A Mountain Climber

In his memoirs Willumsen writes of the first time he opens his eyes to the “beauty and drama” of mountains on a trip to Granada in Spain in 1889. He tells of the inner longing that drives him to mountain landscapes and describes them as a mirages of ethereal beauty  – “Fata Morgana country” – where the effects of the lowland nature end. As he dramatically writes, he has “the feeling of being in the midst of an earthquake, where the universe appears to reel without any fixed point”. After such powerful experiences, mountains become a leitmotif in his works. Later he pays tribute to the mountains and his new great love, his later wife Edith Wessel. At the beginning of the 1900s, just after returning to Europe from the booming metropolis of New York, the couple go hiking in the Pyrenees and Alps. In the spirit of the times they connect nature with freedom and independence, and as a modern woman Edith Wessel frees herself of her corset and goes hiking in loose fitting clothing and practical boots.

There are two versions of A Mountain Climber, one from 1904 and the other completed in 1912. The latter was painted in great haste with expressive brushstrokes because the owner of the original work would not allow it to be shown at an exhibition Willumsen wanted to participate in. Today the paintings can be seen at the Hagemann Hall of Residence in Østerbro and at the National Gallery of Denmark/SMK.

Here you can see some of Willumsen’s early mountain works as well as his sketches for A Mountain Climber.