A Young Artist (Ditlev Blunck) Examining a Sketch in a Mirror
Wilhelm Bendz (Danish, 1804–1832)
1826
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Classification
- Painting
- Dimensions
- height 98 cm, width 85 cm, height 118 cm, width 104.6 cm
- Culture
- Danish
- Museum
- SMK – National Gallery of Denmark
- Rights
- Public Domain Mark: SMK waives its rights in this photograph, as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Teens profiles and older: its museum says too little about what it shows to place it for younger viewers. How works are placed
View at the SMK – National Gallery of Denmark
About this work
Looking at a work of art in a mirror to see if it works is an old trick of the painter’s trade. Showing that trick reveals how even an artist can have difficulties seeing who he is and what he is doing. There is something wrong everywhere within this image. Diagonals are blocked. The picture is full to bursting point; the face of Death has toppled. The smooth mirror that was supposed to show the world truly is split in two. The world has been cut in half. The truth about identity is not straightforward. The French philosopher Jacques Derrida has said that portraits actually lament the fact that you cannot see what you are doing as you draw or paint the portrait because your hand and tools block your view. Portraits are done blind. Thus, the portrait does not represent reality, but a struggle fought between blindness and memory.
