Karen Blixen (b. Rungstedlund 1885, d. s.p. 1962)
Karen Blixen (b. Rungstedlund 1885, d. s.p. 1962)
Flowers in an earthenware Jug. Ca. 1920. Unsigned. Inscribed with pencil on the back of the frame: Karen Blixen 1920. Oil on canvas. 37×33 cm.
Provenance: The present owner’s grandmother, Countess Christine Ahlefeldt-Laurvig (1903–1994), was acquainted with Karen Blixen in her youth at Rungstedlund, and the painting was most likely given to her on that occasion as a gift from the artist herself. In 1938, Christine Ahlefeldt-Laurvig married the artist Erik Clemmesen (1905–1984), who illustrated several of Karen Blixen’s texts. From the same family originates another flower painting by Karen Blixen, now held at Rungstedlund. Karen Blixen frequently presented her works as gifts to family members or close friends.
“Art in all its forms has been of immense importance to me, but I believe that the art of painting has had the most immediate and inspirational effect on my mind.”
With this quotation by the world-renowned Danish author Karen Blixen, the exhibition catalogue for “An Artist’s Eye – Karen Blixen and the Art of Painting”, shown at Rungstedlund in 2023, opens. The quotation bears witness to the decisive importance that painting held for Blixen — not merely as an artistic practice, but as a lifelong aesthetic way of seeing the world.
Karen Blixen originally aspired to become a painter. At the age of seventeen, in 1902, she began her studies at a drawing school in Copenhagen and continued her training from 1903 to 1906 at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts’ School for Women at Charlottenborg. In 1906 she was admitted to the Academy’s model school, though she appears not to have taken up the place. A shorter stay in Paris in 1910, undertaken with the aim of further instruction in painting, nevertheless testifies to her enduring ambitions as a visual artist.
Following her engagement in 1912 to the Swedish Baron Bror von Blixen-Finecke (1886–1946) and the couple’s departure for Kenya in 1914, where they settled on a coffee farm, painting became an important refuge for Karen Blixen. In letters sent home, she repeatedly describes how immersion in painting afforded her calm and distance from the marital and financial difficulties she faced. In a letter to her mother, Ingeborg Dinesen, dated April 1923, she writes: “When I am able to stand here and paint — and it is going reasonably well — and it is raining on the farm, and the air is as delicate and fresh as it becomes here during the rainy season, I feel that it is a pleasure to be alive.” (Bente Scavenius, “Karen Blixen as a Painter,” in “An Artist’s Eye – Karen Blixen and the Art of Painting”, exhibition catalogue, 2023, p. 9).
Several of her works painted in Kenya are today at Rungstedlund.
When Karen Blixen left Africa for the last time in 1931, it marked a decisive artistic turning point. “Upon her departure for Africa, she undoubtedly regarded herself as a painter, but when she returned home, she was a writer” (Bente Scavenius, 2023, p. 12). After her return, she largely ceased painting, yet her deep attachment to the visual arts—and their lasting influence on her way of seeing and shaping form—remained central to her creative outlook.
The inspiration drawn from painting, including that of the Danish Golden Age artists, can be traced throughout her literary work, where descriptions of landscape often function as psychological and atmospheric images that carry the emotional progression of the narrative.
From November 1919, Karen Blixen resided at Rungstedlund due to illness and did not return to Kenya until November of the following year. The present painting was, with great probability, executed during this period and is thus connected to a rare and significant interlude in her life, when Rungstedlund once again became the setting for her artistic practice.
In this work, Karen Blixen’s great delight in flowers and their arrangement is clearly evident. The motif centres on the intimate and familiar: the flowers, the vase, and the tranquil interior, which together form a sensuous and enclosed whole. Blixen paid particular attention to the interplay of colour and the effects of light, here manifested in the flowers’ saturated hues and organic forms, which emerge with an almost tactile presence. This sensuous quality is heightened by the contrast between the flowers and the simple, subdued space surrounding them. The room is reduced to a single horizontal line, creating a sense of calm and stability, while the polished tabletop reflects the vase, introducing a cool, smooth surface to the composition. This mirroring emphasises the materiality of the work and invites the viewer not only to see, but also to imagine the differing qualities of the surfaces—from the soft lightness of the petals to the hard, sleek plane of the table. Taken as a whole, the painting appears as a finely balanced encounter between the organic and the rigorously composed, in which tactility plays a central role in the experience, lending the motif an intimate, almost meditative presence.
Blixen’s great pleasure in flowers later developed into the remarkable bouquets she habitually created for the vases at Rungstedlund after her return home—a tradition that is carried on to this day.
This lot is subject to Artist's Royalty.
Artist’s Royalty
In accordance with Danish copyright law, an additional royalty fee is to be paid for the purchase of works by contemporary Danish artist and some international artists who are either still alive, or who died within the last 70 years. × Read more
Category: Paintings
Additional Remarks: Please note: The item is subject to the Anti-Money Laundering Act. In the event of a hammer price of DKK 50,000 or more, including buyer’s premium, the buyer must submit a copy of a valid photo ID and proof of address in order to collect the item.
