In art history literature, the debate has often been used to point out two significant currents on the Danish art scene around the year 1900: one consisted of those who cultivated and supported a naturalistic painting style, the other comprised the Symbolist artists.Gerda Wegener<\/em>, Ish\u00f8j 2015, 14; Bodil Busk Laursen and Susanne Thestrup Andersen: Naturen og Kunsten<\/em>, Faaborg 1986; Susanne Thestrup Truelsen et al. (ed): Kampen om Kunsten \u2013 Fynboerne<\/em>, Charlottenlund 2010; Iben Overgaard: \u2018Life and work\u2019, in Erland H\u00f8yersten (ed.): Agnes Slott-M\u00f8ller \u2013 Heroes and heroines<\/em>, Aarhus 2018\">2<\/a><\/sup> The debate has been used to explain why Harald Slott-M\u00f8ller and Agnes Slott-M\u00f8ller in particular were subsequently assigned a marginalised position in Danish art history. Taking my point of departure in a feminist analysis of the discourse in articles written by Ernst Goldschmidt (1879\u20131959), Karl Madsen (1858\u20131938) and Agnes Slott-M\u00f8ller (1862\u20131937), I will examine the significance of gender in the dispute and discuss the established reception of the Peasant Painter Feud.<\/p>\n By focusing on the significance of gender in this context, I aim to highlight how the Peasant Painter Feud favoured and exalted masculinity and argue that the debate and its subsequent reception form part of an institutional and discursive undermining of female artists. In doing so, I wish to deconstruct the established narrative asserting that the debate was factual and art-theoretical in nature, and question some of the parameters formerly used to explain the developments within Danish art history. The article thus also sets the stage for critical reflection on how to use and reproduce established narratives in art history.<\/p>\n The Peasant Painter Feud took place during a period which saw a serious shift in how women artists were viewed in Denmark. Art historian Lennart Gottlieb has pointed out that up through the 1890s, the circle of members of Den Frie Udstilling changed; from having included a significant proportion of women artists, the association went on to systematically exclude them around the turn of the century. The artists\u2019 communities Ung dansk Kunst (Young Danish Art) (1910\u20131912) and Gr\u00f8nningen, which emerged out of Den Frie Udstilling in 1915, included no women artists: \u2018women were simply disregarded \u2013 or even despised \u2013 as artists\u2019.Modernisme og maleri \u2013 Modernismebegrebet, modernismeforskningen og det modernistiske i dansk maleri omkring 1910-30,<\/em> Aarhus 2011, 82\u201383. However, Gottlieb does not believe that women lack representation today. In the book Identitet \u2013 Om identitetsproblemter og det s\u00e6rligt priviligerede i tidens kunstkultur<\/em> he states: \u2018Women and female subject matter have become particularly privileged\u2019 and goes on to say that \u2018The re-inscribing of women in a new kind of art history, one where the approach is rooted in cultural history or done with respect for abandoned artistic positions, has paved the way for a new form of jubilantly celebratory art history which fights for historical justice, favouring it over the artistic responsibility previously perceived as the basis for acquisitions and exhibitions in art museums, and which was the trait that set them apart from cultural history museums\u2019. Lennart Gottlieb: Identitet \u2013 Om identitetsproblemter og det s\u00e6rligt priviligerede i tidens kunstkultur<\/em>, Frederiksberg 2021, 26\">3<\/a><\/sup> In the PhD thesis Excentriske Sl\u00e6gtskaber (Eccentric Affinities), <\/em>art historian Emilie Boe Bierlich investigates the dynamics responsible for women artists being written out of Danish art history, and this article builds on that work. In her thesis, Boe Bierlich examines how women artists who were popular in their own time were not represented at the institutions and excluded from art historical treatments of their period up through the twentieth century simply because they were women. She also argues that the art debate in Denmark around 1900 was defined by a gendered polarisation. In this article I argue that the Peasant Painter Feud is an example of this gender polarisation, but whereas Boe Bierlich focuses on the importance of being born female, I argue that the works of male artists were also dismissed and disqualified because critics saw their art as examples of \u2018women’s art\u2019. In doing so, I furthermore aim to add greater nuance to the discussion, expanding our understanding of the types of art that have been left out of art history, and to identify and describe some of the gendered parameters of exclusion that have also affected men.<\/p>\n Two different understandings of gender appear in the debate, which can be connected to a distinction between biological and social sex. The Peasant Painter Feud began with a defence of women artists where artists are grouped on the basis of their biological sex, while some critics associated the concepts of \u00a0\u2018women’s art\u2019 and \u2018manly\u2019\/\u2018masculine\u2019 art with both sexes. The latter involves a social gender perspective associated with whether the art in question is seen as linked to something stereotypically female or male. When uncovering the gender hierarchies built up in the Peasant Painter Feud, it is useful to distinguish between biological sex and social gender, because such a distinction can shed light on how several of those involved in the dispute seem to think about gender.