Facts about...

...Niels Larsen Stevns

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The sculptor and painter Niels Larsen Stevns lived from 1864 to 1941 and was very interested in historical and biblical motifs. The frescoes in the Memorial Hall were painted with the assistance of Eigil Wendelboe (1899-1940), a painter from Funen, on the basis of a number of sketches. Some of them you can find in the museum’s collection. In 1937 Stevns made the illustrations – watercolour paintings – for a deluxe edition of Hans Christian Andersen’s memoirs, The Fairy Tale of My Life (Mit Livs Eventyr).

 
 
Did you know that...

...Niels Larsen Stevns has depicted himself in the fresco which shows the torchlight procession in front of Odense Town Hall on the occasion of Hans Christian Andersen’s appointment as an honorary citizen of Odense

He is the little gray man with the wry hip who is standing with the back to the spectator.   

 
 

Honorary Citizen in Odense

December 6 2007 - January 6 2008

On December 6 2008, 140 years ago, Hans Christian Andersen was appointed as an honorary citizen of Odense. For that occasion a small exhibition about the event was shown in The Hans Christian Andersen Museum. Here you could see the honorary citizen diploma, and other objects relating to the festive day on December 6 1867.     

The fresco in the Memorial Hall in The Hans Christian Andersen Museum shows Hans Christian Andersen being celebrated as an honorary citizen in Odense on the big festive day on December 6 1867

It was – and still is – an exceptional big and rare honour to be honoured as an honorary citizen, and Hans Christian Andersen found this honour to be his greatest, and that day his happiest. In Denmark at that time there were not many honorary citizens. Bertel Thorvaldsen had, 29 years earlier, been appointed as Copenhagen’s – still only – honorary citizen, and in Odense King Frederik VII had been appointed honorary citizen some 22 years earlier. Hans Christian Andersen knew these illustrious honorary citizens very well. As a child he had played together with Frederik VII when his mother took him to the castle where she washed, and in Thorvaldsen he had found both a father and an ideal. The mayor of Odense, the municipal council, and the citizens were pleased about celebrating their fellow-townsman, and the honorary citizen celebrations were naturally commemorated in an opulent manner. “…I wish that my father and my mother had seen this happiness”, the poet wrote to the bishop in Odense.  

The Hans Christian Andersen Museum marked (the anniversary) of this event with a small exhibition which was shown in the museum’s library.