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(2) (Georg) Harald Slott-Møller
(b Copenhagen, 17 Aug 1864; d Copenhagen, 20 Oct 1937). Painter and designer, husband of (1) Agnes Slott-Møller. He studied in Copenhagen at the Kongelige Danske Kunstakademi from 1881 to 1883 and under P. S. Krøyer at the Artists’ Study School (1883–6). Slott-Møller began as a social realist, causing controversy with The Poor: The Waiting Room of Death (1888; Copenhagen, Stat. Mus. Kst), but he became a Symbolist, inspired by the plain language of form and the universal concepts of Italian early Renaissance painting and also by French Symbolism, with which he became acquainted on his honeymoon journey to Italy and France in 1888–9. In 1891 he was a co-founder of the Frie Udstilling, an unrestricted exhibition founded by 18 artists in opposition to the conservative Kunstakademi. In its first exhibition in 1891 at the Valdemar Kleis Gallery he showed Danish Landscape (copy, Copenhagen, Hirschsprungske Saml.), a painting of a cornfield with gilded plaster ears of corn, together with a portrait of the sculptor Anne Marie Carl-Nielsen (Odense, Carl Nielsen Mus.) in the same style, with her hair done in gold. Later, Slott-Møller cultivated a Symbolism in which the predominantly realistic language of form involved an underlying fabric of ideas that were either mystical or simply religious. In 1899 in London he admired the paintings of Dante Gabriel Rossetti and made connections with the artists associated with the Arts and Crafts Movement and with The Studio. The influence of the Pre-Raphaelites is clear in Paolo and Francesca (1905; Copenhagen, Ernst Lohse priv. col., see exh. cat. above). From 1902 to 1906 he was the artistic director of the Aluminia factory, which was amalgamated with the Kongelige Porcelainsfabrik in 1882. He designed jewellery, book covers, silver objects and furniture, including a cradle (1893; Copenhagen, Kstindustmus.), which he described as ‘painted wood sculpture’, and which bears a quote from John Keats: ‘A thing of beauty is a joy forever’.
Part of the Slott-Møller family
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