<\/p>\n In the book Gender Trouble, <\/em>philosopher and queer theorist Judith Butler presents their4<\/a><\/sup> understanding of the feminist project. Here they do away with a distinction between biological and social sex previously used in feminist theories to point out the oppression of women because it predetermines their identity.5<\/a><\/sup> Instead, Butler deconstructs the meaning of gender and decentres the privileged position assigned to the masculine in meaning-making. They do this by exposing the exercise of power seen in discourses and in the practices of institutions.The History of Sexuality<\/em>. Butler writes: <\/em>\u00a0\u2018genealogy investigates the political stakes in designating as an origin and cause those identity categories that are in fact the effects of institutions, practices, discourses with multiple and diffuse points of origin. The task of this inquiry is to center on \u2013 and decenter \u2013 such defining institutions: phallogocentrism and compulsory heterosexuality\u2019. Judith Butler: Gender Trouble<\/em>, New York 1990 (2006), xxxi\">6<\/a><\/sup> At the same time, they point out that there is in fact scope for action within the gendered production apparatus. Through the repetition of gendered codes, a change of identity can occur.7<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n Butler\u2019s feminist queer thinking forms the theoretical starting point of this article, as I endeavour to expose the patriarchal discourses that have contributed to determining who became successful and who was relegated to an outsider position. In the analyses of Agnes Slott-M\u00f8ller\u2019s works, I examine how the works create meaning and cause shifts in the gendered hierarchies of representation.8<\/a><\/sup> By this I mean that Agnes Slott-M\u00f8ller did not accept gendered understandings of artistic idioms.<\/p>\n Art historians Bodil Busk Laursen and Susanne Thestrup Andersen are the ones who firmly inscribed the Peasant Painter Feud in Danish art history with the catalogue for the exhibition Kunsten og naturen <\/em>(Art and Nature) from 1986. The two art historians use the dispute as a point of entry for looking at \u2018forgotten currents on the art scene around the turn of the century\u2019, motivated by \u2018a renewed interest in the idea, form and style of images\u2019.9<\/a><\/sup> The exhibition presented some of the works mentioned in the articles and other pieces that formed part of the original debate. Their reception of the Peasant Painter Feud has greatly shaped recent art history\u2019s view of it.10<\/a><\/sup> In the catalogue from 1986, Busk Laursen and Thestrup Andersen describe the controversy as an artistic dispute: \u2018At its core, the Peasant Painter Feud is a showdown between two different art movements: naturalism and Symbolism\u2019.11<\/a><\/sup> They further conclude that \u2018the opposition, with its academic painting inspired by literature, lost the battle,\u2019 with reference to the artists Agnes Slott-M\u00f8ller, Harald Slott-M\u00f8ller and Gudmund Hentze.12<\/a><\/sup> The enduring resonance of Busk Laursen and Thestrup Andersen\u2019s reading of the debate can be seen in the catalogue for the exhibition Agnes Slott-M\u00f8ller \u2013 Heroes and Heroines <\/em>from 2018, where art historian Iben Overgaard writes: \u2018The discussion marked out fundamental differences between two prevailing art trends; Symbolism against naturalism, ideality against reality, spirit against nature\u2019.Gerda Wegener <\/em>exhibition at ARKEN, Andrea Rygg Karberg distinguished between naturalism and realism on the one hand and Symbolism on the other. Andrea Rygg Karberg: \u2018N\u00e5r en kvinde maler kvinder\u2019, in Christian Gether et al. (eds.) 2015, 14\">13<\/a><\/sup> And like Busk Laursen and Thestrup Andersen, Overgaard concludes that \u2018Agnes and Harald Slott-M\u00f8ller\u2019s ideal ambitions for their art became relegated to a dead end\u2019.14<\/a><\/sup> Art historian Bente Scavenius also sees the debate as art theoretical in nature, presenting it as a dispute between \u2018rustic \u201cclog-wearing\u201d art set against the refined and decorative art that Gudmund Hentze represented alongside the Slott-M\u00f8llers\u2019. The literary historian Henrik Wivel, who authored the fifth volume of the major reference work Ny dansk kunsthistorie <\/em>(New Danish Art History), points out that while the debate was initially gender political in scope, it took place on many levels, including the lowest, where \u2018the artists lambasted each other with exquisite perfidy\u2019.Ny dansk Kunsthistorie bind 5<\/em>, Copenhagen 1994, 151\">15<\/a><\/sup> Wivel concludes: \u2018at its core, the debate had to do with genre and style\u2019.16<\/a><\/sup> In the catalogue for the exhibition Mellem kunst og idealer <\/em>(Between Art and Ideals) from 1988, which showed works by Agnes and Harald Slott-M\u00f8ller and was also organised by Bodil Busk Laursen, she also points out political aspects to the ostracism of the two artists and concludes: \u2018From then on, Agnes and Harald Slott-M\u00f8ller were both regarded as belonging to the extreme right wing\u2019.Mellem kunst og idealer<\/em>, Copenhagen 1988, 16\">17<\/a><\/sup> However, when reading the articles of the Peasant Painter Feud closely, it is difficult to synthesise the writers\u2019 positions into two clear-cut art-theoretical or political positions the way the aforementioned art historians have