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Karen Blixen (b. Rungstedlund 1885, d. s.p. 1962)
Flowers in an earthenware Jug. Ca. 1920. Unsigned. Inscribed with pencil on the back of the frame: Karen Blixen 1920. Oil on canvas. 37×33 cm.
Provenance: The present owner’s grandmother, Countess Christine Ahlefeldt-Laurvig (1903–1994), was acquainted with Karen Blixen in her youth at Rungstedlund, and the painting was most likely given to her on that occasion as a gift from the artist herself. In 1938, Christine Ahlefeldt-Laurvig married the artist Erik Clemmesen (1905–1984), who illustrated several of Karen Blixen’s texts. From the same family originates another flower painting by Karen Blixen, now held at Rungstedlund. Karen Blixen frequently presented her works as gifts to family members or close friends.
“Art in all its forms has been of immense importance to me, but I believe that the art of painting has had the most immediate and inspirational effect on my mind.”
With this quotation by the world-renowned Danish author Karen Blixen, the exhibition catalogue for “An Artist’s Eye – Karen Blixen and the Art of Painting”, shown at Rungstedlund in 2023, opens. The quotation bears witness to the decisive importance that painting held for Blixen — not merely as an artistic practice, but as a lifelong aesthetic way of seeing the world.
Karen Blixen originally aspired to become a painter. At the age of seventeen, in 1902, she began her studies at a drawing school in Copenhagen and continued her training from 1903 to 1906 at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts’ School for Women at Charlottenborg. In 1906 she was admitted to the Academy’s model school, though she appears not to have taken up the place. A shorter stay in Paris in 1910, undertaken with the aim of further instruction in painting, nevertheless testifies to her enduring ambitions as a visual artist.
Following her engagement in 1912 to the Swedish Baron Bror von Blixen-Finecke (1886–1946) and the couple’s departure for Kenya in 1914, where they settled on a coffee farm, painting became an important refuge for Karen Blixen. In letters sent home, she repeatedly describes how immersion in painting afforded her calm and distance from the marital and financial difficulties she faced. In a letter to her mother, Ingeborg Dinesen, dated April 1923, she writes: “When I am able to stand here and paint — and it is going reasonably well — and it is raining on the farm, and the air is as delicate and fresh as it becomes here during the rainy season, I feel that it is a pleasure to be alive.” (Bente Scavenius, “Karen Blixen as a Painter,” in “An Artist’s Eye – Karen Blixen and the Art of Painting”, exhibition catalogue, 2023, p. 9).
Several of her works painted in Kenya are today at Rungstedlund.
When Karen Blixen left Africa for the last time in 1931, it marked a decisive artistic turning point. “Upon her departure for Africa, she undoubtedly regarded herself as a painter, but when she returned home, she was a writer” (Bente Scavenius, 2023, p. 12). After her return, she largely ceased painting, yet her deep attachment to the visual arts—and their lasting influence on her way of seeing and shaping form—remained central to her creative outlook.
The inspiration drawn from painting, including that of the Danish Golden Age artists, can be traced throughout her literary work, where descriptions of landscape often function as psychological and atmospheric images that carry the emotional progression of the narrative.
From November 1919, Karen Blixen resided at Rungstedlund due to illness and did not return to Kenya until November of the following year. The present painting was, with great probability, executed during this period and is thus connected to a rare and significant interlude in her life, when Rungstedlund once again became the setting for her artistic practice.
In this work, Karen Blixen’s great delight in flowers and their arrangement is clearly evident. The motif centres on the intimate and familiar: the flowers, the vase, and the tranquil interior, which together form a sensuous and enclosed whole. Blixen paid particular attention to the interplay of colour and the effects of light, here manifested in the flowers’ saturated hues and organic forms, which emerge with an almost tactile presence. This sensuous quality is heightened by the contrast between the flowers and the simple, subdued space surrounding them. The room is reduced to a single horizontal line, creating a sense of calm and stability, while the polished tabletop reflects the vase, introducing a cool, smooth surface to the composition. This mirroring emphasises the materiality of the work and invites the viewer not only to see, but also to imagine the differing qualities of the surfaces—from the soft lightness of the petals to the hard, sleek plane of the table. Taken as a whole, the painting appears as a finely balanced encounter between the organic and the rigorously composed, in which tactility plays a central role in the experience, lending the motif an intimate, almost meditative presence.
Blixen’s great pleasure in flowers later developed into the remarkable bouquets she habitually created for the vases at Rungstedlund after her return home—a tradition that is carried on to this day.
This lot is subject to Artist's Royalty.
Artist’s Royalty
In accordance with Danish copyright law, an additional royalty fee is to be paid for the purchase of works by contemporary Danish artist and some international artists who are either still alive, or who died within the last 70 years. × Read more
Category: Paintings
Additional Remarks: Please note: The item is subject to the Anti-Money Laundering Act. In the event of a hammer price of DKK 50,000 or more, including buyer’s premium, the buyer must submit a copy of a valid photo ID and proof of address in order to collect the item.
Sale price
Estimate
Time, Location
Auction House
