A Victorious Danish Soldier
H.W. Bissen (Danish, 1798–1868)
1850-1851
- Medium
- Plaster
- Classification
- Statue
- Dimensions
- height 220 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 subject is for older viewers (war, death, the Passion, drink or the like). How works are placed
View at the SMK – National Gallery of Denmark
About this work
Bissen pays homage to the Danish foot soldiers (privates) from the war in 1848-51, where the Danish government prevented the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein from leaving the Kingdom of Denmark. The sculpture springs from the same political soil as the landscape paintings from the period and is fuelled by the same nationalist sentiments. The sculpture marks the first time in European history that a memorial to military victory did not show a goddess, a general, or a monarch, but a simple, anonymous soldier from the battlefields. However, the figure’s face bears a striking resemblance to the painter Johan Thomas Lundbye, who fell in the war. The sculpture is a preliminary study for the war memorial commemorating the battle at Fredericia in 1849; the monument was erected in 1858.