done. The various writers\u2019 agendas were informed by personal tastes and attitudes, power dynamics, misogyny and desperate attempts to defend themselves against other writers\u2019 attacks in previous articles. It is therefore difficult to draw a clear picture of the two polar opposite positions of the Peasant Painter Feud. This is not only because more than a hundred years have passed since the debate took place. Hans J\u00e6ger\u2019s (1854\u20131910) article \u2018Malerkrigen \u2013 et resum\u00e9\u2019 (The Painters\u2019 War: A Summary) testifies to a certain amount of confusion at the time about the actual core of the dispute.18<\/a><\/sup> As the Norwegian author stated:<\/p>\n Just as it was impossible for even the most attentive and interested reader to assert with clarity what the dispute was really about from these articles, it also proved equally impossible for the warring parties to make each other understand what each really meant.Politiken<\/em>, 12.6.1907\">19<\/a><\/sup><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Rather than presenting the Peasant Painter Feud as a clash between two polar opposites representing two different art-theoretical directions, it may be more fruitful to see the debate as one comprising many different themes. Taking such a view, the discussion of different art movements constitutes one trajectory in the debate, while another is the notion that gender is connected with quality. A third approach might be to examine the meaning of \u2018style\u2019, a recurring theme in several of the articles.Politiken<\/em>, 16.5.1907\">20<\/a><\/sup> This is to say that the Peasant Painter Feud contains several narratives that can be unpacked, depending on how the sources are selected and delimited.<\/p>\n In order to understand the nuances of the debate, it is important to form an overview of who actively took part in it. The articles featured in the publication Naturen og kunsten<\/em> (Nature and Art) had been found in a folder labelled \u2018Peter Hansen\u2019 in Hjalmar Bruhn\u2019s collection of clippings at the Royal Danish Library. Thus, the starting point for the publication was source material selected as relevant to the artist Peter Hansen (1868\u20131928), who was also active in the debate. The authors write: \u2018In the exhibition catalogue, the parties in the dispute get to speak for themselves. The most important entries are printed in full\u2019.21<\/a><\/sup> Today, Politiken<\/em>\u2019s archive has been digitised and made available on the newspaper\u2019s website, and if, for example, you search for \u2018Slott-M\u00f8ller\u2019, it is possible to find more entries in the discussion than those featured in the catalogue. In what follows, I will focus on articles that are particularly relevant to Agnes Slott-M\u00f8ller and which touch on the significance of gender.<\/p>\n Gudmund Hentze (1875\u20131948) launched the Peasant Painter Feud with an opinion piece headlined \u2018Dansk Foraar\u2019, meaning \u2018Danish Spring\u2019, which was published in Politiken<\/em> on 14 April 1907. Taking a confrontational tone, he criticised \u2018the lumped-up coterie of Peasant Painters\u2019, which he believed had too much power. He was referring to the Funen school of painters, which included Fritz Syberg (1862\u20131939), Peter Hansen and Johannes Larsen (1867\u20131961).Den frie Udstilling i 100 \u00e5r<\/em>, Copenhagen 1991, 41\u201342. In a later article by Ernst Goldschmidt for the exhibition Die Kunst f\u00fcr Alle: Malerei, Plastik, Graphik, Architektur<\/em> he mentions, in the same breath as Syberg, Larsen and Hansen, the artist Karl Schou, who, like the others, was a student of Kristian Zahrtmann. Ernst Goldschmidt, \u2018Moderne D\u00e4nishe Malerei\u2019, in Fritz Schwartz: Die Kunst f\u00fcr Alle<\/em>, Munich 1911, 414\">22<\/a><\/sup> Hentze was prompted to write the piece by a specific event: the jury of the Charlottenborg exhibition had rejected Gerda Wegener\u2019s (1886\u20131940) Portrait of Ellen von Kohl<\/em>, 1906.Elverh\u00f8j <\/em>(Elves\u2019 Hill\/Elf Mound), 1906, at the Charlottenborg exhibition: Agnes Slott-M\u00f8ller: \u2018\u00c5bent Brev til Censurkomit\u00e9en paa Charlottenborg\u2019, Politiken,<\/em> 30.4.1907. However, it makes sense to see Hentze\u2019s essay as the start of the debate because of its confrontational tone. Busk Laursen and Thestrup Andersen, Iben Overgaard, Bente Scavenius and Henrik Wivel all mention Hentze\u2019s opinion piece as the start of the debate.\">23<\/a><\/sup> In his defence of Wegener and the rejected work, he also mentioned three other artists whom he believed were overlooked and underrated on the Danish art scene: Agnes Slott-M\u00f8ller, Bertha Dorph (1875\u20131960) and Juliette Willumsen (1863\u20131949). In the article, Hentze drew a picture of a cliquey art scene where a single, particular view of art dictated what should be exhibited at Charlottenborg and Den Frie Udstilling, leaving no room for what he, pointing to Wegener\u2019s portrait, called \u2018a sign of a new spring in Danish art\u2019. Siding with Gudmund Hentze, Agnes Slott-M\u00f8ller joined the fray, and they were later joined by her husband, artist Harald Slott-M\u00f8ller (1864\u20131937).