Fairytale Acquisition

Carl Bloch’s Portrait of H. C. Andersen, 1869, is one of the best portraits painted while the writer of fairytales was alive – even if the model himself found his hair too grey and regretted a grease spot on his clothes.

The portrait was painted for H. C. Andersen’s close friends, Martin R. Henriques and his wife Therese. Andersen wrote to Henriques:

‘It brings me pleasure that my portrait by Bloch will be in your home. May it stay part of the family and grow in value when I am gone – gone, that is, from Earth, and when he who painted it has grown old and grey.’

As a child, the museum’s founder, Johannes Hage, heard the author read aloud from his fairytales as a guest in the Hage residence in Christianshavn, and Andersen later praised the young Johannes Hage in a letter after they met in Paris.

The portrait has been on loan to The Nivaagaard Collection since 2019 by an international private collector who was prohibited from bringing the painting out of Denmark by The Danish Commission on the Export of Cultural Assets.

Only recently, in 2024, the museum succeeded in securing the painting for the collection thanks to a generous donation by Beckett-Fonden, which also funded an extensive restoration and cleaning of the painting, so H. C. Andersen can be presented to his best advantage – surrounded by works from his beloved Italy - until January 5, 2025.