( Copenhagen, 1870-1955)

Waiting at the window

21 1/2" x 20 1/2"

26" x 24 1/2" framed

LL: Alf. Broge, 1913

    Karl Harald Alfred Broge was a landscape and genre painter at the turn of the century; one of the most dynamic periods in Danish art history. A growing sense of national pride and a reaction to the industrialization and urbanization of the time, spawned a movement in painting that romanticized the local landscapes and simple scenes of Danish life.

    Broge studied under H. Gronvold, a prominent Danish genre and portrait artist in the late 19th century. Broge began exhibiting in 1889 and was a frequent exhibitor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen. He later became the director of a fashionable drawing school for women in the same city.

    Broge's specialty was painting interiors, particularly those with old-fashioned furnishings and charm. He was part of a group of artist between 1854 and 1958 known as the Realists who portrayed the Danish landscape and peasantry at a time of change. Broge's quiet paintings of the Copenhagen of his time offer an intimate portrait of Danish life. His atmospheric, subtle-toned canvases mourn a vanishing way of life in an increasingly industrialized world.