<\/p>\n The Funen Painters only contributed a brief piece to the debate, written by Peter Hansen, but Ernst Goldschmidt and Karl Madsen both came to their defence. Karl Madsen, who originally trained as an artist, became a member of the gallery commission at Statens Museum for Kunst in 1899. He went on to become a curator there in 1900 and was eventually appointed director in 1911.Statens Museum for Kunst \u2013 1827-1952<\/em>, Copenhagen 1998, 142 and 151\">24<\/a><\/sup> Madsen became involved in the debate after Hentze \u2013 in an article on \u2018Nature and Art\u2019, also published in Politiken<\/em> \u2013 had criticised the acquisition policy at Statens Museum for Kunst.Politiken<\/em>, 26.4.1907. Hentze criticised the acquisitions policy at the Statens Kunstsamling and would like to see more works by a number of artists \u2013 not only women artists, but also by figures such as Joakim Skovgaard (1856\u20131933), Ejnar Nielsen (1872\u20131956) and N.V. Dorph (1862\u20131931).\">25<\/a><\/sup> Following this, Madsen became one of the most active contributors to the debate.Politiken<\/em>, 3.5.1907\">26<\/a><\/sup> Ernst Goldschmidt was an artist and published the magazine Det ny Kunstblad <\/em>(The New Art Journal) in 1910\u201311. He also wrote for Politiken<\/em> and was a regular reviewer for the newspaper from time to time.and<\/em> reviewing the exhibition in Politiken<\/em>, but this did not prevent him from assuming the same dual role in connection with the establishment of Gr\u00f8nningen in 1915. Scavenius 1991, 113\">27<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n Gudmund Hentze does not explicitly mention gender as the reason why the named women artists were overlooked at that year\u2019s exhibitions. However, if one looks at how women artists were described in discussions at the time \u2013 and specifically in the Peasant Painter Feud\u00a0\u2013 it becomes painfully clear that their gender stood in the way of any real recognition of their work. In Ernst Goldschmidt\u2019s article \u2018Charlottenborg-Udstillingen IV\u2019, gender plays a significant role. He begins by explaining what the dispute is about:<\/p>\n The controversy, which one party in particular now seeks to stir up, is not about a struggle between drawing and colour, nor between a striving for beauty and the worship of nature \u2013 for they cannot be separated \u2013 but a struggle between authenticity and affectation. And those who are not partisans in the service of art-political purposes will easily be able to see that Mrs Slott-M\u00f8ller\u2019s Young Danish Nobles<\/em> exhibited this year pales and becomes dry, toneless and contrived when seen next to Joakim Skovgaard\u2019s scenes on similar themes, and that [Harald] Slott-M\u00f8ller\u2019s portraits become empty and superficial exercises of form when juxtaposed with Ejnar Nielsen\u2019s deep, lovely monumentality. Skovgaard and Nielsen are artists who favour drawing and line as much as anyone, so this is not about a dispute between different artistic principles, but a matter of assessing quality.Politiken<\/em>, 5.5.1907\">28<\/a><\/sup><\/p><\/blockquote>\n In Goldschmidt\u2019s view, the dispute was between two groups of artists, one representing \u2018authenticity\u2019 and the other \u2018affectation\u2019.29<\/a><\/sup> A Danish dictionary from 1919 states that affectation is associated with a certain \u2018unnaturalness in one\u2019s being\u2019 and \u2018the addition of self-deception\u2019.Ordbog over det danske sprog, grundlagt af Verner Dahlerup <\/em>from 1919.\">30<\/a><\/sup> Goldschmidt associated the same qualities with what he called \u2018women’s art\u2019. He used this term in a description of the painting Hos den unge Barselskvinde <\/em>(Young Woman in her Confinement), 1907, by Bertha Dorph, one of the four women artists defended by Hentze:<\/p>\n There is a gossamer quality akin to the lightness of kiting spiderlings to Mrs Dorph\u2019s picture, something cheerfully festive, something instantly endearing, a smiling feel about her figures. They are clearly aware that they are beautiful, but then it is such a strongly feminine trait to want to please, to want to look good, to want to show off a little beauty spot in a smiling face, as long as it is becoming, even if it is not one\u2019s own. And Mrs Dorph\u2019s large picture is undoubtedly the most typical piece of women\u2019s art painted in Denmark.31<\/a><\/sup><\/p><\/blockquote>\n In the quote, Goldschmidt establishes a connection between the embellished (the beauty spot), the feminine, and the unoriginal (the falsity of the beauty spot) and concludes that this type of art, which he also described as the \u2018nineties quest for style\u2019, had lost out. In the article he makes a clear distinction between good original art and artificial and unoriginal art, eventually concluding that the winner is neo-naturalism:<\/p>\n The spirits who have stood guard over Danish art have wanted things to be so that the nineties\u2019 quest for style did not became decisive for its future. Side by side with it, a New Naturalism grew forth, heavier and broader than that of the eighties [1880s], and at the same time a young art which, conveyed through strong and independent personalities, united a deep striving for simplicity with a sense of colour and a cultivation of painterly aspects.32<\/a><\/sup><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Ernst Goldschmidt worked with various dichotomies between the real and the fake, the young and the old and the good and the bad. Positioned opposite genuine art one finds an inauthentic and empty art that cannot decide on a mode of expression, and which he associates with women\u2019s art. He thus sets up an ideal of \u2018real\u2019 art and defines women\u2019s