The Hirschsprung Collection

Why it is renowned

Time Out counts it among the eleven best museums in Copenhagen, for its paintings of the Danish Golden Age and the work of Anna Ancher of the Skagen painters.¹ The collection runs from the Golden Age to the Skagen painters and the first modernists, with C.W. Eckersberg, Christen Købke, J.Th. Lundbye, P.S. Krøyer, Anna and Michael Ancher, Theodor Philipsen and Vilhelm Hammershøi.² More than 700 works hang in the house, and the smaller rooms hold furniture the Golden Age artists designed or owned.³

The story

Heinrich Hirschsprung ran the tobacco firm A.M. Hirschsprung & Sønner, and from 1866 he and his wife Pauline collected Danish art, many of the painters among their friends.³ The collection was first shown in public at Charlottenborg in 1888, and in 1900 the couple gave it to the Danish state; the gift was made known in 1902.³ Hirschsprung wanted a building of its own, and the architect Hermann Baagøe Storck drew a plain neoclassical museum for Østre Anlæg; work began in 1907.³ Heinrich Hirschsprung died in 1908, and the museum opened in the summer of 1911.³² Joakim Skovgaard's floor mosaic of 1910 in the entrance hall shows tobacco plants in memory of the founder.³

What to know it by

• Summer Evening at Skagen Beach. The Artist and his Wife²1899P.S. KrøyerKrøyer and his wife on the beach at Skagen
• Entrance hall mosaic³1910Joakim SkovgaardFloor mosaic of tobacco plants
• The artists' furniture³Furniture of the Golden Age painters