The Shadow
Niels Hansen Jacobsen (Danish, 1861–1941)
1897-1898
- Medium
- Bronze, cast
- Classification
- Statue
- Dimensions
- height 76.5 cm, width 275 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
- Tweens profiles and older: its subjects are known and suit older children. How works are placed
View at the SMK – National Gallery of Denmark
About this work
An elongated, seemingly fraying figure with a ravaged face, clutching an hourglass. Stringy and drawn-out like wordless horror and pain. The sculpture depicts death as I myself have experienced it: sneaking invisibly into the body before it makes itself known, ravaging the inside and outside of the body before turning it to dust. Here is no hopeful tale of a light glimpsed at the onset of death. The sculpture is quite a marvel: it depicts death with perfect truth. Paradoxically, it is formed with vibrant dynamism while representing that which destroys life and form. When the artist inaugurated his studio and exhibition venue in Skibelund Krat in 1914, he wrote a poem to accompany the sculpture: ‘Death, sometimes invisible, hides in the dust of the road, yet catches up and reappears when we least expect it, ever creeping in our footsteps, impossible to escape.’ (50 Favorites in the SMK Collection)