art as \u2018other\u2019.33<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n Ernst Goldschmidt would come to play a part in the development of Danish modern art. In his dual roles as artist and reviewer, Goldschmidt preferred artists who could \u2018see and feel for themselves, and incorporate in their art the colouristic devices that the new age has brought them,\u2019 as he states in a later article.34<\/a><\/sup> Goldschmidt used the terms \u2018young art\u2019 and \u2018modern art\u2019 to describe the neo-naturalism which to him constituted the new viable art of the time. Goldschmidt had various platforms from which to disseminate his view of art and women. He was editor of Det ny Kunstblad<\/em>, described by art historian Villads Villadsen as \u2018the mouthpiece of the young generation\u2019 in his book about Statens Museum for Kunst.35<\/a><\/sup> As a member of Ung dansk Kunst from 1910 to 1912, he exhibited alongside fellow artists such as Harald Giersing (1881\u20131927) and Sigurd Swane (1879\u20131973) in 1910, and he was part of the circle of artists who founded Gr\u00f8nningen in 1915, a group which would constitute an important community for the development of Danish modernism. The rules governing who could exhibit in these associations reflected the view of art presented by Goldschmidt in the Peasant Painter Feud. For example, only men could become members of the association Ung Dansk Kunst at Den Frie,36<\/a><\/sup> and, as was previously mentioned, the artist association Gr\u00f8nningen \u00a0left out women artists.37<\/a><\/sup> Thus, women were denied access to several of the communities that would play a central role in the development of Danish modernism.<\/p>\n Interestingly, Goldschmidt not only used the traits he associated with women\u2019s art to criticise Bertha Dorph\u2019s work; he levelled the same criticism at Harald Slott-M\u00f8ller\u2019s portraits, which he saw as \u2018empty exercises in form\u2019. He also associated Gudmund Hentze\u2019s representations of the medieval ballad about Germand Gladensvend (Germand the Merry)The Ballad of Germand the Merry in Seven Small Pictures<\/em>, 1902\u201307, at Den Frie Udstilling in 1907. Fortegnelse over Kunstv\u00e6rker paa Den Frie Udstilling <\/em>1907, Copenhagen, 1907\">38<\/a><\/sup> with women\u2019s art, using the ballad as an image of the 1890s search for style and making a connection between the song\u2019s story about Germand, who borrows <\/em>his mother\u2019s magical feathered cloak, and affected art.39<\/a><\/sup> Through such tangled, indirect juxtapositions and associations, Goldschmidt conveyed that not only the women in Bertha Dorph\u2019s work adorned themselves with borrowed feathers; so too did male artists such as Gudmund Hentze and Harald Slott-M\u00f8ller. Thus Goldschmidt attributed \u2018female\u2019 characteristics to the art created by these two male artists, which in his view disqualified them.<\/p>\n Goldschmidt has not been prominently featured in art history\u2019s treatment of the period. Lennart Gottlieb describes him as a bad artist, but perhaps Goldschmidt\u2019s art historical significance does not reside in his role as an artist, but rather as a figure of power within the fields of art criticism and on the art scene. He was supported, among others, by Fritz Syberg, who praised him for one of the opinion pieces that formed part of the Peasant Painter Feud. In an undated letter, Syberg wrote: \u2018Next, I would very much like to thank you for your beautiful opinion piece, which has pleased me for reasons that I can better talk about than write about\u2019.http:\/\/fynboerne.ktdk.dk\/d\/2Y7f?q=syberg%20goldschmidt <\/a>. Last accessed 7.6.2023.\">40<\/a><\/sup> Goldschmidt remained popular, and when Statens Museum for Kunst was to have a new director in 1930, the association \u2018Malende Kunstneres samfund\u2019 (\u2018Society of Painting Artists\u2019) chose Ernst Goldschmidt as their candidate for the position.Dagens Nyheder<\/em>, 29.10.1930\">41<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n When seeking to understand the Peasant Painter Feud, Goldschmidt\u2019s contribution is interesting because it makes explicit a sexist tone in the general art debate, and he is an advocate of the kind of modern art which would dominate art history\u2019s treatment of the first half of the twentieth century.<\/p>\n In an article, Harald Slott-M\u00f8ller describes Ernst Goldschmidt as Karl Madsen\u2019s \u2018fellow combatant\u2019,Politiken<\/em>, 8.5.1907. Affronted, Ernst Goldschmidt responds to Slott-M\u00f8ller\u2019s article. Goldschmidt, Ernst: \u2018Harald Slott-M\u00f8ller og den moderne kunst\u2019, Politiken<\/em>, 12.5.1907\">42<\/a><\/sup> and indeed there are parallels between Goldschmidt\u2019s and Madsen\u2019s outlooks on art. Like Goldschmidt, Madsen wrote that the debate is about the authentic versus the inauthentic: \u2018The fight to ensure that no genuine values, whatever they may be, are rejected and disregarded in favour of false values, even if they cover themselves up in beautiful names\u2019.43<\/a><\/sup> Karl Madsen also believed that the debate was essentially about quality or what he called \u2018good\u2019 and \u2018bad\u2019 style. The artists highlighted by Madsen as particularly skilled were all men, while he consistently criticised the women artists: Madsen wrote that the air emanating from Elizabeth Jerichau Baumann was thin, and according to Madsen it was a surprising and gratifying step forward