The Daily Valdemar No. 31: April 12

Valdemar Andersen, sketch for advertising Viking pencils, ca. 1922.

Today's moment of calm has a touch of the sacred.

St. Luke is said to have been the first artist just as he is said to have been the first to depict the Madonna and child. The tradition stems from a time in which imagery was destroyed for being the Devil's work and any saying, which puts imagery back on the map is a good one.

Mother and child, the wife and son of Valdemar Andersen was the closest he came to a sacred image in his own work and in the present sketch he is playing with their interaction letting her be the artist. Viking is a company, which still produces pencils. It is obviously a sketch to advertise their pencils, but Viking has no records of such an advertisement. There is one possibility in that Viking was in a dire economical situation in 1922 with German pencils being so much cheaper because of the German currency losing its value following World War I and so Viking launched a campaign of the support-Danish-pencils kind. The story can be read in its entirety here.

The campaign was hugely successful, with a number of guilds taking on the task of promoting the pencils. The sketch could have been meant for a sign in a bookshop for instance. It would have been intended to be printed in color in that the crux of the scene lies in the yellow line for the pencil. The color yellow is central to the Viking brand.

This is but a light sketch. In the right hand corner is the head of a woman seen from the back of her neck in deep concentration. The present state of the sketch makes it all the more vibrant outlined, as it is with a wet brush in two complimentary colors.

Speaking of sacred. Pencils are sacred and with a yellow Viking pencils in one's hand anything is possible.