliers energetically rowing along a pale green canal in front of Palazzo Morosini.

Willumsen painted more than 20 ‘postcards’ from Venice, all of them in the same size and format. A selection is exhibited here. More can be seen in the new wing of the museum.