for Bertha Dorph when she officially gave up her efforts to do what he describes as \u2018taking on a style\u2019:<\/p>\n Mrs Bertha Dorph has publicly declared that, at the instigation of her husband, her picture exhibited this year sees her to turning her back on [the efforts to take on a style]. It is clear that in doing so, she has made great and gratifying progress, which her great energy and skill will doubtless permit her to continue\u2019.44<\/a><\/sup><\/p><\/blockquote>\n The message conveyed here is that she had not succeeded in defining her pictures by means of \u2018style\u2019, and that abandoning this approach to art was a positive step. A trait common to several of Madsen\u2019s mentions of women artists was that he would initially praise them in a patronising manner and then proceed to judge their works. Madsen\u2019s description of Agnes Slott-M\u00f8ller is no exception. He writes that the artist\u2019s choice of subject matter might well be fine, but the execution was poor, adding that \u2018the general public regards her as excellent\u2019.45<\/a><\/sup> In a later opinion piece he made his position clear when, directing his comments at Agnes Slott-M\u00f8ller, he wrote that \u2018too many fritter away their energy on small tasks. Colouring in dolls in knights\u2019 costumes is a woefully small undertaking\u2019.46<\/a><\/sup> Madsen did not specifically mention the gender of the artists involved in the Peasant Painter Feud, but his comments on the women artists were negative. At the time of the debate he was a curator at Statens Museum for Kunst and a member of the gallery commission in charge of deciding which works the museum should acquire. In his previous role as a critic, he would use gendered parameters of quality on several occasions. In a review of the opening exhibition at the Den Frie Udstilling in 1891, he praised Agnes Slott-M\u00f8ller\u2019s Queen Margrete I, Eric of Pomerania and the Jutlandic Aristocracy<\/em>, 1889 [Fig. 1]<\/strong>. He concluded by stating: \u2018The picture in no way reveals that it came from the hand and mind of a woman\u2019.Tilskueren <\/em>, April-May 1891, 334\u2013336\">47<\/a><\/sup> This is to say that Karl Madsen could be positive towards works made by female artists \u2013 as in this review of Agnes Slott-M\u00f8ller\u2019s work \u2013 but in his assessment of artists, he, like Ernst Goldschmidt, applied gendered understandings of what was good and bad. The starting point was that women\u2019s art was unimaginative and fundamentally less interesting than men\u2019s art.Queen Dagmar<\/em>, 1890, which he finds to have \u2018something distinctly feminine about its feel and taste\u2019. According to Madsen, the work is \u2018lovely, its bright colours radiating an atmosphere of endearing youth, virginity and innocence\u2019. He concludes by writing that it is \u2018good art, but not great art\u2019. One of the aspects that compromises the work is that it is not imaginative: \u2018Imagination reserves its right to seek a prouder, more upright image of the noble queen; the three small crocuses seem too delicate a sceptre to be able to lighten the load bearing down on the farmer\u2019s bent neck\u2019. By contrast, Harald Slott-M\u00f8ller\u2019s portrait of Ms Marie Brodersen <\/em>has \u2018a manly feel\u2019, prompting Madsen to proclaim it one of the most outstanding works at the exhibition. Madsen 1891, 334\u2013337\">48<\/a><\/sup> A similar example can be observed in his review of Susette Holten\u2019s works from 1888, where he used the words \u2018manly boldness\u2019 to describe good works and \u2018the hallmarks of women\u2019s work\u2019 as a contrast to this:<\/p>\n If one did not know any better, one would never guess that ‘The Troll Sucking the Lake Dry’ and ‘The Dragon Guarding the Entrance to the Mountain’ were the work of a lady, Miss S.C. Skovgaard. They are characterised by a rather manly boldness, very far removed from the gentle prettiness considered the hallmark of women\u2019s work; the imagination from which they spring does not seem to strive for \u2018the beautiful\u2019.Tidsskrift for Kunstindustri<\/em>, 1888 no. 4, 145\u2013154. Quoted from http:\/\/www.vejenkunstmuseum.dk\/Dansk\/susette\/susette.htm <\/a>. Last accessed 25.1.2023.\">49<\/a><\/sup><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Male critics were not alone in reproducing such stereotypical perceptions of art made by women \u2013 the general polarisation of the genders and widespread understanding of art as a male space was so embedded in the social debate that female critics also reiterated gendered stereotypes in the media, favouring men.Kvinden og Samfundet <\/em>that the women at the exhibition \u2018are too lacking in the boldness in their choice of subject matter and the courage to move forward in new ways, which it is difficult, often impossible, for woman to decide to do, but which alone is the path to full artistic independence\u2019. Margrethe Svenn Poulsen: Kvinden og Samfundet<\/em>, no. 8., 1909. The article was shown as part of the presentation at the exhibition Anna Syberg \u2013 \u00d8jeblikkets sk\u00f8nhed <\/em>at Faaborg Kunstmuseum in 2020.