The Flower Painter J.L. Jensen: Between Art in Nature and the Golden Age
Marie-Louise Berner
A large, lavish survey of J. L. Jensen’s complete works
Johan Laurentz Jensen (1800–1856) is the only fully fledged still-life painter in the Nordics. His beautiful flower and fruit paintings and his rarer kitchen and game still lives have consistently found an appreciative audience, both in Denmark and abroad. As the flower painter par excellence of the Romantic Golden Age, J.L. Jensen brought the international style of flower painting to Denmark, transplanting it here in his own style. He took porcelain painting to new artistic levels in porcelain services commissioned by the Danish royal family, for whom he also – as his crowning achievement – decorated royal palace interiors with unsurpassed still lives of nature on a grand scale.
In recent decades, J.L. Jensen’s art has begun to attract increasing international interest, but has remained fairly neglected in art history literature. That shortcoming is now finally remedied with this in-depth scholarly and richly illustrated documentation of J.L. Jensen’s life and flourishing work.
Marie-Louise Berner is an art historian. She was a research librarian from 1977 to 1999 at the Danish National Art Library, and is the author of Bertel Thorvaldsen . Mette Thelle is an art historian and former Director of Esbjerg Art Musem, Randers Art Museum and Funen Art Museum