Description of the attraction
The Funen Museum of Fine Arts is located in the very center of Odense - opposite the palace and the former monastery church of St. Hans (John). This museum is one of the oldest fine arts museums in all of Denmark.
The progenitor of the museum was the Odense Palace itself, which was used in the middle of the 19th century for administrative purposes only partially. In 1860, it was decided to open an art gallery in the unused halls of the palace. It was only in 1885 that the solemn official opening of the Funen Museum took place. Then he moved to his new building on Jernbanegade Street, where he is now.
The building of the museum is made in the style of the era of classicism and is distinguished by an exquisitely decorated pediment with columns, made like an antique temple. The pediment is crowned with a frieze, which depicts a variety of subjects from Scandinavian mythology and Danish history.
The museum's collection mainly consists of works by Danish artists. It contains works by the realist artist Peder Severin Kreyer, Brendekilde, who worked in the style of socialist realism, and many other paintings by contemporary artists of the 20th century, mainly constructivists.
The oldest works date back to the junction of the 18th and 19th centuries. Of particular note is the infamous Dankquart Dreyer, a young artist who died in 1852 at the age of 36 from typhus. He painted amazing landscapes of Danish nature, but the society, at that time focused on the ideology of national identity, did not accept his work, considering them not strong and deep enough. Unable to withstand critical attacks, Dreyer stopped exhibiting his works, and many of them were discovered and properly appreciated only many years after his death, at the beginning of the 20th century.