\">50<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n Peter Hansen, who contributed a short entry in the Peasant Painter Feud, did not mention anything about gender in his piece. However, he actively contributed to the exclusion of women artists from art history when, as the artist behind the painting The Inauguration of Faaborg Museum<\/em>, painted in 1910-12, he ensured that Alhed Larsen, Christine Swane and his own sister Anna Syberg were not included in the large group portrait of the Funen Painters.Ugeavisen Faaborg<\/em>, 04.12.2019\">51<\/a><\/sup> The exhibition Peter Hansen. I Paint What I See <\/em>in 2022 at Ordrupgaard sparked a debate about Peter Hansen\u2019s view of women, prompting the museum\u2019s director, Anne Birgitte Fonsmark, to make the following comment: \u2018In those days, Hansen\u2019s view [of female colleagues] was not \u201cunusual\u201d. On the contrary, it was the norm, a fact well known to those interested in history\u2019.Kulturmonito<\/em>r, 16.6.2022\">52<\/a><\/sup> The entries from Karl Madsen and Ernst Goldschmidt support Fonsmark\u2019s point, while Gudmund Hentze\u2019s contributions show that there were indeed male artists who took up women\u2019s issues in the media. This is to say that not all male artists dismissed and disqualified the female artists, and men also had the opportunity to contradict this \u2018norm\u2019.<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n Despite the similarities between Madsen\u2019s and Goldschmidt\u2019s assessments and arguments on what constitutes good and bad art, they had slightly different perspectives on what was the \u2018right\u2019 kind of art. Madsen was an advocate of naturalism and a major guiding light for artists and audiences alike, but by 1907 he was no longer orientated towards new currents. The Norwegian art historian Jens Thiis writes that Madsen grew \u2018tired of the ceaseless criticism of alternating modern currents\u2019, turning to older art instead.Samlede Avhandlinger om nordisk Kunst<\/em>, Kristiania and Copenhagen 1920, 164\">53<\/a><\/sup> In this respect, Goldschmidt held a different position, being a younger art critic and an advocate of the various associations that sprang from Den Frie Udstilling. He later protested that Statens Museum for Kunst mostly bought works by dead and older artists.54<\/a><\/sup> Despite their differences, the two art critics shared a view of art rooted in French naturalistic painting.<\/p>\n Goldschmidt and Madsen\u2019s perception of art made by women artists parallels the kind of devaluation described by feminist art historian Marsha Meskimmon in her treatment of the Weimar Republic\u2019s view of female artists in the period 1918 to 1933.We Weren\u2019t Modern Enough<\/em>, New York 1999, 5\">55<\/a><\/sup> Focusing on a German context, she examines how the general understanding of the modern was used to exclude artists in the same way that Goldschmidt\u2019s understanding of \u2018young\u2019 art was also used to exclude women.<\/p>\n Meskimmon challenges the written art history that has become accepted as the \u2018right\u2019 one. In her book We Weren\u2019t Modern Enough <\/em>she rearticulates the contexts surrounding specific works by women artists. Rather than focusing on the women\u2019s limitations, she examines the female artists\u2019 scope for action, \u2018how\u2019 the works mean something, and how female artists used different female typologies as a collection of ideas they could apply in different contexts, thereby countering the central position held by the masculine subject:56<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n Far from demonstrating a single, unified aesthetic in relation to \u2018woman\u2019, women artists were able to appropriate, manipulate and challenge monolithic stereotypes of woman as other, definable only in relation to a masculine subject, and in doing so, they questioned the centrality of the masculine subject and the canonical constructions of art and history premised upon the marginalization of woman\/women.57<\/a><\/sup><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Meskimmon uses the concept of \u2018micro-narratives\u2019 in order to allow marginal subjects scope for action. By highlighting selected examples, she sets out to challenge the canonised understanding of art history:<\/p>\n Choosing to focus upon a limited number of works and privileging the textual sources written by, and\/or directed towards, women produce a forceful archaeology of an alternative viewpoint meant to shift our perception of the landscape of Weimar culture.58<\/a><\/sup><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Taking my point of departure in Meskimmon\u2019s focus on female artists\u2019 agency, emphasising their scope for action rather than the oppressive structures around them, I will go on examine how Agnes Slott-M\u00f8ller resisted the male critics\u2019 notions about the \u2018female\u2019.<\/p>\n First, I will examine Agnes Slott-M\u00f8ller\u2019s contributions to the Peasant Painter Feud, then explore an example of the communities of which she was part, and finally consider how she visually appropriated and manipulated idioms that had become associated with the feminine.<\/p>\n Agnes Slott-M\u00f8ller used different platforms and mouthpieces to make her views known. For example, she published two books: Nationale <\/em>V\u00e6rdier <\/em>(National Values), 1917, and Folkevisebilleder <\/em>(Folk Ballad Images), 1923, and she wrote articles in Politiken<\/em>. \u00a0In connection with the Peasant Painter Feud, her article \u2018Kunsten og Emnerne\u2019 (Art and Its Subjects) was part of the debate. Here she focused not on gender, but on the content of art and what it should be, pointing back to Michelangelo\u2019s The Last Judgement <\/em>from 1536\u201341. For Agnes Slott-M\u00f8ller, the Peasant Painter Feud was a clash between painters who favoured different types of subject matter: modest or grand.<\/p>\n I don\u2019t know why it is considered so healthy, especially among a people like the Danish, to always warn against the grand subjects. When art was at its best, it did indeed dealt with the greatest, weightiest of subjects even though it was not equipped to do so at all. Many a work of ancient and old art touches us precisely because of its inherent contrast between a full heart and a halting, stuttering voice.Politiken<\/em>, 6.5.1907\">59<\/a><\/sup><\/p><\/blockquote>\n In writing these words, she went up against a Danish tradition which favoured everyday subject matter in art. Subjects of the kind that Peter Hansen, Johannes Larsen and Fritz Syberg, but also Vilhelm Hammersh\u00f8i, depicted in their paintings. She defended her art against Karl Madsen\u2019s labelling which proclaimed her a painter for the \u2018general public\u2019, emphasising that her audience included poets, artists, scientists and art critics \u2013 in other words:\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n People who possess the highest degree of education and refinement found in our times, but regrettably for me not people with the financial wherewithal to buy paintings and thereby give me the material support that the Heavens above and Mr Karl Madsen both seem to feel that I should forever do without.60<\/a><\/sup><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Perhaps Agnes Slott-M\u00f8ller did not mention her position as a woman artist because this would, within the gendered hierarchy of the time, be tantamount to automatically disqualifying herself. Instead, she proved her support among the intellectual elite the following year when thirteen leading figures in the realm of Danish culture approached the Gallery Commission at Statens Museum for Kunst, requesting the museum to acquire her work Elverh\u00f8j<\/em> (Elves\u2019 Hill) from 1906 \u2013 the very work which the jury at the Charlottenborg exhibition had rejected in 1907 and which was part of the reason why Hentze wrote the piece on a \u2018Danish spring\u2019, launching the feud. The signatories included the critic and literary scholar Georg Brandes (1842\u20131927), the painter Peder Severin Kr\u00f8yer (1851\u20131909), who had taught Agnes Slott-M\u00f8ller, the writer Valdemar Vedel (1865\u20131942), the professor of Danish literary history Vilhelm Andersen (1864\u20131953 ), the philosopher Harald H\u00f8ffding (1843\u20131931) and the architect Martin Nyrop (1849\u20131921). The letter from these illustrious and erudite gentlemen was printed in Politiken<\/em>, causing the debate about Agnes Slott-M\u00f8ller\u2019s art to flare up again in 1908.Politiken<\/em>, 13.12.1908. Prior to that article, Politiken<\/em> had run several opinion pieces written by Karl Madsen and Vilhelm Andersen.\">61<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n Agnes Slott-M\u00f8ller resisted the exclusion of women artists in the public debate in various ways. She fought to be represented in museum collections and received support on this matter from other women who had a voice in the contemporary debates about women\u2019s rights.Niels Ebbesen<\/em>, 1893\u201394, incorporated into a museum collection, the chairman of Kvindelig L\u00e6seforening, Sophie Alberti, and the women\u2019s advocate Clara Bergs\u00f8e succeeded, through a financial contribution, in making Agnes Slott-M\u00f8ller\u2019s work part of the Randers Kunstmuseum collection. See Claudine Stensgaard Nielsen: Den fries kvindelige kunstnere<\/em>, Aarhus 1991.\">62<\/a><\/sup> Thus, she challenged the gendered hierarchies that were part of the general discussion on art. This process of negotiation can also be observed in her works, which incorporate decorative and naturalistic idioms alike.<\/p>\n Literary historian Pil Dahlerup has described Agnes Slott-M\u00f8ller\u2019s works as a postmodernist stylistic mixture of naturalism, historicism, heroism and national consciousness with tendencies towards \u2018patriotism and symbolism\u2019.Agnes Slott-M\u00f8ller – sk\u00f8nhed er til evig gl\u00e6de, <\/em>Viborg 2008, 120\">63<\/a><\/sup> Here, the term \u2018naturalism\u2019 should be understood in the sense proposed by Georg Brandes: a distancing from the supernatural and an acknowledgement of the necessity to \u2018paint everything after nature\u2019. Dahlerup writes: \u2018Light, air and plein air<\/em> painting are precisely the ingredients that Agnes Slott-M\u00f8ller used to paint her manor houses and landscapes\u2019 and concludes that Agnes Slott-M\u00f8ller was a naturalist in her renderings of buildings and landscapes.Gendered disqualification<\/strong><\/h2>\n
A perfidious debate<\/strong><\/h2>\n
The participants in the Peasant Painter Feud <\/strong><\/h2>\n
A gendered hierarchy<\/strong><\/h2>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.perspectivejournal.dk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/Dronning-Margrete-Erik-af-Pommern-og-den-jyske-adel-scaled.jpg\")
Unimaginative women artists<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Challenging patriarchal structures<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Counternarratives<\/strong><\/h2>\n
![\"Fig.](\"https:\/\/www.perspectivejournal.dk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/Den-doeende-faestemand.A4-scaled.jpg\")
Claiming agency through decorative painting<\/strong><\/h2>\n